Well boys...You shoulda been at work with me yesterday..( or at least been the fly on the wall)
All commissioned retail sales businesses suffer from the same dilemma...Having to walk the line between salespeople when a dispute comes up over whose customer was whose.
Such was the case for me last week. When a Customer calls into our call center inquiring about a car, One of the phone agents takes the call and sets an appointment. Then they'll shoot an email off to a salesperson to ensure that they are aware of the appointment.
What's "supposed" to happen, is when that customer walks in, the salesperson greeting that customer is supposed to ask him a few questions to determine if they were just walking in off the street, or if they had been assigned a salesperson already based on a set appointment.
That didn't happen this week. ( It probably doesn't happen a lot of times, If it doesn't get caught)
Last week I get an email on Monday, confirming a Wednesday appointment. On Wednesday morning, I call the customer to introduce myself. Only as I'm listening to his phone ringing in one ear, I'm hearing an actual phone ringing in the other that's in the store. ( This customer was already here, and had been for almost an hour......and was now sitting at another salesman's desk.)
You can imagine that this didn't sit well with me.
I head directly into the sales office. The offending salesman sees this, and rockets to intercept me on the way in. I tell him that he just stole a set appointment, and that he was now working for half of what he thought he was gonna make.
You can imagine that that didn't sit well with him either.
To keep the drama to a minimum, and in the interest of keeping the story shorter...The manager that had to make the call was on vacation for part of the week. The thief had made the case that the customer just walked in off the street, and I had a screenshot of the email from Monday confirming the appointment in my name.
Who had the stronger argument ya spose?
As the week progresses, and after talking with the other desk manager about it, he tells me that he thinks the theif had made the case that I had no record in our CRM of ever reaching out to the customer, and no record of the appointment even being assigned to me. He tells me that he thinks that he thinks that the deciding manager had softened on his decision to force a split.
I go back to my desk,..look through the CRM,....and sure enough....there is no record that I was ever assigned the customer.
Somebody had manipulated the history. ( All except the email with the screenshot of the customer, the date, and my name on the same page). I don't think it's possible at the sales level to do this,..I didn't think anybody could go back into history, and change something,..but somebody was able.
It didn't help my case that the theif was also the deciding managers "pet", and had shown favor to this guy numerous times by handing out opportunities over the last several months. Could this manager have actually gone as far as change history in our CRM to squeeze me out of the deal?
After learning that the DM ( I'm just gonna shorten " deciding manager" to DM) had softened, I firm him back up by shooting him a copy of the screen shot..He responds back,..that..............I'm right.
So,........despite the fact that the DM wasn't gonna be back till Saturday, I take solice in the knowledge that when it gets listed on the board on Saturday,...the sale that the theif was expecting to be 100% his, is now split,.....in half.
Now we're caught up. It's Saturday morning, the DM is back, he's getting all his ducks in a row,..and he's updating the sales board to reflect how many cars have been sold by each one of us.
And there's that half sale in each of our names,..and the theif was in the office bitching.
I figured now would be a good time to walk in.
* As a footnote to the above, I knew this was gonna happen. I'd known it now for a couple of days. I also know that the theif was a hot head, and he would possibly get physical if I pushed him into an altercation. I also knew that I wasn't gonna back down from him either. I was literally able to plan my reaction to his aggression in advance well before it ever happened.
It was like I was......psychic.
The theif was yelling that the customer was a walk-in,.....I stood there for 5 seconds and said "no, that'd be wrong", planning to produce the screenshot to shut him down, but as expected, he tells me to "shut the phck up!" In front of all three managers.
They have no choice but to shut him down,,...and are telling him to go home. He has to walk by me to leave..
Remember the part where I push him into an altercation?
As he walks by, I tell him Bye-Bye. That's all I had to do. He stops, bristles, turns and walks right up to me. We're......ohhh 10" apart.
* Now,..had I not seen into the future, this probably would've intimidated me, but since I'm psychic I expected it, I closed the gap. I yell "Hit me! I won't even hit you back! It'll be a cheap price to pay to see your ass fired!"
All three managers are now in max alert damage control mode, because of the impending fight in the glass box that is in the middle of a luxury brand automotive store where everybody can see into, and both my name, and the theif's name are being yelled out repeatedly by all three. The theif is about 5 seconds from making the choice to being jobless, and giving me something bloody to remember him by,...but decides to step off and leave.
I so wanted him to hit me.
It's a sad state of affairs that things come down to this. I blame management. The sale shouldn't be split when somebody is caught stealing. It should go completely to the injured party. The only way people are gonna adhere to a rule is if there is a consequence for not following it. Working for free is a pretty stiff fine that only needs to be levied once to change a behavior permanently.