genuis of sears

Joined: 11 Jul 2003 Posts: 157

1978-

Man walks into a Sears store to buy a basic washer and dryer. Mets a professional salesman in coat and tie. Salesman looks like a lawyer or accountant, somebody that the man trusts for good advice. Man listens to salesman for five minute and realizes that this guy really knows his stuff. Man buys Lady Kenmore set and the service contract. Uses his Sears card to charge the purchase. Delivery will be tomorrow and the Sears guys will hook it all up. Man's wife will be happy.

Sears made money:
1- on the sale of a washer and dryer
2- more money on the upgrade to the Elite/Lady Kenmore
3- on the service contracts
4- another dollar or so on the delivery
5- on the interest on the Sears card

The genuis of Sears made money five ways in this sale and if the customers was satisfied with this transaction, it was very likely he would be back to do business with the same salesman when his wife wants to remodel the kitchen.

2003-

Woman walks into Sears store to buy basic washer and dryer. Saleskid in rumpled khakis and white polo shows her the cheap set thats in the ad. She has a question about the washer. Saleskid doesn't know the answer but prints out the product specs on the internet kiosk. Woman thinks about how her Dad always bought from Sears and it lasted and lasted. She buys the cheap sales set based on the price and Dad's good experience. Saleskids says something about MPA while at the register. No thanks. Set will be delivered in 5 days. She pays for purchase with Visa. When the set is delivered, she notices a huge dent in the front. Calls Sears to talk to Saleskid. Discovers that saleskid quit Friday, but manager gives her $25 off to keep the washer.

Sears made money:
1-on the dryer (and a little on the washer)
2- broke even with the contracted delivery service
Sears saved money:
1- by not having to pay health care for parttime Saleskid
2- by not having to pay any retirement benefits for saleskid
THE GENUIS OF SEARS TODAY - COST REDUCTION.

Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 312

Don't forget about the Big Bonus' the CEO received with this sale..... Rock on!

Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 125

You forgot these important items.

1. Saleskid rang wrong color.
2. Delivery called customer the night before delivery to tell them that the item is not in stock and has to be re-scheduled.
3. Saleskid hounded the customer about the credit card and account care.
4. Their was free delivery after rebate, but delivery threw the UPC away when the set was delivered. Store issued 50 credit to customer.
5. Customer has problem with washer after year and a half. Sears takes the washer back and gives the customer full credit to go to Best Buy, Lowes, Home Depot, etc.

Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 5

Interesting how times have changed.

Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 1037 Location: Formerly 3333

A few more things you overlooked......

a.) Sears lost money on both sales as it relates to delivery. We don't make a dime on delivery. It's a cost that the delivery fee doesn't make up for, just offsets some.

b.) In your 2003 example, you forgot to write up the saleskid for not using his tear sheets.

c.) You forgot Item #6 in your 1978 example where the big ticket commission salesperson, after selling the Lady Kenmore and MA, goes back to the favorite gathering spot in Appliances and commiserates with all of his fellow sales associates and complains about the 6% commission he made on top of the $9.00/hr base pay he has and says that if Sears really cared about their people, they would pay them more.

Don't think it happened? Think again. I was there and heard it with my own two ears.

"Footie"

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 933 Location: roaming...

Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 1037 Location: Formerly 3333

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:20 am Post subject:

Footie you forgot one thing if it is like my store the kid with the rumbled khacki, and polo tells them to hang on while they finish there cell phone conversation and the phone in the big pockets of the khackis his phone rings five more times. He grabs the ad and talks some more while ringing

Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 1037 Location: Formerly 3333

I've seen that guy. Very Happy

"Footie"

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

Why does everyone bash on kids so much? I am a kid and sell as well or better then the more vetran people in my department? I know sometimes kids can be a little bit green on the ears but there are many vetrans who don't think that there shit doesn't think and deserve the money more then i do. So if you want to bash on my group i can bash just as much on your group. Anyone wanna go a few rounds on that one with me:) If your good you might get a whoot whoot Smile

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

SM, I can relate, when I started in retail sales I was a teenager, I used to get picked on all the time about my age. By the time I was in my early 20s I was selling better than most, by the time I was in my mid 20s I had the owner of a regional chain of stores call me at home asking me please not to quit, that I could have a leave of absense for as long as I needed. I said thanks but no thanks, and took a job training others how to sell. People in retail don't respect kids until you prove to them over the long haul that you outsell them all day every day, and do it the right way. Then they have no choice. By that time, you're ready to move on up the ladder. I remember being a snot nosed kid with a southern accent showing up as a part timer in Sears in BC and having the full timers laugh at me cuz I talked slow and was young. By the time I left that store 2 of the other full timers quit, and two of the other full timers were fired for theft by deception, I was the only full timer in the department and loving it.

