As anyone likely reading this probably knows, I manage a large team of sales people. There is inherent distrust of salespeople for reasons I have written about elsewhere.
In short, some of them have earned the reputation shared by them all.
In our furniture buying extravaganza over the past few days one incident stuck out. We had seen a sectional couch at a local place. A place that as far as I know has a decent reputation. We continued to look all over in earnest, but ultimately kept coming back to that couch. Meanwhile we had seen it in a couple of other places. In my mind I thought that if all other thins were equal we'd go back to the first place to buy it. Being in the profession (of sales) myself I have some loyalty to the place/person who originally turns me on to something.
Then the Memorial Day sales started. Pricing all gets changed, and there are deals, or at least there are what appear to be deals. In some places, including the aforementioned place what it really amounts to is a rebundling of the items at what is basically the same price. Then stick a big, red tag on it and call it a sale. Whatever. That doesn't bother me too much. Any retailer would be smart to try to capitalize on the Memorial Day sale frenzy, and most people will not have seen the pricing before to know the difference.
What gets me (and most customers) is being treated like a fool. When asked about the lower pricing we had seen elsewhere the sales person actually tried to tell us it was a different couch, made with different materials and construction. Admittedly I hadn't paid that much attention to the details up to this point, so for a moment he had us thinking. But it just didn't add up. Come on! Really?! There are two different manufactured versions of this exact same looking product? Common sense thankfully took over. Still, based on the aforementioned loyalty, the fact that we weren't yet clear whether the other stores had the ottoman we wanted with it, and the fact that we were there, exhausted, and ready to get it done, I agreed to let him see what he could do on the price. He had to "call his manager." I was now getting cynical, which is not a good sign, though he probably really did have to check with someone.
He got close (on the price), but with all of this in mind I just didn't feel good about it. I left it up to Liane, and she must have felt the same way. We walked. Went to the other place and got it done. Had the guy not lied to us I probably wouldn't have been too gripped about the small difference in price.
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Reminds me of when I bought the Sonata. Did the usual dance but I told the salesman, I am willing to spend "X" dollars and not one single penny more. And, I made that very clear. Of course, he came back with a counter offer from his manage of $100 over what I had offered. I stood up, picked up my purse and turned to Charlie and said let's go. The salesman said, "i told him that you would do exactly what you are doing" and asked me to wait one more minute. Again, we were there, they had the car I wanted and except for jerking me around, at a price I was willing to pay. Needless to say, he came back and said my offer was accepted.
ReplyDeleteNow I am contemplating a new car. I think my tactic this time to sales people as I start to browse (since I don't know for sure what I want) will be, "If you call me, I will cross your name off of my list. If I want some info, I will call you." Will be interesting to see who believes me. :-)
Yes, it will. But....let's play this out. Suppose one of them does call you because...I don't know (we're hypothetical here)...a car just like the one you've shown interest in has come in. It's in the color you mentioned you'd prefer, and because it's the end of the quarter and they have too much inventory they want to move it fast and have priced it accordingly. And it really is a great deal. Still crossing them off?
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