Pham Thoai is no stranger to live-streaming fame. During a 12-hour marathon live stream, the popular Tiktoker chalked-up a record-breaking three million views, 22 million likes, and nearly 50,000 orders in January 2023.

As one of the leading faces in the live commerce industry, Thoai believes consumers prefer livestream shopping to real life bricks and mortar experiences.

Live streaming saves time and effort, offers better prices, and usually provides a thorough enough demonstration and review of products to make a real-life trip to the shops unnecessary.

Pham Thoai doesn’t have a formal marketing education. “I started helping with my family sales business when I was eight, and went on to gain more sales experience with a part-time job in college. I learnt how to effectively close sales from companies and other salespeople,” he shares.

“What I know and do now is the result of over a decade of accumulated knowledge. Yes, we can learn a lot from books, but among the ten things I learnt from books, I’ve barely used half in practice. It’s through real-life situations such as encountering tough customers that we learn more valuable and applicable lessons,” Thoai says.

Thoai believes successful livestreamers must know the product just as well as the brand does, so that they can answer every query raised by potential customers.

“Consumers are allergic to brands getting influencers to do paid reviews. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and give them what they want. Consumers are looking for objective and honest product reviews instead of flattering comments.

"To gain their trust, livestreamers must use the product themselves and deliver their personal take instead of making their live session a commercial.”

“I work based on the principle that the customer is always right. I once received negative feedback about a cosmetic product, I immediately rechecked the quality of the product, and even though the product wasn’t defective, it just wasn’t suitable for the customer's skin and caused them irritation. In such a situation, it’s better to give the customer a refund, which may mean we may lose the value of that order, perhaps 300,000 VND, but in return you can gain tens of millions VND as they have left satisfied and are likely to return in the future,” says Thoai.

Live commerce is an integral part of his everyday life and routine. His live sessions take place at night, so Thoai starts his day at noon, spends time on make-up, and experiments and learns about the products that will be featured before the livestream.

“Although I hardly have any free time for my hobbies or shopping, it is fulfilling enough to know that I’m loved, trusted, and supported by many people,” he says.

Pham Thoai believes that the current uprising trend of live commerce has brought huge opportunities to anyone wanting to get into sales.

However, they need to pour their heart and soul into the job and really use the products before giving any review or selling them. Otherwise, they’ll be unlikely to escape accusations of scamming, and that live streamers are just shills for products they don’t really use.