I did my first cell shop for a MS company that is also my fist assignment for them today.

I live and breath technology. I run custom and beta firmware on all my devices and am far too knowledgable about these things. So I thought in advance of three questions to ask the salesman that were reasonable and would be the types of questions an average consumer would ask. Either I missed the mark, or this salesperson is far below par. After he failed to answer all my questions, he got defensive and told me to go online to get my answers.

Did I ask too difficult types of questions?

He was showing me a Samsung Galaxy S5.

1. "Is the surface coated with Gorilla Glass 3?"
Answer:
It's the newest, whatever that is.

Fact:
He could not answer yes or no. It is Gorilla Glass 3.
I gave him a leading question with the answer in it.

2. "What is the largest MicroSD card that the phone will take, and does it need to be a class 4 or class 10 rated speed card to record video at full resolution directly to the card?"

Answer:
It will take and MicroSD card, they are all the same. The largest it will take is 64 GB.

Fact:
To record at the highest resolution directly to the card, it requires a class 10 rated MicroSD card.
The unit will accept a 128 GB card. Even though they are very expensive, they will work.

3. "I recently bought a new home router that has the latest wifi standard, 802.11 AC. Will this phone connect with the AC standard or the older 802.11G speeds for wifi?"

Answer: I have no idea what your taking about. You need to go online and look that up, I have no liturature here for any particular model.

I think I completly threw him out of his rythem and he blew his presentation and all the key points he was saposed to hit. Then he ran off and set the CLOSED sign up.

Was I too difficult on him? Should I have been an uneducated shopper?

I think they want you to be an average customer. Your questions are not what an average customer would ask in my opinion. Also most cell phone shops want you to just listen and not ask leading questions. The salesperson is supposed to ask the open ended questions to determine your needs etc. Of course, shops can have different instructions.

You should have been an uneducated shopper.

Anyone who would know to ask those questions would have found the answers online, bought the phone online, and wouldn't need a salesman for anything.

Questions to ask instead: I heard some phones are made of unbreakable glass. Is that true? Is this one?

Can I record video to a typical SD card or are there special cards meant for video? I've only ever recorded photos and audio to an SD card before but I have a new baby/puppy/boat and want to use the phone to shoot videos for Youtube (or whatever). (be sure to have back story for baby's birthdate and name, breed, name, and sex of puppy, size and brand of boat)

Will this phone network through any home router? I just got a pretty high-tech one. (deliver up the 802.11 AC stuff only if the salesman asks about it)


When it's obvious the customer knows more about the product than the sales rep, that can be very intimidating to the sales rep. You're not trying to make him look like a clueless idiot. Give him a chance to provide normal service to a normal buyer.

You are supposed to ask reasonably answered questions and raise easily solved objections. None of those were, IMHO, except maybe the Gorilla Glass question.

The guy sells many different phone models. It's not like he designed this one.

Wow your questions were not something the average consumer would ask. Here are better questions that a typical as you put it "average" customer would or may ask. How is the picture quality/ Will this work with my home wireless? How is the speed of the phone when moving between apps? Let me ask you a question now OP what is the name of the processor and how many ghz and cores is it?

Maybe next time you can role play as one of your friends who is rather clueless to today's technology. Get into character before you enter the store and stay in character you little genius you!

BuffaloNY101 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wow your questions were not something the average
> consumer would ask. Here are better questions that
> a typical as you put it "average" customer would
> or may ask. How is the picture quality/ Will this
> work with my home wireless? How is the speed of
> the phone when moving between apps? Let me ask you
> a question now OP what is the name of the
> processor and how many ghz and cores is it?

I made sure to avoid questions about processor speeds, graphics abilities, cpu cores. This is why I chose the three questions that I know would be located on product liturature. All were items you'd see in the sales brocure.

I wanted to ask, Can this be jailbroken easily? What is the average CPU overclock achievable? and will it run cyanogenmod firmware. I really thought I was toning down my questions to normal shopper levels.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2014 03:07AM by scanman1.

Agreed, your questions were not ones an average customer would ask, too technical and too leading.

If the people selling phones had that kind of technical knowledge, they probably wouldn't be selling phones.

Most people do not live and breathe technology. I agree these were not questions an average customer would ask. It appears that your questions skewed the results of the shop. I am guessing you probably called the scheduler to report that you could not complete the shop.

In the OP's defense, many of the phone sales associates I have run into need to know more about the products they are selling. I am a techie to, so I do tone down the technical detail of my questions, but they never cease to amaze me with their lack of knowledge when I throw them a whiffle ball of a question and they swing with a miss.

Q: What speed can this phone connect?
A: They are REALLY fast!

