Camera Store - The Hell of Retail

Sales Incentive & Tiny Paychecks

Despite the fact I have already quit, and have not worked at the store for a little while, I keep remembering relatively interesting things worth writing here about.

One thing I just realized is that I did not write as much as I wanted on how we worked on commission. I talked about it a little bit earlier, like when I said one cannot dedicate oneself to represent the company when one is paid so little (even if one is paid a little more for selling more), and when I said some cameras lead to more commission than others (which is why selling a Digital Rebel is not as good in some ways as selling a Fuji S7000, to that lady who bought $2500’s worth of stuff). But let me talk a little more about this, so maybe you’ll realize the profound impact it can have on our behavior – or how ineffective and extremely insulting it is when we stop to think about it for just a little bit.

The system works like this: For everything we sell, we get a little bit of money. Well, not everything - not some things like film, bags, and accessories. But for every camera or camcorder we sell, for every membership frequent-customer card, for every damage-protection warranty, for every passport picture we take, and for every dollar's worth of photo-finishing we take in, we get a little bit more money. Just how much money depends on what the item is: 3% of photo-finishing orders, 20% of the cost of passport pictures and membership cards, etc. For cameras and camcorders, though, we get a fixed amount of money, which is called a Sales Incentive.

How much that Sales Incentive is depends on the manufacturer. Manufacturers who spend a lot on marketing and advertisings may choose to not spend a lot on buying out salespeople. Manufacturers who are less well-known, or who make crappy cameras, may be more interested in paying us to promote and recommend (in the hopes of selling) their stuff.

Some manufacturers also have "points" programs on top of this monetary sales incentives. For example, for every Casio camera we sell, we get Casio points. For about five cameras' worth of Casio points, we can trade in our points for a small, cheap Casio watch. For about sixty cameras' worth, we can trade it in for a Casio digital camera, which sounds pretty cool but is actually probably impossible to accomplish within the period of this points program. Again, the reason for this, which is the same reason that most manufacturers try to buy out salespeople to promote and sell their stuff, is probably that the image quality of Casio's cameras is less than superb.

This does NOT mean that I only recommend crappy cameras. Quite the opposite. I try to keep the sales incentives out of my mind, and really recommend to a customer what I think is best for them. Honestly, it just so happens that the Canon cameras in the store's selection are overpriced (except for the SD200 and 300). While I get much more money selling a Nikon D70 than a Canon Rebel, I honestly tell customers that they're about the same... but Rebels do break a lot, are not built as solidly, and can be unreliable, so they're cheaper for a reason. And if a customer asks me "What's a good entry-level digital SLR?", I say "The D70". But of course I would never recommend a D70 over a Rebel for someone who already has Canon lenses, for example, and as far as image quality and features, they really are about the same, which is what I say if asked. We've even had a few D70s returned because of bad pixels on the CCD, a bit of information I will not volunteer as easily as Rebel horror stories.

Sales incentives for a camera are usually in the $5 range, give or take. However, if you sell a couple cameras a day, that can be about 20% of your paycheck. It disgusts me to think how those $5 affect my state of mind during a sale.

It is rare that I think "I should sell THIS camera instead of THAT camera, or convince the customer he wants THIS camera instead of THAT camera, because THIS camera has a higher Sales Incentive" (so despite Minolta's super-high sales incentives and Panasonic's inexistent ones, I still recommend an FZ10 before a Z3, and explain why the Panasonics are superior)... However, it is quite common that I think "I really ought to persoade this customer to buy a camera, because it means a 10% or 20% higher paycheck if I keep it up". So I do get quite excited during the process where my talking about a camera or two looks more and more likely to end in a sale. It's like playing through a long, challenging, unforgiving level in a video game, and knowing that if you just get through this last little part, you get to save your game and earn a new weapon or something. It's the feeling of "I can't scre up NOW, I'm almost there, and it will be so sweet if I succeed". It's quite an adrenaline rush, and I feel quite pleased at the end. (This of course shows that what I did was quite different from just presenting information and letting the customer decide - which is not what selling is about).

One key lesson in this post is "Don't trust salespeople". But they point I wanted to make was that, whenever it looks likely that we might sell a camera, it's like there's a five-dollar bill dangling in front of us, and I just hate it how much this affects my outlook on the selling process. It does motivate me. Maybe it's something in me that knows that those $5 bills add up a lot at the end of two weeks. Or maybe I'm just looking for any motivation that makes my job look like a fun challenge. But I still feel like I'm being bought, for very little, and it's sad. I want to say it's insulting that they dangle $5 in front of my face to get me to act like I love this camera and for me to invest energy into convincing someone they ought to buy one... but I accept the $5 and do it. It's depressing when you think about it.

Especially when you think about how little they pay us. As I've said, if we really mattered to the company, they'd pay us more than what we need to barely survive (especially as where I live, cost-of-living is just about the highest in the US, I think). They justify the low pay with "At least you get paid more if you work harder". Well, I get paid a LITTLE more if I work a LOT harder - and that's assuming that working harder brings in more sales, which is true but far from linearly. I can't Jedi-Mind-Trick customers into buying, I can only sell so much no matter how hard I try, and even that much does not bring in a decent paycheck. How dare they talk about motivation, about how nice this job is supposed to be, about how great this store is and how great this company are, if they pay so badly?

Sometimes, they try to tell us how we don't just charge for film developing, we supply memories! Helping someone get and understand a camera, and giving them their pictures as prints, is supposed to be important, and we're supposed to feel good about it! Well, yeah, but no. Sorry. Not if you're paying us so little that it's hard to survive on. At least my region's manager has admitted that for many of us, working in this chain is a temporary thing, and that's ok. And she sometimes makes jokes about how, when we think hard enough about our jobs, it's understandable if we then want to go cry in a corner. I don't know if her saying these things is good or bad.

Maybe I should just face it that we're clerks. Just clerks who know a tad about photography. But still, some people do do this for a living for much or all of their lives. Is that ok? And shouldn't they get paid more?

Or maybe I'm just spoiled.

Or overqualified.

Nah, just spoiled.

posted by Remus