I bought a fridge on Sunday. The experience reminded me why advice and execution are best sold separately.
The salesperson at the store tried to convince me to buy an LG—even though the reviews on the entire Internet said it wasn’t a good refrigerator.
Even the reviews on their own site were something like 2.5/5 on well over 3,000 reviews.
She told me not to worry about the reviews, “People only give negative comments most of the time”, she said.
Granted, I almost believed her. Maybe the refrigerator was fine. Maybe only people with bad experiences leave reviews on things like this.
She seemed sure.
But I also remembered the people who tried to repair my old refrigerator telling me not to buy Samsung, LG, and a few others. They said buy brands like Whirlpool, Maytag, General Electric, etc.
So who do I trust?
The repairmen had no horse in the race. No incentive for me to buy one over the other. They just knew which fridges reliably broke down and had class actions against them for faulty parts.
I trusted their advice most. So I bought a Maytag. The reviews were also 4.4/5 on their own website and were consistent across the Internet.
So here’s the thing…
I’m going to go on a limb here, but I think that salesperson was incentivized to sell (or get rid of) the LGs they had.
My feeling is she gets paid more to sell an LG over a Maytag, even if it was a cheaper product.
And even if that’s not true, it doesn’t matter. We are taught to be skeptical of salespeople when we’re not sure.
It reminds me about why I believe advice and execution should be sold separately.
I personally believe it’s a better buying experience largely because of the reduced conflict of incentives and therefore creating a higher level of trust.
If you want to sell advice, be the fiduciary.