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 01/01/2005 08:28:12 PM · #1
It's something I have on my mind for sometime now and I thing I have to let it out.

I worked as a salesman in various store for the last 12 years. I'm now director of an electronic store in my hometown, and people that compare price between a regular store and internet are PISSING ME OFF!!!!!!!!!!

An E-store just have to have a wharehouse and some people to do the shipping plus a website. Somtime they don't even need a wharehouse, they order stuff from their supplier and they have 'em sending it to your address, plus they charge you for transportation. IT COST NOTHING!

Each week I see people come over to my store, Spend an hour or 2 with a salesman and then go buy on the internet because it's CHEAPER!!!! Some of them even have the guts to come back to the store with their new stuff to ask more questions. I got some news. A QUALIFIED SALESMAN COST MONEY AND THE KNOWLEDGE HE SHARE WITH CUSTOMERS WORTH MONEY. HAVING A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE COME ASK QUESTION OR HAVE SERVICE FOR THEIR PRODUCTS ON LOCATION AND INSTANTLY COST MONEY AND IT'S WORTH IT!!! EVEN HAVING SOMEONE TO SUE AND NOT ONLY AN IP ADDRESS WHEN SOMETHING GO WRONG WORTH MONEY. I have nothing against people who buy on the internet but leave salesman alone because they are not paid to give you a crash course on what you want to buy, they are paid if you buy it from them. And don't compare price because you're not buying the same thing. When you go to a store you buy a products but you also buy knowledge, experience, confidence and service.
 01/01/2005 08:34:31 PM · #2
For most things electronic and photography, I don't bother with the physical store anymore. No reason to.

M
 01/01/2005 08:37:50 PM · #3
Originally posted by mavrik:
For most things electronic and photography, I don't bother with the physical store anymore. No reason to.

M


Well if you don't bother with stores anymore it's okay. This is against people who go get their information in a store and then give their money to an E-Store because they don't want to pay for the valuable information they received.
 01/01/2005 08:40:06 PM · #4
I shop for everything online too.

I find that when I walk into a Best Buy or whatnot, I usually know more about the subject than the salesman who's paid to help me. When there is a subject I don't know about, I usually do all my research online too.

As a storeowner and internet shopper myself, I see shopping on the internet as an inevitable way of life. Heck, most of my supplies, equipment, and inventory comes from purchases over the internet.
 01/01/2005 08:43:36 PM · #5
Have you thought about getting a webpage for your store? Maybe selling things a little cheaper?

just some thoughts. I don't know much about stores and the prices, but the stores here rack their prices up so high that I would never buy from them.
 01/01/2005 08:49:17 PM · #6
Originally posted by moswyn:
I shop for everything online too.

I find that when I walk into a Best Buy or whatnot, I usually know more about the subject than the salesman who's paid to help me. When there is a subject I don't know about, I usually do all my research online too.

As a storeowner and internet shopper myself, I see shopping on the internet as an inevitable way of life. Heck, most of my supplies, equipment, and inventory comes from purchases over the internet.


I agree. Usually I find that the salesperson is muchmore uninformed than I am,and it makes it easier to shop on my own. But I still prefer stores just because of the fact that I know that there is a sales person behind the product, ready to back me up if something goes wrong.

I also agree with nicklavey. Sales persons should still not be taken for granted just because they might not be able to provide you with information. They are there to help you with your purchase and make you feel thats its okay to buy what you are buying.

I feel much more comfortable talking to a person than emailing a sales rep back and forth. It is more comforting to know that a real live person is on the other end of your conversation.

-Robert

Message edited by author 2005-01-01 20:49:57.
 01/01/2005 08:50:17 PM · #7
Talking for an hour or two to a salesman for info is a letch. They should be kicked out! lol
 01/01/2005 08:56:11 PM · #8
Originally posted by moswyn:
I shop for everything online too.

I find that when I walk into a Best Buy or whatnot, I usually know more about the subject than the salesman who's paid to help me. When there is a subject I don't know about, I usually do all my research online too.