Q: What kind of resolution is the screen?
A: This screen is AMAZING!

I think these phone sales people think that all of their meaningless adjectives will sell phones. Now that I have shopped them, I am pretty confident that, I have enough sales knowledge to do a decent job selling phones if I had to change careers.

AustinMom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most people do not live and breathe technology. I
> agree these were not questions an average customer
> would ask. It appears that your questions skewed
> the results of the shop. I am guessing you
> probably called the scheduler to report that you
> could not complete the shop.

I did not ask over the top questions, but I will tone them down much more for my next electronics shop.

I don't feel my shop was blown by me asking 3 questions. The unmanned kiosk and the fact he took off again for a second break while I was there and the other observations are all still relivant.

Not every shopper will fit a cookie cutter mold. There are other shoppers out there who may ask a slightly more advanced question other than, "Can I play Angry Birds" on this device. This is a $650-$700 investment. Not everyone is a complete idiot. The company may want to know how the salesperson handles 1-2 questions he dont know the answer to.

Telling me to go research it online is not the answer I'd want my salesperson to give.

Perhaps, I'll have to find out and offer to follow up with me. Or to simply state that they don't know the answer off the top of their head instead of making up a wrong answer.

These are things I'd think the company would want to know about.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2014 03:54AM by scanman1.

I'm a fairly technical person, so OP's questions made sense to me. That said, I've sold cell phones at retail, have managed a retail wireless store, and have worked as a cell phone manufacturer rep, coaching and training retail sales staff.

The OP's questions were certainly not typical. As others have pointed out, most customers who know enough to ask those questions will likely have looked the answers up before they walked in the store. More likely, they're not in the store at all... they're researching and buying online.

Furthermore, the knowledge required to answer OP's questions was not required or expected of store staff, at least not when I was responsible for training them! We wanted salespeople to emphasize the *benefit* to consumers, not the technical specifications.

Quite frankly, the staff members who could answer the OPs questions were usually awful salespeople. They ended up with unhappy customers and poor numbers.

The majority of customers will tune out immediately when someone starts talking about brand of glass, class of SD card, or versions of the 802.11 spec. They want to hear that a phone has "the latest technology in scratch protection," "enough space for a whole vacation's worth of photos and videos," and WiFi that's "fast enough to watch Netflix."

All that said, I would like to think that when presented with a specific technical question, the staff member is resourceful enough to look up the answer, not make something up that's incorrect.

I did a smart phone shop and I don't know hardly anything about them. I have a "stupid" feature phone which I only use for emergencies. I did not ask technical questions and the best feature they kept pushing was the color of the phone. When I had to ask the technical questions, it was horrible. They kept telling me the phone was pretty when I needed an answer about a special feature that took 3 pictures and averaged them. The real problem is they want you to present yourself as a new smart phone user with no knowledge and then want you to ask fairly complex questions. I have decided I won't do cell phone shops.

So can you play Angry Birds on it?

Did you submit your report yet with the three questions you asked? Did you get feedback on it? Ultimately it will be the MSC that will decide if your questions were too difficult/specific to ask. Then you will know for next time.

Depending on the MSC, the point is for the salesperson to offer the information, not so much for you to ask the questions, unless that is what the guidelines say. You are supposed to pretend to be an "average" customer, not a techie, for most of the cell phone shops I've seen...and some you are supposed to have almost no knowledge of cell phones.

I have a shop coming up to evaluate someone that works in the field I retired from a few years ago....he's fairly new at his job according to the scheduler so I'm going to guess I know more than him, but I have to pretend I don't know that much....it is what it is. The point isn't to show off your knowledge but to assess what knowledge your target has.

"These are things I'd think the company would want to know about."

If the guidelines didn't say it was what the client wanted to know about then they don't which made your questions an exercise in futility. If the MSC didn't tell you to ask any questions or didn't tell you to ask about those features specifically, the report will probably be rejected, you won't be paid and the client will never know anyway.

I agree with the others that your questions are too technical. I think the gorilla glass question was reasonable but as already mentioned, I don't think a regular shopper would have asked the other two questions.

scanman1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AustinMom Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Most people do not live and breathe technology.
> I
> > agree these were not questions an average
> customer
> > would ask. It appears that your questions
> skewed
> > the results of the shop. I am guessing you
> > probably called the scheduler to report that
> you
> > could not complete the shop.
>
> I did not ask over the top questions, but I will
> tone them down much more for my next electronics
> shop.
>
> I don't feel my shop was blown by me asking 3
> questions. The unmanned kiosk and the fact he took
> off again for a second break while I was there and
> the other observations are all still relivant.
>
> Not every shopper will fit a cookie cutter mold.
> There are other shoppers out there who may ask a
> slightly more advanced question other than, "Can I
> play Angry Birds" on this device. This is a
> $650-$700 investment. Not everyone is a complete
> idiot. The company may want to know how the
> salesperson handles 1-2 questions he dont know the
> answer to.
>
> Telling me to go research it online is not the
> answer I'd want my salesperson to give.
>
> Perhaps, I'll have to find out and offer to follow
> up with me. Or to simply state that they don't
> know the answer off the top of their head instead
> of making up a wrong answer.
>
> These are things I'd think the company would want
> to know about.


