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MightyGodzilla wrote:

gak, I mean really, does really piss you guys off so much that the salesguy would ask you if you needed glues, paints or files when you bought a model - how's he supposed to know that you've been doing this for 20 years and has set files "older than he is?" Getting asked for glues is like going through the fast food chain and getting asked if you want fries with that. One time I went to the FLGS (15 miles away) with the intent to buy glue, bought about $150 worth of models, Dvds, toys....and forgot the glue. Had to make a whole other trip, 60 miles round instead of 30...I wish the clerk would have mentioned the glue.

It does when they keep asking OVER AND OVER AND OVER again once you make it clear your not interested in paints, glue, or the newest hotness in models. There is such a thing as nagging yoru customer too much.

In your example it be like the fast food chain asking "do you want fries, soda, candy, chocolate, icecream, a hamburger" after you just said you just want value meal number 3.

Upselling is to be expected, badgering is not.

I guess the big thing is that you used to walk in there and it felt like a creative, fun place, where ideas and scratchbuilds flowed, and you just bought out of pure enthusiasm and were encouraged to get excited by example not by specific product.

These days, it seems like you feel like you walk in there, and are dressed in dollar bills, which the staff rabidly try to strip off you, leaving you cold, naked and ashamed with only a terrorgheist to cover your privates.



In all honesty, they are certainly not alone in this type of sales policy, I can't say I like it, but it is not that big a deal either... I think it is more sad that it could be so much more of a comfortable place to hang out in than offensive or anything like that. Then again, making you feel like it is cool to chill in the store for hours on end may be exactly what they are trying to avoid lol -

There's no point in pretending that all independent stores are much better though. Some will crudely up sell, while other treat their customers like an annoyance which is even worse. But there are a lot of stores that are great places to be, they have friendly well informed staff, they are comfortable and relaxing and you feel happy to spend your money with them. Very few GWs achieve this any more.

The problem is that GW 'hobby centres' can't represent 'the hobby'. They are a high street chain shop. They want to sell the GW hobby which management believe they can sell as an independent concept from the rest of the wargaming and modelling world. But that's a totally artificial seperation. The pressure to push GW as some unique entity means that staff have to talk only GW. They rarely talk about non-GW anything and frankly that stunts any 'normal' hobby conversation. It not the fault of staff, it's what a highstreet branded store does. In an independent hobby shop you could have a chat that wanders around any range of models or games, stuff on TV, comic books. With GW it's GW, GW, GW all the way. That's not relaxing. Maybe it works for kids that only know about GW, but for anyone over the age of 20 it's wearisome.

Big as they are, GW don't have a model range that large and a lot of it is only available online. All GWs are more or less the same, you can't 'browse' them as you would a more varied shop. That's why people get dragons and battleforces pushed at them when they go in the store. A good independent store is like Aladdin's cave.

It would be great if they had all their figure range in the shops instead of hidden away online, that they reintroduced the specialist ranges to the shops and they put Forgeworld kits on the shelves too. Their shops would be gleaming with all manner of goodies then. But they flatly refuse to do any of these things.

inquisitorlewis wrote:Since I am no longer playing either 40k or WHFB I decided to just find something that would be fun to assemble and paint.

inquisitorlewis wrote:If the guy would have been like "the manticore is a great model. Have you seen his awesome rules" I very well would have bought the army book as well. I feel like GWs sales strategies are flawed the whole way up to the corporate level.

Since you don't play WHFB anymore, why would the army book have interested you more than a different large, cool model to assemble and paint? The army book would have been an upsell of about 30 dollars to boot.

rovian wrote:just some poor guy trying to sell you some models.

Been that poor guy (girl) trying to sell things in a retail environment all about the upsell. It wasn't GW though, of all things it was teddy bears. I worked at Build-A-Bear, and the tactics that are being described for GW's hard upsell are the tactics of the UK high street in regard to toys and children's products. Show, show again, show something twice as expensive and hope that pester power will do the rest for you.

I lost count of the numbers of children who were physically removed from our store in tears because their parents were (quite understandably) not willing to drop forty quid on a rabbit in a princess dress. I also lost count of the considerably larger number of parents who reluctantly found another tenner for the princess dress having only intended to buy the rabbit, after they (perhaps foolishly) let me take their six year old round the store to look at the shiny things.

No, we didn't get commission, but we did get invited to leave our employment if we didn't make enough sales. I have a certain inbuilt sympathy for the poor guy trying to sell you some models, particularly in a pretty rough job market. Doesn't mean the tactic isn't incredibly annoying when pushed too far. (I do think it's reasonable for sales staff in a store to ascertain in a polite and friendly way if you're actually planning to buy anything, particularly given the habit of parents in these parts to use GW as a free creche. The job of retail sales staff in any store, after all, is to sell stuff)

Hard upsell - appealing to impulse - works like magic on kids. If GW believe the majority of their sales come from a customer base aged 12 and under, this is a reasonable play. However I think they might be wrong about that, and I have no idea why you would try this as your frontline (or indeed sole) sales tactic on adults. It's not endearing, and it doesn't build any rapport. I suppose if GW have a view that their customers can be bullied into buying stuff, it might work - once, before the customer in question decides they're never going back to the store.

