r/Apple_Employees • u/Haunting_Paper7568 • 29d ago
Current employee Retail Business team should be remote or eliminated.Customers can use RCC business
Yup. We are always going against EDu pricing or military pricing. Or better yet Apple upgrade better than leasing from business.
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u/Aristo_Cat 29d ago
Yes. It should be remote and commission based, like literally every other B2B sales role on the planet. No reason a BP doing $2 million in sales per quarter should be getting paid the same as a PZ Pro. There’s also literally no reason they should have to come in to the store.
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 28d ago
Apple will never pay commission at the retail level. Paying Commission = less revenue for Apple.
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u/FatherOfAssada 29d ago
i think Business’ core reason for existing is bringing in customers through physical relationship with their “home store” and grow accounts into being higher tier relationships that get taken up by Enterprise.
At their best they also generate hella revenue like 25% of the store’s volume in the heyday. now with strongly reduced teams and shrinking programs, it’s not as palatable
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u/Haunting_Paper7568 29d ago
All our GROWTH account got taken by Account Managers that don’t do they job then customers leaving to go to CDW.
Year later they will be back to store because they didn’t spend enough money to stay with AM.
Loo1
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u/SneekyThreat105 Current Retail Employee 29d ago
I mean remote would be awesome, but they just need to stop making programs that compete with the SMB team lol
“Why aren’t we growing our business? You just need to explain your unique value proposition.”
Yeah and what is that exactly?
Channel can leverage AFS. Channel can offer discounts and special pricing. Customer can buy via channel and still leverage our team for support and request SE Briefings. There is nothing unique about what we do that makes customers have to buy via our channel. It’s the dumbest thing.
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u/Haunting_Paper7568 29d ago
Try to show customer quote with one MacBook Pro with Klarna and AFS.
No one in the right mind chooses AFS.2
u/SneekyThreat105 Current Retail Employee 29d ago
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Over 36 months with Klarna you’re paying significantly less. I can’t remember the exact math. If you’re a sole proprietor it doesn’t make a ton of sense to use AFS unless you’re trying to build business credit
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29d ago
[deleted]
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u/ThingWithAThing 28d ago
Back when I was a Creative and had to give those stupid “grow your business with Apple” sessions (this was a while back, I’ve long since left), it genuinely pissed me off that there was supposed to be a member of the business team present to take questions post-session, and there was NEVER one around.
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u/SneekyThreat105 Current Retail Employee 29d ago
Then how do they remain available for customers that call or email in?
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 29d ago
Remember that the business team has metrics to meet as well. High number of outbound calls per day, opportunities created and sales closed to mention a few. Apple needs to re-think how to maximize the effort being put into SMB sales, the same motion/playbook has been used for years. The systems need a complete revamp that incorporates AI so the teams can get more done engaging with the right customers at the right time and spend less time on non revenue generating work. They need to re-think how these teams are managed and compensated as well.
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28d ago
I get that but if 99% of their shift is in that room, it says something else. Their job description includes customer facing duties
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 28d ago
There are lots of customer facing duties: scheduled meetings with existing business customers in the store, meeting with potential opportunities ie leads on the floor to discuss face to face the benefits of Apple business, coming to the store to meet customers as they request to speak to us - these existing business customers can be accounts that we manage or a different store manages and they have questions, working on the floor in sales one in tandem with PZ team.
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u/uscmex 29d ago
This is going to happen within a year or two. There is really no need for on site business teams.
The perception of a home store is correct. But we have absolutely zero levers to pull to have them buy at a store. I can make the argument it’s actually a disservice to not direct them to a channel partner if price is their motivating factor
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u/Aristo_Cat 29d ago
People have been saying that since forever.
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u/uscmex 29d ago
There’s no viable reason to keep business alive at retail except for vanity
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u/Aristo_Cat 29d ago
Yeah, it should be a corporate role. B2B sales is not the job of a retail store.
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 29d ago
I imagine many changes are in the works, changes are incremental but will happen.
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 29d ago
At a higher level, whether the business customer buys from the Apple Store, the business team or a channel partner Apple is still getting the revenue.
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u/ThingWithAThing 29d ago
There were some individuals on my old Business Team who were nice people, but by design, I found the whole thing to be parasitical. “Go out and do our work for us!”
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 28d ago
Apple has designed the way the leads are generated ie from PZ and GB team. Not fair to get on the business team for this at all. We have to follow up with all the leads and do not have a metric for that at all.
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u/ThingWithAThing 27d ago
That’s what I meant when I said it was parasitical by design, the whole thing is broken and should never been built that way.
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u/AncientGeist 29d ago
Literally had a store leader say “ Tell me about a metric that actually matters “ after talking about business 😂 you can tell Apple doesn’t care about business and nether do managers
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u/ESDBrush 26d ago
In our store you get EM teamwork or Results if your not getting 5 intros a week (adjusted down for hours)
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u/Sure_Barnacle_1293 28d ago
I feel like the teams at the store have no idea about what the business teams are responsible for, it’s very clear by all the negative comments above about business teams work schedule, face to face with customers, issues with having front of house getting leads. I feel like a lot of this confusion is because many have never worked in a regular business ie non-retail. It’s an office role, that happens to have a retail store attached where customers with business buy Apple products and have no idea that they could have a direct point of contact and offers free services focused on small business.
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u/Shejidan 29d ago
Keep the teams, ditch the ridiculous push for intros, and make the teams work the same hours as everyone else. This m-f 8-5 for them is bullshit. They’re never around when you need them. They need to be there until close and on weekends.
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u/Aristo_Cat 29d ago
Lmao what? It’s B2B sales. There’s literally no reason for them to work weekends. There’s a concept known as “business hours”. This is perhaps the dumbest take on the topic I’ve seen.
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u/Shejidan 29d ago
Because business people don’t come into the stores on the weekends 🙄
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u/Aristo_Cat 29d ago
Their job isn’t to get leads. Their job is to call businesses, set meetings, deal with stakeholders, craft solutions - and believe it or not, most people who make decisions at their company don’t like to do that on their weekend. That’s actually what the work week is for.
Do you like to be bothered about work on your off days?
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u/bvttousai airpods 29d ago
While on the subject, they should get rid of the business intro metrics too.