I was trying to sell something to a customer last week, and like most products in the store, the item I was selling had virtually no markup.  In fact, when you take into the account the cost of shipping this thing to our store, the cost of paying our warehouse crew to process the item off the truck and print a price tag for it, along with the cost of rent and utilities and my own wage to sell the darn thing, we’ve lost a good amount of money just to get on the shelf for the customer to buy. 

To offset all those costs and generate enough of a profit to pay a dividend to our shareholders, our sales staff are taught to sell add-ons.  So once we determined what it was what the customer wanted, I went about trying to find some accessories and other add-ons the customer might need, as well as offering an extended warranty service.  I also went about explaining any other features the product might have but that the customer may not have known about.

Of course the customer did not buy everything, which I expected.  I only wanted him to buy whatever accessory he thought was useful or interesting.  I’ve done this long enough to know that when you sell something a customer doesn’t actually want, they’ll just return it later.  But when I got to explain the extended warranty service the customer said he didn’t even want to hear about it. He was abrupt and rude, and having spent nearly a half hour with this gentleman I was a little offended that he didn’t have the courtesy to extend another minute to hear my sales pitch.  I asked him why he didn’t even want to hear what I was about to say, and he simply stated, “I know you guys make money off the extended warranty so I won’t buy it.”  I told him the whole purpose of my store or any business was to make money. 

I asked him again, if I could, like I did with the product itself, like I did with all the other accessories he was about to purchase (some of which had a better markup than the warranty itself,) simply explain the warranty and if he did not find it useful, then he could simply decline.  He looked me straight in the eye and said once again, “I know you guys make money off it so I am refusing to buy it.”  I rang up his purchase, bid him good day, and hoped to never have the misfortune of serving this particular gentleman again.

To be honest, I’ve done my job for years now, and I don’t really care whether someone buys the warranty or not.  However, if someone declines the extended warranty or anything else, they need to decline it for the right reasons.  If they’ve looked over the terms and don’t see a use for any of them, then decline.  I can’t sell you something you don’t need.  But don’t decline it because it helps us generate a profit. 

If you don’t work for a business then you’re running one.  And the point of any business is not lose money or even to break even.  A business needs to make money to support itself, its employees, and if it’s publicly traded, it needs to support its shareholders as well.  My customer had a stance that was one, irrational because he was not thinking of his own personal benefit but rather thinking of ways to ensure my store and I did not benefit whatsoever, and two, hypocritical because if it was his own business he would have no problem looking for ways to increase profit.

Lastly, is it so bad that we let someone make some money?  I’ve always been a fairly generous tipper and at the two lunch spots I always go to I leave a one dollar tip for a five dollar lunch.  I order what’s one menu and have yet to make any special request, although if I made a special request both places would accommodate me unquestionably.  The service I receive is always prompt and the people are friendly and welcoming.  If that customer came back to my store again, the one who wouldn’t even hear my sales pitch, I would still help him, but I certainly won’t go out my way to help him. 

I’ll smile but I won’t mean it.  I’ll be friendly though I don’t want to.  I’ll do my job.  Had he simply listened to my sales pitch and politely declined, things would most certainly have been different.  But he finds it offensive that I’m trying to make some money on his sale when all I’m doing to trying to make a living.

To avoid being undersold by their competitors, nearly all big box retailers adopt a price matching policy of some kind. It helps keep customers coming back to your business if they can get the same price as anywhere else. I think it’s a good retail practice. However, I’ve worked for several years in retail, and it always surprises me how often customers will use a price matching policy for a savings of a few pennies.

I once had a customer who claimed a competitor across the street was selling a video game for less than we did but they did not have a flyer I could use to verify the price. I checked their company website and found that the competitor did not list products or prices – only locations and contact numbers. Without verification I could not match. The customer left the store and came back a short time later with a price tag. They had gone across the street and secretly smuggled out a price tag for the game in question. The difference in price? Two cents. However, at the time we had a price beat policy, and to beat the price we discounted an additional ten percent of the difference. And the customer stated they indeed wanted the additional ten percent of the difference: 0.2 cents. I discounted the game by three cents. My favourite story however, comes from a co-worker of mine. A customer had purchased a phone and found it cheaper elsewhere. They came by the store, stood in line for about fifteen minutes and when they got to the counter they asked us to match a competitor who was selling the phone for ten cents cheaper. Rather than spending the five to ten minutes doing all the proper paper work for the price adjustment, my co-worker found it easier to pull a dime out from their own pocket and handed it to the customer.

I understand why a customer would want us to match a competitor price when there’s a substantial savings. And strangely enough, although matching such prices usually means that we lose money rather than make it, I’ll happily do it because I want to do right by a customer. I wince when I ring in the sale but there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m doing the right thing. It’s the inconsequential price beating that bothers me: the pennies and nickels and dimes. Yet, there are customers that go through such trouble: waiting in line, scouring flyers, arguing the fine print of policy terms, for nothing more than pocket change. Don’t people value their time more than that? For the difference of a few cents why bother? I’d rather they buy it elsewhere than come to my store and waste my time.