As a storeowner and internet shopper myself, I see shopping on the internet as an inevitable way of life. Heck, most of my supplies, equipment, and inventory comes from purchases over the internet.


When I wrote about a qualified salesman I wasn't talking about best buy people
 01/01/2005 08:58:32 PM · #9
When I worked in a travel agency, the agents there had the same sort of complaints. People would call up and ask for help finding cheap flights and then go online and book them themselves. Then when there was a problem with their ticket and Expedia didn't care at all, they'd call the agency back for help.

Like other people have mentioned, I generally skip the store and go straight for the internet. It seems that unless you go into a very small, specifically marketed store, the sales people are either quite unwilling and uneager to help or just don't know anything. Or both. I run into this frequently in computer stores. On one occasion, I went to the Customer Service desk and asked the employee there if they had a certain kind of cable. He said, "I don't know" and proceeded to stand there and stare at me. Clearly customer service is not the place to ask questions and God forbid someone actually make an effort to find out something.

Anyway, that was kind of a tangent. I guess I was just thinking that you're lucky to find yourself in a store where they actually provide knowledge, experience, confidence and service. Sorry to hear about the annoying customers...
01/01/2005 09:02:18 PM · #10
I think that buying on the internet is inevitable for people living in rural areas or for those communities without access to stores, but this kind of buying also undermines local economies.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Nick. I try to fully support my local camera shop as I want my money to stay in the community and I want to be able to come back with questions or problems. I've become especially friendly with a particular salesman and he is readily willing to talk about hardware, photography in general and the industry, and I find this is wonderful as I can stay in there for hours talking with this one fellow and he shares my passion and is very knowledgeable. I fully intend to purchase my next camera from them, most likely a DSLR.

There is an issue that has come up over time that I don't like, however. I have bought a number of accessories from them, and have also witnessed transactions of other customers, where they do not give the buyer a receipt unless asked for. They don't give a computerized receipt, or something that's "official," but rather handwrite it on an old style receipt book (the kind with the carbon copy pages). Then, you can barely read what they've put down on it. Personally, I don't like that way of doing business and I need to bring it to their attention.

I'm just curious as to what kinds of stores you have managed as I'm hoping that you do pay your sales help well. In most of the big chain electronics stores I have frequented, I know they get paid poorly, and I do not get accurate product information, so as has been said here prior, I do my own homework and stay away from the big chain electronics outfits. I do still intend to give most of my business to the small stores.
 01/01/2005 09:17:10 PM · #11
Originally posted by Olyuzi:


I'm just curious as to what kinds of stores you have managed as I'm hoping that you do pay your sales help well. In most of the big chain electronics stores I have frequented, I know they get paid poorly, and I do not get accurate product information, so as has been said here prior, I do my own homework and stay away from the big chain electronics outfits. I do still intend to give most of my business to the small stores.


Well, The store I'm in now is small. 6 salesman, 3 technicians 3 cashier. The salesamn have better salary than I had when I was a salesman. they're paid hourly and they have commission and bonus too. They are the passionated type, the type of salesamn that if you come in the store and ask for something that he know he don't know well he'll transfer you to someone else who know better even if he's to loose commission. We don't check how much time they spend with customers because we prefer our customers to be satisfied than having a high volume of sales as well as a high volume of return. But we do have higher prices than the internet because we deliver the same day, install it for free most of the time, take care of the problem for our customers. Oh yes, and we do give computer invoice to all our customers.
 01/01/2005 09:28:11 PM · #12
Seems to me that most of the small stores are going out of business and the local economies are being overtaken by the huge megalomaniac chain stores. It's turning into a economy of oligopolies and there is going to be very little true competition.
 01/01/2005 11:56:19 PM · #13
I worked at a momn-and pop motorcycle dealership. The son took over and had the same complaints as you - folks would come in to touch and feel an item, get teh size figured out on helmets and jackets and leave. They'd be back for something and have the new helmet/etc and when asked, they said tthey bought it mailorder.

