Monday, November 3, 2008

Smile Search

Submission:

Pretty frequently, you are expected to go out and "Smile Search", which is go out into the store or mall, and try to bribe people to come in for pictures right then and there. You offer them some promotion along the lines of a free 8x10 and 50% off the rest of their order, but they absolutely have to come to your studio at that time. Sometimes this is done for good reason, such as training purposes. Other times, in an attempt to try and generate sales your manager and will decide you have nothing better to do and assign you a certain amount of Smile Searches you have to bring in.

People don't come to Sears with their children dressed up for pictures on a regular basis. On the rare occasion that you do find someone who is willing to come in, many will just order their free 8x10 and nothing else, which sort of defeats the purpose of trying to make money. [And destroys your sales average]And you better make sure you meet your quota of Smile Searches or you risk getting the accusation of just sitting in the studio all night doing nothing and being given a write-up to match.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the credit card apps that I had to fill out working in retail. Like I wanna rope in some schmuck for 25% APR credit card when I am personally against stroe credit cards in general.

As for those Smile Searches... they worked on me once, but it was a Kiddie Kandids. My son was 4 months old at the time and I had just bought some new clothes for him for Easter. So I had some fancy new duds for him to wear. Plus he had been napping in his stroller for about an hour before that. I got my freebie and a couple of additional sheets. Then they called me 3-4 weeks later and offered me 3 more free sheets to bring him in so they could train a new employee. (They claimed it was because he was such an easy baby to work with) I got the free sheets plus a couple extras. I'm such a sucker and my son apparently LOVES the camera. He'll pose for anything... and he's two now.