I’m a little late to this party but had the thread open since it was posted. As a 35 year old i straddle the “millennial” and old school gap (in my opinion haha). There is value of ordering things online that can be commonly used or even basic electronics. But if it’s anything above basic, I still believe talking to someone even if on the phone, pays dividends. We recently bought a new vehicle for my wife and explored for weeks online our options, the new vehicles options, what the price range was, anything you could think of. Then we went silently armed with this information to the local Ford dealership. We told the guy what we’re wanted, what we had looked at online and what we’re the must haves. We didn’t divulge prices found or our final number. What we found was a great experience with the salesman checking every box and coming in LESS than online prices.
I believe online will cut out a good portion of the sleazeball salesman still in our industry. An educated buyer will have a little bit of an idea of what’s going on and what they want, but also know that there’s service, setup and an ongoing relationship involved that needs to be considered. The truthfulness of these remaining salesman will have them continuing to be successful and maintaining a happier client base. The big box store mentality will continue to erode peoples confidence in those large corporations, HOPEFULLY pushing more business to the Indy channel.
it could be our geography (central Pennsylvania) but people still want to do business with local people. One thing we try to do is stress the service and install side (probably like everyone else) but in regard to those Canon products Monte referenced he stays away from (A4, scanners, wide format), we push the small difference to buy local and have our team do the install. More than not we win theS deals, albeit at much smaller margins, but it’s a victory in our column and not the resellers.
for the sake of my career and livelihood, I hope we’re still around in 10 years with a still mature but evolving marketplace. If not, I’m an ok burger flipper 😁