For In-Company use only. Anyone in possession of this document without the express authorization of GSI will be subject to lawsuit and/or prosecution.
Okay so they tell you that you’re in a performance driven company, and you feel like you’ve been run over by a truck.
What does that mean, other than that sinking feeling that maybe you’re completely isolated in a cut throat environment where every penny is tracked?
It means you’re part of a large organization, and the more you work to further that enterprise, the more you will further yourself. The ultimate tools are the values of our corporate culture.
Welcome to the twenty first century. We’re in this for the long haul. See, our country does not make anything anymore, so the only thing left to do is sell. Beats welfare, and beats Macdonald’s though.
It is guaranteed that you will have bad days when other people are doing well. Hey, the same is true of fishing. Get over it. We always remember our own bad days and too easily forget when the other person is reaching for an extra clove of garlic to go with their shit sandwich de jour. Make a point of helping out without being intrusive or meddlesome. You may even make a friend or a mentor that way.
In the post-modern, heavily streamlined retail environment, there’s always something to do, so find it and do it. And just how shiny is our toilet today? If you’re having a bad streak selling, maybe it’s time to get to know the warehouse better.
Is there something the warehouse manager wishes a little fairy godmother would take care of? Do it. Don’t be surprised when it helps your numbers down the road, when you’re the person who knows where all sorts of stuff is that the computer says is in-house, but is nowhere to be found.
Another great thing about maintaining the warehouse is that to the victor goes the speed of sale and deal makers. Any warehouse is full of penny inventory that could well be headed for the trash after it retires from its career as a dust bunny.
That same dust bunny at any time can be transformed into a deal making add on that delights the customer and constitutes pure profit and/or added value. It can also accelerate the pace of somebody’s deal, and have the customer coming back to you for more.
With a little luck this can lead to "local legend kind" of buzz for the store, which can only be good.
The challenge lies in administration. How does warehouse and operations rapidly process this found stuff without violating the integrity of the count and that corresponding laundry list for corporate sales auditing?
But the problem lies in the variety and inconsistency of this. For example, we have a surfeit of used cases with only a penny into them that we cn sell as a bargain at twenty to thirty dollars. Good news.
Most of these take up valuable warehouse space for indeterminate periods of time because they are designed to hold very specific body silhouettes for long discontinued and/or rare items. Bad news.
Solution: You keep picking up the phone and the odds are that you will be the one who talks to a customer who needs one of those very pieces that you know about due to your knowledge of your store. Get the customer in the store and start qualifying them. They want to spend money. Help them.
One thing to be especially wary of is setting high selling goals at the beginning. If anything, tighten your belt and build yourself an infrastructure. And it’s going to be from knowing what’s in your warehouse.
We are bent on Total World Domination, and we’re going to dropping Huey Helicopter diaper loads of gear. You can’t sell it if you don’t know about it, and it’s not on the floor.
An experienced performing artiste will tell you that in a performance driven environment, there is a phenomenological substrate of maximized inconvenience. For example, any smoker will tell you that if they are late and need a bus to come, it substantially increases the odds that one will arrive if one lights a cigarette.
No one knows why, but this is one of these observed "superstitions" much like the ones EMT’s and cops have with the phases of the moon, which everyone scientifically denies exists, but which everyone has experienced to be true.
Oddly enough this maximized inconvenience principle can be turned in one’s favor. Some of my best number days were days where I had set out to do nothing other than merchandize the store and execute other boring miserable tasks that seem to have nothing to do with selling, but a lot to do with the rodential combination of idiocy and cunning which characterizes our best customer. Some examples for your amusement:
There’s Something about a Wo/Man on a Ladder
In a store full of associates, it seems almost a mathematical certainty, that whoever’s on the ladder will attract a customer with an issue. Perhaps because they don’t feel they need to ask you whether or not you work here. You are an advertisement for the fact that you are doing a job here.
This is especially true of a heavily merchandised environment like GSI, where so much of the high end stuff requires visibility without being within too easy reach of non-qualified customers. Librarians report similar events.
In fact to better understand a Guitar Sys Inc is to redefine one’s understanding of that place we all dreaded (or hid in) in school: The Library.
How does a library work best? It is organized down to the last dust bunny. It’s where you go to find out exactly which hand Louis XIV used to wipe his royal buttocks after the official morning defecation.
I have been lucky to find myself interacting with a real top of the food chain kind of bunch. A warehouse manager is like your librarian, and if you take about an hour or so out of your week to work with him/her, not only will your numbers improve, but so will everyone else’s.
A clean table lets everyone eat in greater health.
Although this is the kind of thing that at first may make people think you are an incredibly hard working psychotic, over the long haul, you are making less work for yourself. By organizing the guitars and basses "by the numbers" you have "walked the warehouse" in such a way that you can have product in a customer’s hands before you even know you were going to do it.
Next sale. And to put the cherry on it, it keeps you in better shape than the gym, and you have earned the respect of the warehouse, who are the backbone of the store. Forget that principle at your cost.
Things never to do
Enter the Organ Grinder
Okay. You’ve done all the right things. You know your warehouse. You can do the Windex Kung Fu SO WELL, Ralph Macchio would burn an incense stick worth of envy.