I have to disagree. Salespeople are trained to sell phones to consumers not tech wizards. Like other people have stated, techies wouldn't even be coming in the store. He may have not done things like suddenly closed the store if you had not rattled him with your questions. We don't shop to set people up for failure. I'm not saying this is what you intended to do, of course, but this is what ended up happening.
If I were you I'd make note of it on the report and send an email off to the scheduler to just give them a heads up. They are the ones who know for sure what the client is trying to uncover by having their locations shopped.

The sorts of questions that dspeakes has posted are more in line with what a typical customer might ask.

Wow I have never gone into that much detail on a cell phone shop and I have done dozens of them. My son usually knows more about the cell phones than your typical salespeople at these stores. I keep it really simple - "does this phone take good piks" and am out of there in 15 minutes. In reality I think they are just checking to see if people are wearing their name tags.

At least one MSC has "expert" scenarios, where you have to be knowledgeable about phone technology and you are required to ask more techie questions. Even then, they give you the specific questions they want you to ask. The default assumption is that you are an average, non-techie customer. I'd report exactly what you asked and let the MSC make the call - there is a chance they might reject it, but you'll know better next time.

The MSC owner reads this sub forum, as I applied for the company based on the signature line of this member.

The shop is "Pending Validation" now.

Try sticking with the Angry Birds question next time. Have fun with it.
Questions I've asked over the past year...
Can I set it to let me know if it's my ex calling?
Can I watch TV on this? Does it carry Wheel of Fortune?
Does it have music? What kind?
If I text my mom with this, will she finally be able to text me back?
Can I make movies with this, I mean good movies?
Is this the one that had the Superbowl commercial?
Does this come in red?
And just yesterday...
I can still make phone calls with this, right?

I'm actually going to side with Scanman here. Maybe it's because I consider myself somewhat tech savvy but I don't think it's unreasonable for a man who sells cell phones for a living to know this. Were I to be in an electronics store, questions like that are what I'd ask.

I agree that next time you could ask less specific questions especially if in a big box store rather than a stand alone. Still in MHO the employee should know the answer. My hubby works for verizon fios so no cell phone shops for me. If he does not know the answer, he finds the answer for the customer even if he has to call them back later after it is researched. Several guys in his group sold cell phones before transfering to the help desk. The salesmen that set records (aka made crazy good money) always knew their products very well. My dad sold high end stereo for years and he loved customers that asked questions like yours. They would buy all their expensive toys from him because he did all his brand training and read reviews, went to trade shows etc.

Well, it really comes down to the shop instructions and whether the shopper was supposed to be an ignorant newbie learning about phones, or a more sophisticated buyer testing the salesperson's knowledge of his/her job.

There are many different kinds of cell phone shops.

scanman1 Wrote:
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>(blah, blah, blah)..I applied for the company based on the signature line of this member.

scanman1, can you please translate that for me? For the life of me, I can't figure out what it means.

(heart)

stilllearning Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> scanman1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >(blah, blah, blah)..I applied for the company
> based on the signature line of this member.
>
> scanman1, can you please translate that for me?
> For the life of me, I can't figure out what it
> means.
>
> (heart)

The signature line is the text that you put in your profile that appears at the bottom of every post you make. In this case, it was the MS's company that they had in thier signature line. As I had not applied to every company on the list, I decided to apply there seeing that they are active in this forum.

Today I spent the 31 minutes I was waiting for assistance at my first of two cell phone shops on my 150 mile route thinking of more questions to post here instead of fuming.
What I used...
After being pitched a particular data plan..."And how much do the cards for the minutes cost after that?"
After being shown a smart phone..."So it stays open all the time?" Then, "Well, where are the buttons?" After being shown on/off and volume, "No, no, no... the 1234 and ABCD buttons?"
To show the alphanumeric "buttons," the text function was opened, with contacts listed. The contacts had photos. I asked, "How does it know what my friends look like?"
Let me know if any of these work any better for you, scanman1.
I was going to say a friend had said to look for one made out of gorilla glass, but none of them were see-through, so I figured none of them could be made of glass and it would have seemed suspicious to ask about it.