ICKIMORE

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 1337 Location: The Collective

I dont have a problem with kids just as long as I dont see the crack of their ass..(pull your goddamned pants up!) or any of their nasty ass piercings....want to be a professional??? Then be well spoken, smile, and dont look like a hoodlum. Want to have a eyebrow piercing?? Wear your baggy pants and show your underwear???? Then go somewhere else! Very Happy

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

Agreed Bodyguard. If you don't want to look professional (to the standards of the norms of the society we live in) then don't be surprised if you get told to go find a job in a non-public sector.

An example:

A small business owner that owns a religious book store and that caters to a fairly traditional clientel should not be told that he needs to hire a transvestite for the checkout counter. The reason being not because we should be prejudiced against transvestites, but because the business of the book store would most likely suffer from the probable affect of turning off the majority of the customers.

If you can't look the part that you need to in order to promote sales, then maybe you need to change and not society in general.

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

I do agree people should look professional. It's too bad sears is not a professional job anymore. In my department there is 11 people. 4 full timers (all fta by the way) and seven part timers including me. All the full timers dress pretty decently except for Al (he smells real bad too i dont know why) who has wrinkled shirts all the time for some reason. Anyways the part timers in my department overall don't dress very well. I asked one of them why they do not dress a little more professional. He told me this " I cannot afford to dress well enough because i am not being paid very well, i make on average 9 dollars an hour and i bust my ass and this company can kiss my ass". That response right there basically sums up the way him and the other 5 part timers think. I do understand their side because they should not have to dump a lot of money into good clothes if they are making hardly nothing in electronics. On the other hand since i have been there i have always dressed professional and will continue to do so. I think partly why is because when i was hired everyone was dressed like that so you would stick out like a sore thumb if you dressed crappy or hard a lot of piercings or anything else for that matter. Over time as the average pay per associate went down we got less and less qualified people to work in my department. Lower pay=lower expectations. You get what you pay for when you run a company. Sears is directly to blame for fllooding the floor and paying such low commison on electronics. They are not entirely (Economy has been slow will give them that) but i believe they share alot of the blame. Don't mean to knock the full timers at my store or the other stores but even they do not dress like they did 10 years ago. They dress less professional then they did. It's like they have loosend up a bit over the years and figured they cant pump money into really nice clothing all the time with thier wages constantly going down. I count my blessings that i am in school and have somewhat of a chance not to end up permanetly at sears. God help me if that ever happened.

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

OK, I don't get this logic:

1. I am not paid well.

2. I spend my money on nose rings.

Tell me how that works please?

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

I am not debating with you on that icki. I think they should put money into their clothes instead of piercings, but it is not my place to say that. What you pay is what you get with employees. You can't expect the 9 dollar an average associate in electronics to act like the 20 dollar an hour associate in appliances. We wouldnt' even have a bunch of young people in highschool working in my department if the pay was better in that department. If you don't pay enough then 17 year old people who pierce there ears and noses is all we get. Im a business major in school and from my experiences (as well as family members who have served as partners and ceo's of companies, and yes i come from a privlaged family) you cannot run a successful business without good employees. To get the the good employees you need to be willing to pay for them. If sears does not want to do that, theres nothing i can do about that. They are only cutting their own throats. I will work hard and dress nice for as long as i work there but when i am gone i will never look back at that place. I won't even shop there most likely because i disagree so heavily of what has happened there over the years. I guess its my silent protest:)

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

That's fine, but even as a young person that was selling electronics that was living at home with his parents with no car payment or rent required, I dressed and appeared as I needed to maximize my sales. I wasn't an idiot. I said to myself, "ok self, would I keep my hair cut short and wear these white dress shirts and ties all the time outside of this place? nope. But if it makes me an extra $20 a week, maybe it's worth it while I am here."

Of course, I wore $300 suits for the last year or so I was on the salesfloor also, so maybe I'm a bad example. Yes, on the payroll for D/57 I purchased 3 $300 suits. Took me a while to pay those off on the old credit card, but I made my money back in added sales. Maybe it wasn't the suits that did it, but something did, and I happened to be wearing them, so I can't discount that it was.

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

Please dont make general statments about young people. Yes they can live at home but many have to pay for things like there own car, their insurance and cell phone bills. Yeah my dad makes 450k a year so i did not have to pay for squat but i am the exception. While were talking about electronics, what do you think they shoul do to try and help people make more money in electronics?

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

Teach associates how to sell and act professionally at all times. Simple as that. I go in Sears stores a lot. I purchase from Sears stores whenever possible. I've been known to make purchases in Sears stores where the associates didn't know who I was. I've seen some scary stuff man.

