Sales incentives at ...?
I tried to buy a wireless USB connector from BestBuy. Before I went to the closest BestBuy, I had checked online that it had the connector on stock. But I only found more expensive items on the shelf. So I asked the sales associate. He replied politely that those on the shelf were all they had. If I would like, he could help me order the less expensive model online but it would need about a week to arrive. Without option, I had to buy the more expensive one.
This just passed without much to say until a New York Times essay on sales incentives at Staple. My experience pretty much backs everything said in the article. It appears a common experience that retailers are fetching customers in by bogus ads and try to sell more expensive goods.
The NYT article starts with this story: a mattress company would place a full-page newspaper ad at every weekend with deep discount on one particular mattress. The unspoken rule among sales reps, when coping with customers coming with the ads, is that whoever sale that mattress will be fired. It sounds ridiculous at the beginning: then why placed the full-page ad? Answers came from a customer experience with the Staples. The customer tried to buy an Acer computer for $499 but rejected a PC protection plan from a sales rep and manager. Unexpectedly, the once on stock Acer computer then became out-of-stock. This was a three-year old customer complaint but now it is revealed by a Staples manager. She explained that Staples tracks sales staff by a system called Market Basket. The chain requires sales reps sell average $200 add-on, or no sale at all, i.e., not items not on stock. If this number is not reached, store managers are gone with the wind. Letting customers leave hands empty is a jargon in sales reps called "walking the customer". A nice name. Walking the customer is an update from a tactic that was known as “bouncing the customer,” she said, which entailed sending a customer to another Staples store. But that practice was abandoned because so many stores were bouncing so many customers that it was creating ill will among consumers. Now, staffers who don’t want to walk customers have another option: they can escort them to an in-store computer and tell them how to place orders online. “If they buy it online, we lose the sale,” said the Staples manager, “but we don’t have the Market Basket problem.”
Staples official declined this report.
Given that, I may just order another USB wireless connector online at BestBuy, that particular priced connector and return the higher price one.
This just passed without much to say until a New York Times essay on sales incentives at Staple. My experience pretty much backs everything said in the article. It appears a common experience that retailers are fetching customers in by bogus ads and try to sell more expensive goods.
The NYT article starts with this story: a mattress company would place a full-page newspaper ad at every weekend with deep discount on one particular mattress. The unspoken rule among sales reps, when coping with customers coming with the ads, is that whoever sale that mattress will be fired. It sounds ridiculous at the beginning: then why placed the full-page ad? Answers came from a customer experience with the Staples. The customer tried to buy an Acer computer for $499 but rejected a PC protection plan from a sales rep and manager. Unexpectedly, the once on stock Acer computer then became out-of-stock. This was a three-year old customer complaint but now it is revealed by a Staples manager. She explained that Staples tracks sales staff by a system called Market Basket. The chain requires sales reps sell average $200 add-on, or no sale at all, i.e., not items not on stock. If this number is not reached, store managers are gone with the wind. Letting customers leave hands empty is a jargon in sales reps called "walking the customer". A nice name. Walking the customer is an update from a tactic that was known as “bouncing the customer,” she said, which entailed sending a customer to another Staples store. But that practice was abandoned because so many stores were bouncing so many customers that it was creating ill will among consumers. Now, staffers who don’t want to walk customers have another option: they can escort them to an in-store computer and tell them how to place orders online. “If they buy it online, we lose the sale,” said the Staples manager, “but we don’t have the Market Basket problem.”
Staples official declined this report.
Given that, I may just order another USB wireless connector online at BestBuy, that particular priced connector and return the higher price one.
posted by Intl.investment.services at
8:52 AM
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