The department is tighter than the sphincters of the stressed out people who have to walk it.
Despite the fact that your dog just died, your lover won’t speak to you because of the sixteen hour days you put in, and you’re hung over from a night of drinking to temporarily forget all of the above, nevertheless you just slammed a customer with a product presentation that has them on the knife edge of a strong transaction.
We’re talking at least a kilo buck. Out come the magic words:
"Is that the best you can do for me?"
I don’t know where this wretched haggle chop came from, but I’d love to have about ten minutes alone with them duct taped naked to a folding chair while I got to play with a paper clip and a bic lighter all over their body.
This is where I see our people shooting themselves in the foot with the greatest chain wide frequency, and I see a potential source of cancer. Because it spreads to the lower end stuff, where there’s no real headroom unless you’ve got the volume to justify lowering the margin. X-mas comes but once a year.
"Is that the best you can do for me?"
STAND FIRM WITH OUR PRICES UNLESS YOU ARE GETTING THROWN TO THE WALL OR IT‘S JUST A NICKEL OR A DIME. IT DEVALUES THE CUSTOMER‘S PERCEPTION OF THE INTRINSIC WORTH OF THE PRODUCT AND SETS YOU UP FOR A WORSE GRINDING NEXT TIME THEY‘RE IN. YOU’RE BUILDING A CLIENTELE.
"Is that the best you can do for me?"
Answer the question with a question and watch them squirm."Why do you want me to take even more off the piece than the store’s discount, which we guarantee to be the highest in the country, if not the world?"
DON’T DENY YOURSELF THE COOLEST CHOP OF ALL. HIGH PROFIT MARGIN ADD ONS! (I’ll put a cord or half a high quality gig bag into it or both by lowering the price of the guitar. Get some margin back on the pieces I ring up.)
"YOU KNOW, I‘VE GOT TO BE HONEST WITH YOU. DON‘T LET THE $200 PRICE TAG ON THIS YAMAHA CLASSICAL FOOL YOU. WE GET IT THIS CHEAPLY AND WE PASS IT ON TO THE CUSTOMER, BUT I KNOW IT IS DESIGNED TO GIVE DECADES OF ENJOYMENT. IT WOULD ONLY BE LOGICAL TO GET A HARD SHELL CASE FOR IT…."
"Is that the best you can do for me?"
YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE BEST PART ABOUT THIS? IN YOUR OWN HEART YOU KNOW YOU‘RE TELLING THE TRUTH.
"Is that the best you can do for me?"
DO NOT PANIC! THAT IS WHERE THE MANAGER EARNS THEIR MONEY. LET THEM INTO THE LOOP. REMEMBER THAT EVERY DOLLAR YOU DROP IS TEN CENTS OUT OF YOUR POCKET AND NINETY CENTS OUT OF THE STORE THAT IS THE SOURCE OF YOUR BREAD AND BUTTER!! IF YOU HAVE A BAD MONTH THE STORE TAKES CARE OF YOU, BUT IF THE STORE HAS A BAD MONTH, WHO TAKES CARE OF THE STORE?
There are several logical reasons for standing firm with this position:
1)It works over the long term. I have seen Sales Associates who made a habit of "pulling down their pants" basically to snake somebody else’s customers. It works for a while. Once I even saw someone make it all the way to Department Manager before the whole thing caved in on him.
2)It sets an objective criteria for both the customer and the SA. One brilliant manager I know refers to it as the "Guitar Sys Inc Game." I already am guaranteeing you the lowest price and guaranteeing that if you find it better over the next thirty days I’ll eat it.
What more do you want? And you know what else? Think of why I’m getting such a kick out of working with you. When you have a problem who you gonna call? Who loves you? Who takes care of you?
Who puts on the warehouse goggles and dives deep for you? Who’s glad to see you whether you’re spending money in my store or not? Listen babes, I’m selling you something that’s the best deal in town, and cheaper than a shrink and more fun than illegal drugs!
And if you get the right breaks and have the right stuff, you might end up a success beyond your wildest dreams.
3)Even at MAP (minimum admissible price), what we are selling is the experience of the sale and customer service. Everybody guarantees price matches.
Now ask yourself, how many times have you made a purchase, not because you were getting the lowest price, but because you liked who you were doing business with?
Now ask yourself why that is true. Could it possibly be because you want to see them stay in business?
The worst thing about making a habit of breaking MAP
The worst thing about making a habit of breaking MAP can be best epitomized by the following real life listening experience of a certain exemplary employee no longer with the company, named Mark, who got to work late and hungover on a Sunday morning.
As you know GSI policy dictates he had to stand outside with the customers and wait ten minutes for the store to open, since the only Sunday Keyholder was in the back verifying the cash count from that Saturday. He heard the following:
"What do you mean?"
"Look man this really works with them. They have one price posted, but if you get the right salesman, you can do way better. Always ask them if it’s the sale price. They always have some kind of bullshit going on the radio. It gets them nervous. Maybe they didn’t even hear their own fucking ads, I don’t know.
