What Circuit City Taught Me About How Not To Succeed In Business: Part 1
I worked for Circuit City --a now defunct electronics chain---for two very long years. I sold appliances mostly, but also was trained on selling small electronics, programming cellular phones (remember the Motorla "flip" phone?) and selling home audio equipment. During my tenure at Circuit City I learned some invaluable lessons in organizational leadership that I have never forgotten. Perhaps if these lessons had been evaluated by the Circuit City brass a few years ago, they would still have jobs. 1. Care About Your Customers Needs, Not What You Need From Them . As a Circuit City employee I quickly learned that my first priority was to sell products that paid the most commission and that would make the company money. Our desire was not to help the customer find what they needed, but to sell them something that had a higher "spiff," which was the slang for the commission sales people received. We could see the spiff on every ...