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Too Spiffy for Words (11/23/98)
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You know it happens, and in fact you may have seen it yourself: a customer interested in purchasing a Mac is steered instead towards the Wintel offerings by the store employees. You may have chalked up the whole ugly incident to PC bigotry, and that can certainly factor into the equation-- but it's not the whole story. In many cases, the salesperson's motive for pushing the Wintel systems is primarily a financial one. Say the store has a huge overstock of Presarios; the manager may offer cash bonuses to the sales staff for each Presario they can push out the door. More likely, however, if a salesperson is pushing a few particular systems, it's because the manufacturers of those systems are offering "spiffs."
A spiff is a "cash incentive" (read: "bribe") offered to retail salesfolk in order to get them to move a certain product. If you've ever wandered into CompUSA looking to buy a new Power Mac and the sales representative tried really hard to get you to buy, say, an HP Pavilion instead, it may have been because that salesperson would receive a $50 spiff if he or she could have changed your mind. It doesn't sound entirely kosher, does it? But that's the way the game is played-- by everyone except Apple. Historically, Apple has refrained from offering spiffs, and that may have been a contributing factor to the Mac's meager slice of the retail pie. Whether they were taking the moral high ground or they just didn't have their act together is open for debate.
Good news, though-- now that Apple's back in the consumer game and they've tasted blood, they're ready to deal. According to MacInTouch readers, Apple is finally offering spiffs in an effort to bolster Mac sales this holiday season. Retail salespeople will get $30 for every iMac they sell before the end of the year; PowerBooks carry a $50 bounty. Is it possible we'll start seeing salespeople who are actually trying to sell Mac equipment? Strange but true. Apple really seems to be treating this holiday sales season as a "make or break" battle in the war of public opinion.
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SceneLink (1171)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/23/98 episode: November 23, 1998: Apple quietly unveils a spiffy new plan to sell still more iMacs this holiday season. Meanwhile, their subterranean engineers continue to work on the P1 consumer portable, now rumored to include cellular Internet access, and AOL and Sun eye the tasty morsel known as Netscape...
Other scenes from that episode: 1172: Surfing on the Bus (11/23/98) If you've ever desperately needed to check your email while you're on the bus, you might want to consider a less stressful career choice. Nevertheless, it happens-- situations arise in which Internet access would be incredibly helpful, but circumstances prevent you from getting online... 1173: Sunscape Online (11/23/98) The hot topic in the tech world is, of course, the ongoing negotiations between AOL, Sun, and Netscape. Apparently AOL and Sun are trying to decide whether or not to buy Netscape; if the deal goes through (for something like $4 billion in stock), AOL would probably run Netcenter and distribute Navigator, while Sun would take over Netscape's server software...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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