I would like my GW store to stay open. I don't go there much myself, but a lot of people do go there a lot, and I would not like all the staff to become unemployed. When I do go, I'm intending to buy something anyway (usually something that's not worth paying the postage for), and I am open to being upsold some paint or glue to keep the staff happy. I'm going to fling that Devlan Mud around with abandon anyway; another pot is not a dealbreaker for me. I am not open to being upsold a complete army for a game system I don't even play, which happened to me a couple of visits ago. But this I agree with other posters is almost certainly a complete failure to sales-train the staff adequately.

Lara wrote:

I would like my GW store to stay open. I don't go there much myself, but a lot of people do go there a lot, and I would not like all the staff to become unemployed. When I do go, I'm intending to buy something anyway (usually something that's not worth paying the postage for), and I am open to being upsold some paint or glue to keep the staff happy. I'm going to fling that Devlan Mud around with abandon anyway; another pot is not a dealbreaker for me. I am not open to being upsold a complete army for a game system I don't even play, which happened to me a couple of visits ago. But this I agree with other posters is almost certainly a complete failure to sales-train the staff adequately.

Yes, but this is Dakka where it's in style to desperately want GW to fail no matter how it affects anyone else. Even if ithey don't realize that it hurts them because they've "quit Games Workshop" (but pay no attention to them handing their wallets to Big Tom Kirby again).

Lara wrote:

Been that poor guy (girl) trying to sell things in a retail environment all about the upsell. It wasn't GW though, of all things it was teddy bears. I worked at Build-A-Bear, and the tactics that are being described for GW's hard upsell are the tactics of the UK high street in regard to toys and children's products. Show, show again, show something twice as expensive and hope that pester power will do the rest for you.

I lost count of the numbers of children who were physically removed from our store in tears because their parents were (quite understandably) not willing to drop forty quid on a rabbit in a princess dress. I also lost count of the considerably larger number of parents who reluctantly found another tenner for the princess dress having only intended to buy the rabbit, after they (perhaps foolishly) let me take their six year old round the store to look at the shiny things.

My sypathies, as I'm usually one of those parents. But then again, I make it clear before we EVEN step into the store to the kids they may have a stuffed animal, outfits are an absolute no.

Hard upsell - appealing to impulse - works like magic on kids. If GW believe the majority of their sales come from a customer base aged 12 and under, this is a reasonable play. However I think they might be wrong about that, and I have no idea why you would try this as your frontline (or indeed sole) sales tactic on adults. It's not endearing, and it doesn't build any rapport. I suppose if GW have a view that their customers can be bullied into buying stuff, it might work - once, before the customer in question decides they're never going back to the store.

The problem is....they keep trying to work it on adults, which is why these threads keep popping up.

Worglock wrote:

Lara wrote:

I would like my GW store to stay open. I don't go there much myself, but a lot of people do go there a lot, and I would not like all the staff to become unemployed. When I do go, I'm intending to buy something anyway (usually something that's not worth paying the postage for), and I am open to being upsold some paint or glue to keep the staff happy. I'm going to fling that Devlan Mud around with abandon anyway; another pot is not a dealbreaker for me. I am not open to being upsold a complete army for a game system I don't even play, which happened to me a couple of visits ago. But this I agree with other posters is almost certainly a complete failure to sales-train the staff adequately.

Yes, but this is Dakka where it's in style to desperately want GW to fail no matter how it affects anyone else. Even if ithey don't realize that it hurts them because they've "quit Games Workshop" (but pay no attention to them handing their wallets to Big Tom Kirby again).

And of course you'll be there to keep harping on that point.

Aside form people complaining, there is always you trying to troll your way into everyones heart.

<text redacted; let's avoid grade-school style name-manipulations-to-insult-others, please --Janthkin>

whitedragon wrote:

inquisitorlewis wrote:Since I am no longer playing either 40k or WHFB I decided to just find something that would be fun to assemble and paint.

inquisitorlewis wrote:If the guy would have been like "the manticore is a great model. Have you seen his awesome rules" I very well would have bought the army book as well. I feel like GWs sales strategies are flawed the whole way up to the corporate level.

Since you don't play WHFB anymore, why would the army book have interested you more than a different large, cool model to assemble and paint? The army book would have been an upsell of about 30 dollars to boot.

I am still interested in the fluff of it all. Painted examples of models is also a good selling point for someone just looking to paint and model. Still wishing I would have picked it up that day.