Sales staff working on an
hourly wage do not apply to this discussion. They usually make minimum wage and work at
big box stores like
Best Buy or
Future Shop.
But the all-mighty
commission salesperson... The profit potential is boundless!
Every item in a store has a
price tag. A percentage of that price goes to the salesperson when you buy it. This is sometimes as high as 15%, more often 10%, and most often by far in the 1-5% range.
Warranties and other
non-tangible add-on items are usually pegged around 10-30%.
Case in point. A salesperson makes one sale - a $10K
Sony Plasma TV with $500 stand, plus a $2K warranty.
3% of the TV is $300.
4% of the TV Stand is $20.
20% of the Warranty is $400.
For spending around an hour with you, this salesperson has just made themselves $780. That's one hell of an hourly wage.
This is of course balanced with the extreme opposite, spending 2 hours with a
customer that buys a $50 VCR making you 50 cents.
Smart salesmen spot you and your
fancy new shoes and know how to upsell. "You don't want that $50 VCR, you want an $80 VCR! Honestly!" It's all in the
sales pitch.
What is more curious, however, is that supervisors over the
salespeople usually get a small percentage. 0.5% plus a monthly salary, for example. The
store managers will get a larger salary plus a big bonus structure. Regional managers are well rewarded for the amount of volume their region ships. But when you get down to
brass tacks, they are all salesmen at heart. The only people not making
a boat of money at a
retail store is the
customer service reps and the
warehouse guys.
Yet another nodesave! I'm on a roll.