Sales maggots working on commission.
So I walk into Circuit City looking for this deal, a 1 GB SD flash memory card for only $19.99 (no rebate). I find the guy behind the counter and ask him for the “advertised twenty dollar, one gig SD card”. He opens the locked case and pulls out two SD cards and starts ringing me up.
I say “whoa there, what the heck are you doing”? He says, “It’s a buy one, get one free deal, and it comes up to $29.99.” I said, “I’m pretty sure that that was not the deal, and besides, that’s the one with the rebate.” Indeed, it was 60 bux total with 30 back by snail mail, assuming that you jumped through all the hoops and the stars were aligned properly.
Remember kids, always bring the ad. I spied the flyer on the counter and leafed through it. After I pointed it out to him he said, “Oh, the Polaroid one. Sorry, we’re all out”. I said the magic word “Raincheck”, and he pointed to the customer service counter. As I began to step away, he relented, and quickly said, “Wait, let me see if there’s any in the back” Well wonders of wonder, there actually were some, and he made commission on a $20 sale instead of having me walk out empty-handed.
Leah Says :
While I think the idea of trying to get all your daily money on commission is horribly (you get pushy, rude people that way sometimes), I think having a base hourly wage (say, minimum) plus a small commission for sales really drives people to help customers and try their hardest.
The problem comes with unscrupulous employees who try to upsell anyone. That really sucks, and I’m not sure how to control for that. Ideally, the small commission would encourage employees to work hard and be helpful (unlike the “hey, we’re chatting here” type of people that often work in retail and can’t be bothered to help). Ideally, this commission would also encourage workers to become knowledgeable about their products and find pride in setting customers up with exactly the right system/product/etc and no more.
2006-12-17 13:20 PermalinkStandard Mischief Says :
At one of the places I worked at, we ordered supplies from a salesperson who worked on commission. On his last week working for the company, he took one of our orders, and promptly send it three times to three different locations. The way shipping and receiving worked at my place of employment, well they had no idea what should be arriving so they signed for everything. You could Fed-Ex them a box of turds and they would sign for it.
The salesperson was counting on the fact that it would take months to sort out the confusion, and by that time he would already have cashed his check. He was right. Took us over six months.
Although I believe performance based pay as a whole is a good idea, it does sometimes change the dynamics.
2006-12-17 13:34 PermalinkMichael Hampton Says :
Circuit City hasn’t had commissioned salespeople since 2003.
2006-12-23 19:45 PermalinkStandard Mischief Says :
That’s funny, I thought I spoke plainly and it seemed he was clearly stonewalling, I wonder what his motivation was then?
2006-12-23 21:47 Permalink