Has anyone else had to deal with a customer with too much money, a sales person looking at a fat commission and being asked for an honest opinion on what to sell them?
Worse, having to deal with the same customer years later in the same situation?
While I am no longer a computer tech, I worked in the business since 1979 (Yes, I am old).
First time I meet the customer I knew this would be trouble, I was young, foolish and shy. But when someone walks into your store in the middle of July (40C in the shade) wearing a full length mink coat and enough rings with big gems that they could replace a knuckle-duster - even I knew we were in trouble.
This woman wanted a SuperPet for her 10 year 'genius son. The son wanted a VIC-20 for all the games his friends were playing. Problem, except for some educational games written in Basic the SuperPet can not run programs written for the VIC. Both the VIC and The SuperPet designs branched out from a common machine The Commodore Pet, but one was designed for home use and gaming, and the other was designed for university course work. Supporting not just 'Basic' and '6809 Assembly' but also 'COBOL', 'APL', 'PASCAL' and FORTRAN' checkout http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/broc...t/SuperPet.htm
The salesman of-course wanted the big sale with the big commission, but he was smart or had been burnt before. He asked both my boss and myself what we thought. We just asked the kid genius a few question. He be lucky if he could find the power switch in less than a minute. This kid was not bright, he just wanted to play games with his friends.
Now the fun began. We tried to sell the woman the VIC-20. She would ask if the SuperPet was the more advance computer. We would say yes, but the SuperPet would not match her son's needs. She insisted that she wanted only the best for her son, and so the wheel turned over and over.
It took an hour but finally she left without buying anything. The salesman by the way sold three to four VIC-20s to walk-in customers during the entire time she was there. When she finally left we talked among ourselves and agreed it was probably a good thing not to have sold the computer since it was clear how stubborn she was, and there would be problems since the SuperPet really was not what her son wanted.
Jump forward 12 years. I am at a different business, and guess who walks in?
Middle of summer - yes.
Mink coat and lots of rings - yes.
Car right outside left running of the A/C? - yes.
Son need computer for university - yes.
I quickly dashed over to my boss and explained what happened in the pass. By this time of-course most people are using PCs. Then he and the salesman did something smart that could not been done in the old store.
They steered her away from the Macs as we were the only repair center in area, and sold her a very expensive Compaq Laptop plus extra batteries, external floppy drive and docking station. Additionally they sold her a manufacturer's direct service contract with Compaq. That is a contract where if something breaks Compaq will mail the customer directly the replacement part and includes labeling to automatically send the bad part back in the same box. That meant except for a broken display we never have to see the customer, better the son did call us about software problems from his university (over 300 kilometers away) and all were of a nature that we could tell him to talk with his university's IT department.
In all I figure this woman paid almost $3000 more on her son's machine than most other parents spent on the computer when sending their children to the same school.
Worse, having to deal with the same customer years later in the same situation?
While I am no longer a computer tech, I worked in the business since 1979 (Yes, I am old).
First time I meet the customer I knew this would be trouble, I was young, foolish and shy. But when someone walks into your store in the middle of July (40C in the shade) wearing a full length mink coat and enough rings with big gems that they could replace a knuckle-duster - even I knew we were in trouble.
This woman wanted a SuperPet for her 10 year 'genius son. The son wanted a VIC-20 for all the games his friends were playing. Problem, except for some educational games written in Basic the SuperPet can not run programs written for the VIC. Both the VIC and The SuperPet designs branched out from a common machine The Commodore Pet, but one was designed for home use and gaming, and the other was designed for university course work. Supporting not just 'Basic' and '6809 Assembly' but also 'COBOL', 'APL', 'PASCAL' and FORTRAN' checkout http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/broc...t/SuperPet.htm
The salesman of-course wanted the big sale with the big commission, but he was smart or had been burnt before. He asked both my boss and myself what we thought. We just asked the kid genius a few question. He be lucky if he could find the power switch in less than a minute. This kid was not bright, he just wanted to play games with his friends.
Now the fun began. We tried to sell the woman the VIC-20. She would ask if the SuperPet was the more advance computer. We would say yes, but the SuperPet would not match her son's needs. She insisted that she wanted only the best for her son, and so the wheel turned over and over.
It took an hour but finally she left without buying anything. The salesman by the way sold three to four VIC-20s to walk-in customers during the entire time she was there. When she finally left we talked among ourselves and agreed it was probably a good thing not to have sold the computer since it was clear how stubborn she was, and there would be problems since the SuperPet really was not what her son wanted.
Jump forward 12 years. I am at a different business, and guess who walks in?
Middle of summer - yes.
Mink coat and lots of rings - yes.
Car right outside left running of the A/C? - yes.
Son need computer for university - yes.
I quickly dashed over to my boss and explained what happened in the pass. By this time of-course most people are using PCs. Then he and the salesman did something smart that could not been done in the old store.
They steered her away from the Macs as we were the only repair center in area, and sold her a very expensive Compaq Laptop plus extra batteries, external floppy drive and docking station. Additionally they sold her a manufacturer's direct service contract with Compaq. That is a contract where if something breaks Compaq will mail the customer directly the replacement part and includes labeling to automatically send the bad part back in the same box. That meant except for a broken display we never have to see the customer, better the son did call us about software problems from his university (over 300 kilometers away) and all were of a nature that we could tell him to talk with his university's IT department.
In all I figure this woman paid almost $3000 more on her son's machine than most other parents spent on the computer when sending their children to the same school.
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