Thursday, March 03, 2005
Best Buy Hard Sell
It's been a while since I wrote much about the manipulations of corporate marketing.
I spoke with an ex-Best Buy employee today who told me what it takes to work the check-out in one of their stores.
It takes 5 "no's". That's right. Each cashier is supposed to try to sell every customer five items, or ask the customer repeatedly to buy a single item until the customer has said "no" 5 times.
When the pressure got to be too much for this guy, he quit. A lot of customers got angry, he said.
Corporate chains like Best Buy are willing to risk making their customers furious. If even one out of ten actually buys an additional item or service then, I suspect, the added revenue more than covers the loss of the few customers ticked off enough by the obnoxious sales pitch to never come back.
I spoke with an ex-Best Buy employee today who told me what it takes to work the check-out in one of their stores.
It takes 5 "no's". That's right. Each cashier is supposed to try to sell every customer five items, or ask the customer repeatedly to buy a single item until the customer has said "no" 5 times.
When the pressure got to be too much for this guy, he quit. A lot of customers got angry, he said.
Corporate chains like Best Buy are willing to risk making their customers furious. If even one out of ten actually buys an additional item or service then, I suspect, the added revenue more than covers the loss of the few customers ticked off enough by the obnoxious sales pitch to never come back.
// posted by Dean @ Thursday, March 03, 2005 
