Bit of a rant, primarily to see who else has had a bad experience in sales.
To begin with I shall address two facts; firstly that I only worked in sales for 3 months and secondly I worked for a well known, long standing company which I myself have used many times as a customer previous to said employment.
Onwards..This post stems from a recollection of my brief employment as a computer salesperson, following my completion of a short apprenticeship in IT and my desire to work in IT or computer technology in some form or another.
The company shall remain nameless, however many Brits will know it as the place you often go for your TV, laptop, tablet, white goods or a radio or some other bullshit item. A real smorgasbord of tech tat tbh.
Initially it was just a matter of talking to customers and then getting to know what they were looking for and recommending them a suitable option. Me being me I would often suggest the most appropriate option and follow up with the guidance on windows office 365, mcafee antivirus software and then obviously store insurance policies, all of which I often found absolutely unnecessary (My first mistake) due to the availability of free online services and insurance policies that you can use like home insurance or general tech insurance, like for your phones and TV which you can often lump your tech into one policy cheaper.
As the weeks moved on, my initial position had developed from I earn basic salary which at the time for 30 hour week was a little over 600 a month take home. This was without any added commissions from my sales of all the additional crap I had pretty much deemed unnecessary for most people.
So I was earning peanuts and faced with a choice, barely break my target and take home fuck all but feel I haven’t been scamming every Tom, dick and Harry that came within ten feet of me. Or sell my soul to the dark lord of greed and selfishness by peddling shit software, useless insurance policies (which were overpriced, under managed and by and far a total waste of time and money) and try and up sell some poor soul out of twice the money they would have spent on something that was already not what they wanted or needed an overpriced, polished piece of shit computer.
Added to that rant that when someone called in sick from white goods or audio or TVs suddenly I would become an expert on that department to cover the staff shortage.
Like. A. Rabbit. In. The. Headlights.
“Excuse me I’m looking for a good quality washing machine, preferably one with such and such and in this brand, and not that brand because I’ve read about that brand and I want mine to be such and such specifics, what can you recommend to me?”
“Err, I’m usually in computers so your guess is as good as mine but I can walk around with you and pretend that I know more than how to read the bullet pointed labels, you can clearly read yourself”
“Would you like insurance with that?”
Safe to say that I didn’t have to cutthroat attitude of a ‘good’ salesperson.
If you’ve managed this far, take a moment and pat yourself on your back because it was a peculiar memory that I guess many, many, many others have experienced also.
Give me your stories, if you will?
Oh yeah and Fuck Sales. Fuck sales in the arse.