Sales Floor Let's meet in the Middle; an Electronics/Tech thread

We still own Entertainment here. Toys is supposed to own Entertainment but they're so behind on Work load, they decided we should keep it
 
Also we're up to 6 trucks a week for BTS and it's quite messing up the flow of things here.

Also we're trying our best to get batteries under control. Vendor pushes the outposts. Front occasionally pushes the CL batteries and we do our own batteries
 
Has anyone heard rumors that Target is revamping its contract with MarketSource, to increase its dedicated Target Mobile footprint in stores, after supposedly beginning to phase out the contract in recent years due to modernization? I've heard this from management and some Target Mobile Leads/District Leads, if true, it may be a regional thing.
 
OccidentalAvenue said:
Has anyone heard rumors that Target is revamping its contract with MarketSource, to increase its dedicated Target Mobile footprint in stores, after supposedly beginning to phase out the contract in recent years due to modernization? I've heard this from management and some Target Mobile Leads/District Leads, if true, it may be a regional thing.
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Wow MobilePlus must have been a flop
 
OccidentalAvenue said:
Has anyone heard rumors that Target is revamping its contract with MarketSource, to increase its dedicated Target Mobile footprint in stores, after supposedly beginning to phase out the contract in recent years due to modernization? I've heard this from management and some Target Mobile Leads/District Leads, if true, it may be a regional thing.
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Good luck with that. Our Target Mobile guy is an older gentleman that is good with phones and the seniors who get their Consumer Cellular and TracPhones from us. He is here five days a week, however, his days off there is never anyone to replace him. I just have to tell people call before you come over so you know someone is here. He keeps training young men and women who stay a day or two and then are never seen again.
 
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Mobile plus is successful at my store. Much better than the last year or so of Market Source.
 
oath2order said:
Wow MobilePlus must have been a flop
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I have a feeling Spot got lots of backlash from STLs and the like in Plus Mobile stores. Even though the TMs are arguably better than Marketsource was, it really hurt to not have the extra payroll thrown our way sometimes and I know that generally doesn't sit well at STL level.
Alternatively, they saw an increase in fraud transactions going through the POA, which makes Plus Mobile less profitable than simply bringing Marketsource back
 
tholmes said:
I have a feeling Spot got lots of backlash from STLs and the like in Plus Mobile stores. Even though the TMs are arguably better than Marketsource was, it really hurt to not have the extra payroll thrown our way sometimes and I know that generally doesn't sit well at STL level.
Alternatively, they saw an increase in fraud transactions going through the POA, which makes Plus Mobile less profitable than simply bringing Marketsource back
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We have it. Our tms are excellent with the elderly and cc. But they spend an hour or two with each cc guest and only earn a small sale. Meanwhile they could have sold a few TVs, iPads, etc. our SDs hate owning Mobil for that reason.
 
So honestly spending an hour+ with a cc guest is an extreme unless something went wrong. In my experience of observing my fellow tms that do that they perform something I call "overspending time" with a guest. I understand the need to create that great guest experience but you can be efficient if you know what you're doing and have a mind for teaching people efficiently.
@Ashfromoldsite

On the note of selling att/Verizon....anyone know how to get phones in? We are out of almost all contract phones, our inventory is correct and up to date so what's up?
 
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My TMs are bad at overspending time with elderly CC guests. Two do it to "make a point" and the third tries to avoid it, but sometimes you get a guest that is clueless.

I have to agree though, the hours investment with and what the company gets back from CC has to be bad in plus mobile stores.

Also sold my first Verizon phone in a month and a half today. Took about an hour because the POA software is dog shit. Ended up having to call the ROC to activate the phone.
 
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AngryElec said:
On the note of selling att/Verizon....anyone know how to get phones in? We are out of almost all contract phones, our inventory is correct and up to date so what's up?
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This isn't surefire, but there's a section in the Consensus POS for logging "opportunities." Essentially, if you find that you don't have a phone someone asks about, you can file it as an opportunity to send a notification that you don't have the inventory you need. All that's required on the guest's end is some basic information and which phone they were looking for.

Grain of salt here though, I was never able to get it to make a difference during my time as Plus Mobile.
 
MobilePlus is an absolute failure at every store I have worked at and visited in my area, it is absolutely unsustainable in mid to low volume stores, which are frequently already strapped for payroll hours. Many of these stores simply do not have, or fail to allocate enough hours to the tech team to make it possible for a tm to dedicate even 30 mins, let alone more to a single guest for a cell phone activation. Compound that with the DBO mentality and task orientation of modernization, and you get tech departments that are unable to fulfill both the sales and task requirements placed on them by store leadership. There is literally no incentive to put up with this, you can walk over to the ATT or Verizon store in the same shopping complex as a target and get paid to ONLY sell phones, and not have to deal with any other BS.
 
I mean it sounds more like your stores suck and your leadership is inept... :3
I'm in a low volume store that is strapped for hours and we use the bare minimum staffing. We sell more than one contract a month and of course deal with 1-6 cc a shift (more daily obv). All my teammates are able to do their work and help their guests.

I would rather have us than marketsource anyday. It does sound like you guys have pre plus mobile mentalities still and think phones are a burden. And to the guy who said you could sell a TV in that time....how many tvs a day does your tech personally sell daily.

