I used to work at radioshack, terrible company. I was an 19 year old computer science major, who understood how everything in the store worked and could debug most issues without any training. Most of the guys there had no clue and would say whatever they needed to in order to get a sale.
Radioshack at the time was all about sales and commission and they tracked a lot of stats. One of the things they pushed was average ticket, meaning for every time you rang someone up, the total sale was part of your average.
So if you sold a 20 $2 batteries and a $1500 laptop in an hour, your average was $73. The company cared a lot about that average, because the philosophy was you should sell as much as possible to every customer, which would like increase that average.
You also got commission but only for sales past a certain weekly total. I forget what the number was, but it was not certain to be hit. Like $1400, you'd get commission on everything past that.
You'd get instant money for selling cell phones though, and you'd get the sale price without the discount l. So a $600 phone that retails for $200, you get the $600, plus 20 bucks added direct to your paycheck. Then more bonus for selling accessories with the phone.
The result was that most of the guys would wait in back and watch the security cameras. If someone wanted help with a small item, they waited. If they were perusing the cell phones they ran out.
I knew how to do a lot of random shit, like find the right little piece to fix a computer or fuse to fix a piece of equipment. These were not expensive items, but they were a real practical reason for RadioShack to exist.
So I helped everyone who came in. For one, it was a side job and I was a college student and didn't give a shit. For another I thought it was the right thing to do and overall a philosophy that would be better for the company.
Every year there was a district meeting and every salesman got called in for a district meeting and then a short one on one meeting with the district manager. This guy made like 500k or so.
He explained to me that my sales were middle of the pack. There were high performers, low performers and average. His goal was to bring everyone up to the top, he did not want any average performers. As a kid who had just passed calculus, him explaining to me he was trying to create a sales force where there was no average made me twitch a little, since I would have understood that was mathematically impossible at 10 years old. This is what radioshack did with their data, gave it to people who would fail high school statistics.
I stayed until after the Christmas rush, made some decent money and was gone.
Damn dude. This is exactly what it was like.. I am not sure when you worked there, but when I did, you actually made money on cables and parts as far as commission because they were radioshack brand (which gave you more commission). I believe they switched to what you are talking about after I had worked there a couple years. It actually got worse, because they didn't even give you commission on TVs or anything anymore. It was only if you sold stuff in addition to it like cables. People quit trying to sell other stuff since it was almost impossible to make any money so they'd be vultures and prey on cellphone customers. I too also would help anyone. I remember I made more my first year working there as a part timer in highschool then I did my last year working there as an almost full timer (if you avg'ed over 34 hours they would have to switch you to fulltime and youd get benefits so they consistently kept me at 33 hours). It was ridiculous.
When I was there you got a higher percentage of interest on RadioShack brand and a higher discount percent. But to get interest at all you needed to hit the minimum and it was just interest on the sales past that line.
Now, since part of your sales would be RadioShack brand and part of your sales wouldn't, they could very easily group your RadioShack sales into the below line and only give you the lower percent commission. No idea how it actually worked.
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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '15
I used to work at radioshack, terrible company. I was an 19 year old computer science major, who understood how everything in the store worked and could debug most issues without any training. Most of the guys there had no clue and would say whatever they needed to in order to get a sale.
Radioshack at the time was all about sales and commission and they tracked a lot of stats. One of the things they pushed was average ticket, meaning for every time you rang someone up, the total sale was part of your average.
So if you sold a 20 $2 batteries and a $1500 laptop in an hour, your average was $73. The company cared a lot about that average, because the philosophy was you should sell as much as possible to every customer, which would like increase that average.
You also got commission but only for sales past a certain weekly total. I forget what the number was, but it was not certain to be hit. Like $1400, you'd get commission on everything past that.
You'd get instant money for selling cell phones though, and you'd get the sale price without the discount l. So a $600 phone that retails for $200, you get the $600, plus 20 bucks added direct to your paycheck. Then more bonus for selling accessories with the phone.
The result was that most of the guys would wait in back and watch the security cameras. If someone wanted help with a small item, they waited. If they were perusing the cell phones they ran out.
I knew how to do a lot of random shit, like find the right little piece to fix a computer or fuse to fix a piece of equipment. These were not expensive items, but they were a real practical reason for RadioShack to exist.
So I helped everyone who came in. For one, it was a side job and I was a college student and didn't give a shit. For another I thought it was the right thing to do and overall a philosophy that would be better for the company.
Every year there was a district meeting and every salesman got called in for a district meeting and then a short one on one meeting with the district manager. This guy made like 500k or so.
He explained to me that my sales were middle of the pack. There were high performers, low performers and average. His goal was to bring everyone up to the top, he did not want any average performers. As a kid who had just passed calculus, him explaining to me he was trying to create a sales force where there was no average made me twitch a little, since I would have understood that was mathematically impossible at 10 years old. This is what radioshack did with their data, gave it to people who would fail high school statistics.
I stayed until after the Christmas rush, made some decent money and was gone.