Learning from Circuit City’s Mistakes

I think anyone with half a brain saw this coming when they terminated the experienced people working at the store.

The day CC fired their experienced sales staff was the day I stopped shopping there. And, I was not alone among my friends and colleagues. Stupid decision by CC.

what a bunch of hogwash and easy monday morning quarterbacking with no real advice for ongoing concerns and no meaningful way of calling the ‘experts’ on this.  this article is a PERFECT example of the old saying, ‘those that can, do…those that can’t teach’.

the fact is that for every one that thought the CC salesperson was helpful, there were at least 1 other that saw them as annoying. i remember being basically hassled to death at CC one shopping weekend many years ago. just leave me alone and answer my question when i ask. don’t follow me around the store and stalk me for the commission.  if CC succeeded, these same ‘experts’ would have said, CC was completely right to follow a business model that works. people have been conditioned by other big box stores and the explosion of information online to be self sufficient when shopping…to do their research before they buy.

look at their ‘advice’.

-Make sure your overall business is viable. GEE…REALLY?

-Find your unique value proposition and build your company around it. WOW…this one should be patented as a unique business model.

-Location, location, location.  Another winner bit of advice.

sheesh…

oh…and BTW…Sears sales people are commissioned and purportedly knowledgeable. last time i checked sears isn’t keeping any competitor up at night.

In 1986, I was granted employment with CC after an extensive application period. I told myself: “I will give this until Dec. 1987. Starting with commissioned sales, if I don’t make 40K first year, time to move on”

The problem with this particular store was the sales managers, playing favorites with the female staff. I had 4 customers who put on ‘layaway’ a certain model of camcorder, that was currently out of stock but 2 weeks out before replenishment.

When the units arrived, instead of them being tagged and set back for my customers to pick up, they were “hid” for the lady salesmen to cherry pick by management.

This kind of atmosphere of playing favorites was bad enough, the general manager had his head turned and when this was mentioned, “his quote “you want fired?” was the line of defense.

I made 38,500 and got the heck out of there.

If you want good employees, you must pay them, not treat them like temps and be fair to everyone. No favorites, no jerks and somethjing to look forward to when driving to work.

That job was a bellyache.
I have been self employed ever since.

“best salespeople” and “better-paid salespeople” are not necessarily the same thing.

I now lots of cases where people are hired at better rate with certain expectation of performance from them. Unfortunately those expectations are not always met, and those people just “hang out” there, getting their annual salary increases, and other benefits.

There definitely should be some incentive to give one’s best, or face the consequences.

Hey Rusgrafx, exactly who are the business geniuses that are hiring these sub par employees in at better rates?

An incentive to have as many employees as possible, working part time, no benefits and mainly college students, 12 hours a week.

To me, this means they will not be on the sales floor long enough to famuilarize themselves with the merchandise, the company saves the benefits and pays minimum wage.

We all know that this is not a solid foundation.

What these companies MUST realise is that a single person with a mortgage simply cannot make it on less than 700/week before taxes.

I applied for a job 5 years ago to suppliment my income (full time) from self employment while times were lean and was laughed at by every company I applied for when “salary desired” was set at 750/week.

If I don’t make 750/week, things begin to get turned off around here, namely water and electricity. After taxes, 750/week is only the most basic of income to support a single person, mortgage, insurance, utilities and automobile.
Can you live off of a net income of 500/week after taxes?

I don’t want to point fingers, but in one case a guy was hired because he was a friend of a friend of CEO, in another, a guy was referred and highly regarded by the current employee (that guy lasted only several months and BTW that current employee got a fat referral bonus). So circumstances could be different, but the outcome is the same—a sub-par team that doesn’t perform.

Ti,
I agree the author was being captain obvious but maybe he had a limited word count.

With that said, there locations sucked in many cases versus BBY, by getting rid of appliances they missed out on attracting tons of people with refi money in hand doing remodels who bought other stuff and they didn’t brand themselves well enough.

CE22,
If we set the bar at a single person being able to own a home most employers will fail that test unless the person has a college degree or two. 

I also stopped shopping there (had pretty much done that already) after the layoffs (and made up my mind ever more when they offered them there jobs back at close to half their pay).

Tom, I wrote a free eBook called “CIRCUIT CITY SIX - Six Fatal Mistakes of a Once “Good to Great” Company.” (can be downloaded at this link: http://www.eamesmgmt.com/CIRCUIT_CITY_SIX_eBook). It covers some of the points you made and also disagrees on at least one. If you’re interested, please take a look (it’s short). It would be great to hear your opinion on that. So far I got a lot of comments and almost all of them are posted on the download page.

Sincerely
Don