"Break their balls a little about it probably going to be cheaper next month. And if the guy with the long hair and the devil tatoo is there, bust his balls by telling him you’ve only got a hundred dollars less than the price in your pocket and see what he does. Most of the time he’ll drop at least seventy five bucks and throw in a couple of cables.
"You know what else works? Tell them you saw it for fifty bucks less at Flash Music. They won’t know that it was a piece that wasn’t worth wiping your ass with.
And then they’ll feel like they have to drop their pants for at least seventy five. And of course, never forget that if it‘s not in a box, it‘s a ‘floor model.’
"Watch out for the manager though. That bastard could sell you syphilis out of a whorehouse"
And the worst thing about falling into this rabbit hole is that there is only a very thin line between setting a precedent and the creation of a routine.
HOW do you expect to advance yourself over the long haul?
An adjunct to Schuelberg’s Law: Your most powerful guitar selling tool is the cloth in your pocket and a guitar without too much schmegma and fingerprints on it:
Ps. Here’s an answer to that cheesy "floor model" chop:
Customer: You’re selling me a floor model?
You (make a grand sweeping gesture): If this were the largest car dealership in the area, instead of a retail music store,would you call the Mercedes Benz you just took out for the test drive a "floor model?"
The good news is that there is money to be made in retail. The bad news is that it is in management, which requires that the practitioner abandon mammalian values, and embrace those of the register. In essence, one must become one of the many finger puppet representatives of machine driven bottom line goals. It offers physical comfort hand in hand with the abandonment of one’s key internal values as a musician.
Fortunate is the manager who has never really striven for musical accomplishment. Her judgment will never be distorted by any sense of compassion for talented musicians who are having a hard time. Luckily for GSI, the post punk pandemonium squad is just about coming of age.
For these fortunates, born between 1975 and 1981, the three chord guitar kazoos of the Ramones constitute "the classics." Roll over Beethoven indeed.
Add to that the ever more significant "high tech" managers who draw their background from DJ, Hip Hop, or Rap "Culture." The only contact these folks have had with scales is when they weigh the money in the cash drawers at the end of the day.
The situation keeps looking prettier, as long as you mean ugly.
The marketing of music requires an ever increasing distance from the making of music itself. An abstraction of this level is very dangerous indeed, because there is no clear line to draw as to the beginning of this process. Some would put it at the invention of the Piano Grand. With every increase in the amplification there is a loss of a delicate quality of experience.
The original apologists for this kind of change seemed reasonable enough at the time. Avant Garde composers of the early to mid twentieth century found in "noise" a new palette of sounds. They hoped that they were integrating the sounds of the Industrial Age into the alchemy of music.
However, as the Serial Composers also found to their cost, what looks good on paper has to sound good. And very little of the academic classical music of the last century can be said to be listenable and/or memorable.
Jazz and its offshoots seem to be the only source of any kind of vitality
The work of a Charlie Parker seems more satisfying than that of a Webern, and it analyzes well. From a marketing point of view, however, the music he represents is a bit of a nightmare, because mastering it will depend more on hours of work and moments of inspiration than spending any kind of money on a regular basis in a music store.
Add to that the mystical tendencies of a John Coltrane, and one can see how by the fifties, music retail was on the ropes. These practitioners have very little money and spend even less
Rock music and its ever multiplying gadgets and gizmos came to the rescue. Who needs to pratice when you can wow them with the perfect digital delay setting? Thank God for marijuana.
The nature of the listener’s experience of music is not to be deprecated either. What is happening to the listener as they are increasingly bombarded an ever increasing array of synthetic sounds arranged in machine driven rhythmic time?
Both language and music are pivots in the relationship between the body the emotions and the rational mind. Are we being programmed? Of course we are! Now it’s up to you to get in the game and become one of the programmers, not one of those being programmed. Welcome to management.
The good news is that one is provided with an awesome array of manipulative techniques through which one can abnegate any responsibility for one’s "employees."
"What do you mean, you’re not making enough money? Give yourself a raise. Sell more."
"Look, I love you like a brother, but your numbers are simply not working for the company. This is a performance driven enterprise.
"If you check the employee handbook , on page seventeen it clearly states that in the case where there are two consecutive months where the employee’s hourly salary exceeds the sum of ten percent of the gross profit of his transactions for the same month two per cent of the sum of same transactions, this will constitute a tender of constructive resignation on the employee‘s part with two months’ notice..
"The company agrees to comply with the employee’s implied wish to leave the company and accept promotion to customer. You’ve tied my hands. I need to let go of you."
Overtime wages are an enemy. Short punching hours is routine. No sales associate is so confident at the beginning of the month as to their performance by month’s end that they will punch every hour in for the first half of the month. Especially since the average five day week for the employee is closer to fifty five than forty.
However, by and large the entry level employees are very young, healthy, and have hearts full of dreams of what they "really want to do."
Many, if not most, of them have no history of work outside of a MacDonald’s or some such. Few have pursued any higher education, and are functioning with the marginal skills derived from a combination of smoking weed and attending public high schools.
The even better news is that the business model has mechanized itself over a period of more than thirty years of trial and error. Even those who hate what it represents have to marvel at a model where the only impediment to greater efficiency is the human animal itself.