His solution? Become a mail order store. When i stared there in 1990, I was the nonly non-family member working (mom, dad, son and me - a mechanic then). Sales were about $265,000 a year.
When i left in 2001, they were #1 in the US in dollar volume of 'hard parts' for Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki and KTM. (they did not sell Honda). Sales exceed $12 million a year. 50 some odd employees. By then i was in charge of the web site, mail order catalog and still did some mail order sales.

the biggest problems we never solved:
Mail order pricing was lower than in-store. although you could call in an order and pick it up at teh mail order price...kind of discriinatory if you ask me, but another profit center and it kept the oher local dealers from being upset.

How to break into the big time accessory sales. To compete on price here took large full page ads and low margins and/or direct purchasing. We were buying Dunlop tires for what Chapparral (a CA mail order outfit) was selling them to the public for! But we bought thru a distributor on credit. Chapparral bought containter loads from the manufacturere for cash. hard to compete.

We salesman were paid a commission based on markup

01/02/2005 01:38:16 AM · #14
To be honest, i do most of my shopping online as well. People look out for their pocketbook. What most store owners are doing to adapt to the new economy is to set up their own eShops. Economic darwin-ism. Ask you local milkman all about it.
01/02/2005 04:16:28 AM · #15
Although I personally do almost all of my electronics shopping online, I know my dad and I agree wholeheartedly with you Nick. I think many people don't even realize the harm in what they are doing - essentially tying up your resources and then giving no business in return. I would almost suggest putting up a very polite notice that indicates the harm this does to your business - but at the same time I feel that a note like this might push away other 'normal' customers who may not want to browse or look anymore because they'd feel pressured to buy and guilty if they didn't. I'm not sure if there are any business type forums online, but they're probably out there somewhere - I would consider asking other business owners if they've figured out a way to curb this behavior without pushing away customers.

edit: I think most people that participate in DPC are at that point where they shop around online - don't be discouraged by the responses in this thread that we ALL shop online. I know many people that are willing to pay the extra bucks in order to have in-store service, get the product immediately, and be able to see what they are buying. Many of my friends are this way, and so are my parents.

Message edited by author 2005-01-02 04:18:16.
 01/02/2005 04:34:50 AM · #16
We're not the best cross-section to be discussing this, because most of us know exactly what we want, and we have resources to find out what we don't know. So we shop on the 'net because it's cheaper and more convenient. I'd rather shop on the 'net than in a Big Box store any day.

Still, I used to own a fishing tackle shop that specialized in "long range outfitting", and we had a steady customer base of people who bought from us because we knew what the hell we were doing. You don't want to be hundreds of miles offshore and find out the gear you bought is not the gear you needed. You want a working relationship with a shop that repairs tackle perfectly, and you want to know they'll give you priority because you're a steady customer. We believed (and I still believe) that a "hands-on" specialty shop in the right place that has great word-of-mouth (we never advertised) can succeed nicely. It's all in the extras you give people.

But then again, this kind of fishing is a high-ticket item (trips cost 2000+ bucks for the boat alone, never mind the tackle etc.) and our customers came into town prepared to spend money. A photography shop is a much different thing. Specialized stores for professionals can still thrive in the right market if they have truly experienced, knowledheable help, but I'd hate to try to run a small, general-market photography shop in this day and age.

Is this a loss to the "community"? In some ways, yes. But the community is speaking, isn't it, with its wallet? You succeed by giving people what they want, not by convincing them they want something else, and this is especially true with pricing. One thing we did to offset higher prices, in the tackle shop, was to have available quality, "loaner" equipment to give our serious customers when something had to be worked on. I doubt this would work with cameras, though :-)

Just a typical late-night ramble, folks...

Robt.

01/02/2005 04:36:29 AM · #17
I don't have exactly the same problem, in that I sell my pitcher plants at markets, but I do have people who come and pump me for information, and then tell me they've bought plants elsewhere, and they aren't growing well!! I can spend hours with these people, and then find they don't want to buy. On the other hand, I've had people who have come back to buy from me BECAUSE i've spent the time to explain and be helpful. So take heart Nick, as long as your salespeople are as helpful as possible, and well mannered, then you will always get repeat business, and that's one of the most important parts of running a successful business, as far as I'm concerned.
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