On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:51:56 -0500, dpb wrote:

RickH wrote:
...
it's just construction commodities, there is no reason for anyone to
have to pay a commission for materials.

If a sales person is working on commission as a part of their
compensation package, it is simply a part of the distributor labor
overhead and the total cost is unlikely to be significantly different
from a supplier with that business model than those with all-salary
compensation plans.

I don't disagree with anything you say, above or below.

It really has no bearing that I can see other than perhaps an unethical
sales person pushing a higher-priced product for the commission
advantage (which appears to be what the OP is concerned about). But,

I don't know about the OP, but I ask the same sort of questions he did
sometimes, to glean whether they are on commission. Sometimes i just
ask, "Should I look for you when I come back?"** and usually I only do
that wehn I've taken up a substantial amount of their time, and I just
want to think about it over night, and I want the clerk who waited on
me to get the commission, if commissions are involved.

**And if he says yes, I ask what hours he is there. That doesn't mean
I'll rearrange my whole day or week to get there when he is there, but
if he works 40 hours a week, it's not hard to get there during those
hours. Although I don't promise him that I will. I presume they get
a reasonable base salary and commissions are only part of it (where
commissions are used.) I doubt it is like when I canvassed for
aluminum siding. Most of those guys only get paid, I think, when they
find a sale.

Has anyone mentioned that the advantage of commissions is that it
makes it more likely that a clerk will be eager to wait on you. We've
certainly had complaints here about lack of service at these stores.

The disadvantage is that I like it when the clerks leave me alone,
although if I were spending hundreds of dollars on something, I might
look at it differently.


what's to say the salary-only sales person isn't pressured by his
organization to push the higher-margin product because his year-end
bonus may be tied to profit margins, at least in part?

The end line is you can't avoid the tendency for distributors/retailers
to market what is advantageous to them in some fashion. After all,
they're in business primarily to make a profit and doing that by serving
a need is simply a technique to the goal...