Missing sales opportunities

I visited a client on Friday who had bought a new printer. One of the irritations of buying printers is how manufacturers skimp on a couple of dollars by not supplying USB cables which are essential to set up the machine.

This should be a great selling opportunity for the sales person to make more profit on the sale, given the fat margins shops make on cables. Yet nearly half the new printers I see are sold without a cable.

For the manufacturer, this is false economy as they almost certainly receive support calls from upset customers who can't figure out how to plug the printer in. This probably wipes out any savings from not throwing a cable into the box.

The local shop is even more at risk as those customers who can't set it up may well return the printer. That wipes out the profit on the next five printers.

Another niggle is the failure of shops to sell paper to go with the printer. Again this is another good opportunity. My client had no paper in her house.

The client suggested they could throw the cable and paper in for free as a goodwill gesture. Unfortunately too much of the retail IT industry operates on margins too fine to allow that. Also many customers are wholly price driven so goodwill gestures are usually wasted.

I charged for the cable, but gave some paper as a goodwill gesture. I'm still baffled why the shops don't do this.