I think mobile sales are two fold, they serve to bring a guest into the store to boost sales, as they often leave with other items and not just the phone

I also don't see how marketsource is cheaper. Literally paying to bring on more tms
 
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AngryElec said:
So honestly spending an hour+ with a cc guest is an extreme unless something went wrong. In my experience of observing my fellow tms that do that they perform something I call "overspending time" with a guest. I understand the need to create that great guest experience but you can be efficient if you know what you're doing and have a mind for teaching people efficiently.
@Ashfromoldsite

On the note of selling att/Verizon....anyone know how to get phones in? We are out of almost all contract phones, our inventory is correct and up to date so what's up?
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With elderly you have to explain it over and over. Or You have to take the phone and just do it for them. I keep saying we need to just sell and activate a phone and stop offering to transfer all their contacts for them. Stop offering to set ringtones and other stuff for them. The guests expect it now. They come in to target for technical support even when they don’t want to buy a new one. This lady had a fit because our guy was on break. She was having a cow about the wait. When he got back, she couldn’t figure out how to turn on the phone!!
 
Ashfromoldsite said:
With elderly you have to explain it over and over. Or You have to take the phone and just do it for them. I keep saying we need to just sell and activate a phone and stop offering to transfer all their contacts for them. Stop offering to set ringtones and other stuff for them. The guests expect it now. They come in to target for technical support even when they don’t want to buy a new one. This lady had a fit because our guy was on break. She was having a cow about the wait. When he got back, she couldn’t figure out how to turn on the phone!!
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Transfering contacts takes mere moments and if it can't be done automatically we don't offer the service, and explain how to do it. Teaching someone how to use a phone is about knowing how to teach in a way they can understand. We do the same processes here that they do there. We do tech support, transfer contacts, and show them how to use a phone. None of which (unless extreme issue that requires roc) takes long.
However if these services aren't requested they shouldn't be offered, for sake of time. Don't put ideas in their heads as it were. However when a guest can't turn their phone on or off because the rep never showed them how, that is on the rep and is a basic

If needbe I can type up a way to guide someone through their new phone and how to put it words they can understand as well as make sure they are understanding.
 
I don't think it matters if it's a TM doing the phones or a MarketSource Tech. The big issue is that you can't have one TM schedule back there and expect them to be able to do phones and always get everything else done. Some days our electronics opener can't get anything else done because it's just one phone guest after another. TMs have to be called from other departments constantly to help electronics guests. Push and pulls don't get left for the closer, who is then not going to have as much time to zone properly so a lot of the department is rough as hell. And, when the only TM back there is just doing phones it's difficult to keep an eye out for theft so you get more loss.

My store's been hit hard by this recently. CC guests start arriving the moment the doors open and they don't let up all day. Not sure what the reason for the increase in volume is. But, we have the same TMs in electronics and the same TL. They're all good. Electronics was extremely well run, but now it seems to be slowly falling apart.
 
it seems activating phones for people who were alive when the Titanic was afloat still sucks just as much in 2019 as it did for me back in 2008 lol

I once had a 70 year old redneck tell me that he preferred going to Walmart to get his phone activated and talk to an American in person, when activating it himself might end up in him having to call the 800 number and "talk to the Taliban" as he put it. In a way I can understand that but it's nightmarish when the department is mobbed and you're scheduled by yourself, as you are almost guaranteed to be

If you like dicking around with phones (I do) and you want to do this in a non-irritating setting i.e. not at Target, it's good to drum up some side business by hitting up your parents so you can network with their Boomer friends and charge a flat fee to fix their phone issues and activate/transfer their lines or whatever. As you can probably tell I've been doing this lately. 90% of the time it turns out to be something easily done in well under an hour and they seem to pay well, or at least my mom's Eat Pray Love squad does. Last week I showed up, transferred a SIM card from a dead phone to a live one, restored contacts from backup and this lady paid me 50 whole bucks for 15 minutes of my time. I told her the AT&T store would've done that for zero dollars but she didn't care. Yeet!
 
can't touch this said:
it seems activating phones for people who were alive when the Titanic was afloat still sucks just as much in 2019 as it did for me back in 2008 lol

I once had a 70 year old redneck tell me that he preferred going to Walmart to get his phone activated and talk to an American in person, when activating it himself might end up in him having to call the 800 number and "talk to the Taliban" as he put it. In a way I can understand that but it's nightmarish when the department is mobbed and you're scheduled by yourself, as you are almost guaranteed to be

If you like dicking around with phones (I do) and you want to do this in a non-irritating setting i.e. not at Target, it's good to drum up some side business by hitting up your parents so you can network with their Boomer friends and charge a flat fee to fix their phone issues and activate/transfer their lines or whatever. As you can probably tell I've been doing this lately. 90% of the time it turns out to be something easily done in well under an hour and they seem to pay well, or at least my mom's Eat Pray Love squad does. Last week I showed up, transferred a SIM card from a dead phone to a live one, restored contacts from backup and this lady paid me 50 whole bucks for 15 minutes of my time. I told her the AT&T store would've done that for zero dollars but she didn't care. Yeet!
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You should change your profile title to Getting Bread Master.
 
Ashfromoldsite said:
With elderly you have to explain it over and over. Or You have to take the phone and just do it for them. I keep saying we need to just sell and activate a phone and stop offering to transfer all their contacts for them. Stop offering to set ringtones and other stuff for them.
Click to expand...
In theory, this would help Spot immensely in some ways. The issue is, most of the competitors in prepaid or postpaid phones already make such a point of what they call "walk out working" that it's complimentary as part of an activated phone on any carrier. This service includes a data transfer, a walkthrough of their device if requested, a recommendation of a smartphone app they think the customer would like, and an install of any screen protector the guest purchased.
If we choose not to do it as Mobile, we run a really high risk of losing a demographic of shoppers that tend to spend a lot at retail stores in the course of a year. Any person can activate a phone with a tiny bit of training, it's the rest that's important for the long run. Plus, Spot has a contract with CC for us to do tech support visits and the full activation process, so the company is getting paid for us to take care of it.
 
I sold three chromebooks before I left for the afternoon today. I counted that as doing the demo.

We decided to do other things that needed to be done.
 

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