I’ve recently been having some car trouble. The engine oil light came on and I’ve been drilling holes into my head trying to find out which oil to use as I didn’t know these were vehicle dependent (bare with me… I am going somewhere with this).
So using Yahoo Answers and various VW forums (I have a Passat) I went to the local Halfords and asked for some help in validating my findings. The assistant was very helpful and looked through a list of makes, models and years and told me I was correct.
Now here comes the whole point of this post.
On walking around the oil display stand the assistant picked up some Castrol oil and said “this is the one you need” I happily walked to the tills and bought my item. It wasn’t until I reached my car that I thought… There was loads of oil there with the same grade numbers on the fronts. Some were even Halfords own brands. So why wasn’t I offered one of these, no doubt cheaper products? I suspect that the answer is that the sales assistant has received some training instructing them in product recommendation based on achieving maximum profit. So basically I wasn’t given a choice of the other available products because this would reduce the bottom line…
Crafty indeed.
So how can this apply to our industry?
Well, I already only produce designs once commissioned (NO SPEC!) however I do often face the designers’ dilemma in showing a client a number of designs, one I love and two that are OK, leaving the client to decide because I believe in delivering value for money. However using the Halfords method, I suggest changing this to only showing the client one design as the one I recommend, in the hopes that it is accepted, that my profit margins remain high due to not spending time on other lesser comp’s and that I end up working on and spending more time on a design that has 100% of my confidence.
Anyone else had a similar experience?
