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Comment by gandreani | Hacker News Reader

Wow props to that sales rep. Not many would pass on the opportunity to sell something more expensive. I'm assuming they make some sort of (paltry) commission

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I've had a similar experience with Apple Store employees many, many times: I walk in and vaguely describe what I want, and they steer me to the cheapest item they sell that could possibly meet my stated requirements.

I've also returned Apple products multiple times, once (recently) without the packaging, and once several days past the return window. They refunded me every time, no questions asked.

This makes me wonder if it's part of their training?

It is - you’re not trained to upsell, only to give the customer what they need to do what they want.

Can be a little annoying (an employee actively tried to downsell my partner, even though they knew what they wanted), but overall it’s a nice practice.

Yeah they always try and talk me out of battery replacements, saying it doesn’t need it because it’s on 81% durability rather than 80%.

I worked in AppleCare and even we support techs had incentives to sell products.

Incentives matter more than training.

That assumption would be wrong, and is why you get that kind of service from them. They may have targets of units sold but the real target is customer satisfaction and part of that is getting the customer into the right product so they're happy with it

Targets of units sold is a better metric than targets of total revenue, if a company is focused on customer satisfaction.

They are a highly NPS driven operation. It makes sense: if you keep NPS above a certain threshold each sale begets additional sales from other customers. They manage people and places to what customers say in NPS surveys but don’t allow tolerate soliciting ratings. It’s simple, thus scalable.

Apple Store reps don't make commission.

My experience is that they are more focused on finding the right product for your needs. I've been there more than once where they happily downsell a customer.

At some point in the 2000s I was buying a laptop at an Apple retail store, and just before we processed the transaction the salesperson asked if I was a student.

"Umm, I kinda look like a student."

"Good enough for me!"

I got a student discount.

I’ve found that experience fairly common at our Apple Store. They’ve talked me down.

> I'm assuming they make some sort of (paltry) commission

I worked at an Apple Store in 2010. There was no commission. I was a sales person at the time.

A college student had a bad interaction with one of our sales people and asked a manager to be helped by a female employee. We had none available and I was asked to assist her because I wasn't aggressive.

An asshole pathological liar, who later got fired, had tried to upsell her for no reason. The MacBooks with Intel processors were plenty fast. A 13" MacBook Pro was more expensive and offered no benefits for her student needs. I don't remember the rest other than she bought the MacBook, which was what she wanted when she came in.

no commission

Does not mean no incentives.

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