[REDVAN]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

This is no different from any business that sells add on products to their main offering.

Go work in retail electronics. Its not selling a computer or stereo or dishwasher that gets you paid and promoted, its the extended warranty.

I mean, I'm old and its been a long time, but when I worked at FS, I was a top performer and moved up the chain not because I sold a ton of computers a year, but because I had a 5% closing rate for their CSP.

We were taught sales techniques and at times you had to make some pretty nebulous statements, and a manager had to approve a sale where the CSP was declined and the manager had to do a second approach.

Looking back on it, sure I learned some interesting sales techniques, but I didn't enjoy sellling it.

Frankly the only areas where the CSP broke even or lost dollars was on big screen projection style TV's and appliances, because frankly all of the other electronics were pretty bullet proof and usually didn't break or fail in three years.

But I could show you value charts etc etc and literally scare you into buying it.

If you look at how commissions worked. If I sold a $2000.00 computer with 10% margin, I would take a third of the profit margin or about 60 bucks.

But if I sold a $500.00 CSP plan on that computer, CSP was pure profit and I'd scoop a third or $150.00. So I would sell it. It would make the difference between making $100.00 a day and $200.00 back in the early 90's which was great money.

And of course the stores competed with each other on CSP. A store with <5% average CSP was an underperformer no matter how much product they sold and managers would dread going to the managers meeting.

I remember that I was good at selling the warranty and they started loaning me from store to store that were struggling, not even to necessarily teach them about it, and I didn't give a crap about helping someone else to learn how to sell it because I wanted a clearer path to promotion. I would go into their store for a month and try to crush everyone and help boost the stores percentage. Then I'd walk out at the end of the month with a smirk and a jerk like and that's how its done grasshopper with a bunch of bucks in my pocket and a hangover from nightly drinking.

Businesses have always been about selling the profitable add ons.

Want to make money on a computer, sell warranty (grease) make them buy some video games for their kids and get an upgrade on a graphics card. Make them buy a crappy printer and a bunch of replacement cartridges and a box of paper. A expensive mouse pad? Sure sure it protects your mouse and looks its the enterprise. Why don't we go take a look at those super expensive speakers.

I used to work for a car rental company.

It's on par with this, if not worse.