mm wrote:
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.

The other disadvantage it is likely (especially in the case of a big box
store because their salary is low) they will try to push whatever has
the bigger commission.

Two of my relatives kids got jobs at Best Buy during college. The
intense training for their knowledgeable associates (thats what they
claim in all of their adds) consisted of them having to show up early
and being briefed in the training room about what items had commissions
that day and the key points to sell them.




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...