4 defining traits of the best ecommerce sellers

The author is the Regional Director of Amazon Global Selling in Southeast Asia. The opinions expressed in this article are his own, and does not necessarily represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of his employer.

Photo credit: Bench Accounting

Let me introduce you to Nut. You’ll always see him in a flannel shirt and jeans, with a big grin on his face. And he has plenty to smile about.

Ten years ago, while his friends spent their weekends attending courses on “how to sell online,” Nut quit his run of the mill job and jumped straight in. He learnt “on the streets” through trial and error and reading whatever free material he could get his hands on. He identified products that sold well locally and looked to source them in an attempt to make a small fortune. This was a very “Thai” businessman thing to do – if it’s working for someone else, copy it. He was in the business of “picking winners.” Unfortunately, six months into his online adventure, the only thing he had to show for his hard work was a pile of unsold inventory.

Fast forward two years. Nut’s girlfriend was making more money selling on LINE and Facebook than Nut was making in a full time desk job. She needed his help. To the online marketplace he returned, only this time, he thought about building a brand and offering the customer something different — something of greater value than being another option. What if he sold his girlfriend’s traditional Thai clothing to people who found them “exotic”?

Through a little research online, he noticed people in the US/UK were willing to pay 10 times more than the product could be sold for locally. Moreover, he had a wider selection and range of designs than those currently listed. What started with 10,000 baht (US$283.56) of clothes and a home photoshoot is today a global business, generating over 10 million baht (US$285,263) in sales per year.

While technology startups get the lion’s share of the media, there are many entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia with a good product to sell but a reluctance to expand their business online. Whether the barrier is internal, “online selling seems so complicated — there are so many moving parts” or external “I don’t think I can compete with the products that are out there,” once you make the decision to sell online, commit and do it well.

I’ve been privileged to help hundreds of businesses owners and entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia enter the online space, and noticed that most successful ones have the following four traits.

1. They move fast.

They are hungry and have a strong bias for action. Give them a list of things to complete and you can consider it done. These sellers can go from registering their businesses to launching them in 1 week. I’ve seen other business owners take up to 9 months to do so and give me every excuse imaginable why they can’t do it any faster.

And when they finally launch, they don’t expect sales to just roll in. They learn how to grow the new sales channel they have just entered into.

2. They are resourceful.

If they need help with something operational, they don’t schedule a meeting with me — they ping someone in their network. In Thailand, they will LINE message you; in Singapore, Facebook will provide the answer; in Indonesia, Instagram shows the way to overcome the hurdle.

It’s very common to see LINE and Facebook apps open on their desktops as a tool to solve problems on the fly.

3. They are obsessed with customer satisfaction.

While most businesses can make customers happy enough to make a first purchase, very few will actively get these people to talk about the business in a positive light. My most successful clients are the business owners who drive word of mouth because they know it’s priceless. They say things like, “if people like my product, they will tell others. But if I convince them to post about it, they’ve just told 1000 others. It will drive sales and that’s what I want at the end of the day.”

4. They just get it.

I don’t have to sell them on opportunities to sell globally. Sometimes it’s better for me to send them an information/registration link and get out of their way. With less than 1 percent of retail being conducted online in Southeast Asia (vs 6-8 percent in US/Europe), they are willing to adapt and do whatever it takes to be successful.