I'll tell ya a good one. I purchased this lawn mower from this guy, he waited until we were at the counter to tell me about the PA. I explained to him after the sale who I was and what he should have done to increase his chances of selling me the PA. I then purchased a PA from him anyway even though he really sucked at selling it to me. Two months later I went back in and saw him again. I told him who I was and that I had purchased the lawn mower from him before and so I wanted to purchase a gas grill from him. No lie. He waited until we were at the counter to tell me about the PA. I mean come on, wake up and smell the coffee man. I told ya who I was, I told ya about my prior purchase. I was begging you to sell me the PA at the product. But noooooooooooooo. No need to do that.

I haven't purchased anything from him since, and don't plan on it in the future. He can't sell, and he has proven that he is incapable of modifying his behavior to help increase his sales. He needs to be manning a register in softlines somewhere in my opinion.

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

How do you explain the commisions on 1 percent sony camcorders. Does sears really only make enough money to give 1 percent on the gross purchase of a sony camcorder??? What do you think should be done about very low commision rates, something that has fell victim in electronics. I absolutely agree about better training. Training should be done by people not by a computer that associates now sit through. What's your thoughts on sears new way of "professionaly training people by a computer"? Do you think people should be forced to use a tearsheet to sale to customers? If you agree then it could be possible to assume that you and sears think that there is only one correct way to sell when ifact many of us know that is not true.

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 1337 Location: The Collective

No one puts a gun to your head and makes you work for Sears.....dont want to conform to our way of doing things then dont even apply...

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

OK, I don't know the profit margin on camcorders here in my head. But if you are asking if there should be items at 1% in general. Yes, I believe a scaled commission structure is appropriate to encourage people to sell up to sell down.

As for training, see, there's a problem in the commission areas. The problem is that most BC ASMs have never sold in BC. I think that is stupid. Unfortunately, most BC associates have no desire to move up the ladder to get to the point of being BC ASMs any longer. See, most people don't like getting a promotion through a pay cut, and since most BC sales associates make more money than leads, that is a problem. So your BC ASM doesn't know how to sell (in many cases), so it is impossible for them to effectively teach you how to sell. Oh, they can put out the certain code words and methods used in selling, but they can't actually draw on that past experience to prove to you what they are saying is correct. They don't have the, pardon my French, balls to sell a customer from scratch with the PA with you watching to see how it is done, because they have a fear of failure.

So then there is the store HR, the one in charge of training. The one who makes less than a BC sales associate so no BC sales associates go become HRs. See the trend here?

Now that leaves your store in a quandry. How do you teach people how to sell, when nobody in a position of authority short of maybe the SGM knows a lot about selling, and since the SGM is so far removed from the process, the trust is often not there (nor the time to build it up) for the sales associate to trust all the SGM has to say. So what is the store to do? Well, since the only people that know how to sell in the store happen to be the other sales associates themselves, then they are left to train their competition. So the company did something to try to help. They instituted a new training method to at least give a bit of methodology to the new associate. Then they put in some tear sheets. See, since the sales associate is doing the training, eventually through turnover you will have no sales associates there that received training from any human outside of a sales associate. The rules of the game of telephone apply over a long time as well as a short time. The message will get garbled over time. Before you know it, without proper guidance, you have sales associates thinking it is best to present PAs at the register (as an example). So the tear sheet will at least stem the tide of some of that degradation of the message.

Now, an appropriate solution in my view is this. Promote only former BC associates to BC leads and BC ASMs. That presents another problem though. See, much of the negativity through the store comes from BC associates. In other words, morale is at its lowest point within BC. So the decision would be to promote somebody that thinks the company sucks. Would that help further the cause or hinder it? It could go either way. In my view, do it, and turn the position over a few times if needed to find the right person for the job, but get it done. Get a former BC associate in those jobs, they are the only ones that can teach the right way to sell. If you need to go through 10 BC associates to find the right one for the job, then do it. It creates a potential labor unemployment issue that is not desired, but if it works in the end it might be worth it.

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 321

Find me a BC ASM that will take a TO on a PA sale and I'll show you a real SALES manager.

ICKIMORE

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 477

No i do believe in fluctuating commisions. Dont get me wrong there, i just have a problem with too many items being in the one percent range. Please bodyguard dont give me the "if you dont like things leave speach". Hell if we did that 80-100 years ago people would still be working 14-15 hour days. If i dont like things sure i can leave or i can stay and force change to happen. I stand up for my rights and if i believe a company is worth fighting for to change for the better (as in i am going to be there for a while) dam right i would speak up. Yeah icki i do agree with you we need better managers. But really we not only need ones with experience but with more competence as well. To get better quality managers you need to pay more as well. Like i say you pay for what you get with employees as well as managers. Do you think electronics has to many items that fall into the low commision ( 2 percent or lower) catagory. Because on average alot of my paychecks have about a 1/3 or 1 percent commision items.

Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 1337 Location: The Collective

If you would take the time to read and understand my post, it referred to new hires. Again experience adds a lot to ones understanding of things....no amount of college can substitute for hands on experience.

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