How to win customers and influence people

In late 2010, I started working for a much loved Australian retailer. It was my first client-side role after a few years in agencies, and my first time back in retail since stacking shelves at my local supermarket.

At the time, most “online” teams sat either in IT or Marketing, depending on how seriously the business took it. In this case, marketing owned the website and was responsible for its success.

After a few weeks, I felt like I had a reasonable understanding of the business and asked what I thought was a straight forward question.

“Hey, why don’t we sell online?”

The response was immediate.

“We don’t sell online. We will never sell online. Don’t ask that question again.”

A few years later, we launched ecommerce. Today, that same brand is seen as a leader in the industry and has one of the largest ecommerce businesses in Australia.

Things change.

Over the last few years, ecommerce has become critically important. But as it has grown, it has often evolved through a marketing lens with success tied to traffic, campaigns and acquisition. Teams get very good at driving the metrics they can control.

Get customers to the website. Get them to transact.

But not always what happens next.

The website is still expected to do a bit of everything. Drive store visits, showcase the latest campaign, capture emails, support the brand.

It is almost always the largest revenue channel, but it is not always treated that way.

That creates some strange outcomes.

Stores are expected to fulfil online orders, but the impact ecommerce has on store performance isn’t always recognised. Close a store and you often lose the halo that comes with it.

We have built a model where everything is connected, but we still measure in silos.

The Greatest Car Salesman

There’s a well-known story about a car salesman named Joe Girard, often referred to as the greatest car salesman of all time.

He didn’t get there by pushing for the hard sell or chasing one-off transactions. His entire approach was built around relationships.

Every customer mattered. He kept detailed records, remembered names, followed up after the sale and stayed in touch long after the car had been delivered.

He believed that every person knew around 250 other people. If you treated one customer well, that experience didn’t stop with them. It spread.

Over time, that compounded. One customer led to another, then another. Not because of better advertising but because of trust.

Ecommerce must work the same way.

Every order is not just a transaction, it is a moment where you either build trust or erode it. Delivery, product quality, communication, returns. All of it shapes what that customer does next and what they say to others.

Most businesses focus on getting the first sale.

But in reality, that’s when the customer experience really begins.

The latest buzzword

Every few years, something arrives that is going to change everything. Big Data and data lakes would unlock customer intelligence at scale. Augmented reality was going to let customers visualise products in their home before buying. 3D product views would kill the uncertainty that drives returns. Some of these made a dent. Most took far longer to implement than anyone thought, or they quietly gave up when it all became too hard.

AI feels different. Not because of the technology itself, but because of where it sits in the customer journey. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude are increasingly part of how people research, compare and shortlist products before they visit a site or set foot in a store.

That changes the game in a specific way. A Google ad puts you in front of someone. An AI recommendation reflects what the world already thinks of you. Reviews, delivery experiences, product quality, how you handle a return. The signals that have always driven word of mouth now feed directly into how AI represents your brand to a customer you haven't met yet.

There is nowhere to hide. A pattern of poor delivery, inconsistent product quality or a frustrating returns process used to be manageable. You could outspend it or at least contain it. Now those signals are aggregated, surfaced and handed to your next potential customer before they've even clicked on your site.

Revenue from AI-driven traffic is still small. But the direction is only going up and the businesses that show up well in that environment are the ones doing the unsexy work now. Not on campaigns, but on the experience that happens after someone clicks buy.

There can be only one

Traffic and conversions matter. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't run an ecommerce business. But if you had to choose one metric, one number that forces the right decisions across pricing, experience, product and marketing, it has to be lifetime value.

LTV changes what you focus on. When the goal is a returning customer rather than a single transaction, the priorities shift in ways that compound over time. Delivery stops being an operational footnote and becomes a brand decision. Product quality stops being a cost-of-returns problem and becomes the foundation everything else is built on.

Customer experience stops being a nice to have and becomes the thing that either brings someone back or doesn't.

Real loyalty follows the same logic. Most loyalty programs are built around the transaction, rewarding behaviour that would have happened anyway and training customers to wait for the next discount. That's not loyalty, it's conditioning. When LTV is the measure, you stop asking "how do we get them to buy again" and start asking "why would they choose us again." The answer is rarely points. It's usually reliability, service and a brand I can trust.

It also changes how you think about price. Competing on price alone is a race you won't win. Amazon, Shein and Temu will always be cheaper. The margin erosion required to keep up will slowly destroy your business. But when LTV is the lens, you're not trying to win on price alone. You're giving customers a reason to come back that has nothing to do with a discount code. That's harder to build and harder to copy.

I briefly worked for a startup in the food delivery space. One day, the owner came in and the first words out of his mouth where "Why have we only had 1,000 sessions today?"

So, what did we do to address that. Discounts, campaigns driving sales but the underlying business wasn’t improving and profits were rapidly disappearing. If the question had been around building lifetime value, the strategy would have looked completely different.

This is how to win

The last few years have not been kind to retailers. Lockdowns, rising costs, margin pressure and a wave of global competitors have tested even the most established brands. Some didn't make it. Brands that Australians had shopped for decades disappeared overnight.

The ones that have thrived share something in common. A relentless focus on the customer. They know that getting the sale is only the first step. It's what you do next that matters most. Not because it's a nice idea, but because in a market this competitive, it's the only strategy that lasts.

This article was first published in the Inside Retail Australia May 2026 Edition