Commissioned Sales Force, A Proposal

Micro Center’s announcement last week that it will take over up to 10 former CompUSA stores is giving some enterprising business grad student looking for thesis material a golden opportunity.

I would suggest a paper on the impact of a commissioned sales force in a PC/CE environment.

CompUSA obviously chose to shutter these locations because they were failing under its business model. So Micro Center must think its methodology can succeed in the exact same facility with essentially the same customer base. The stores more or less have the same merchandise mix, and with Micro Center’s newest location hitting the 30,000-square-foot mark, they are comparable in size.

So this leaves sales-floor talent as the primary differentiator.

I’m going to do my best to track this situation as it goes forward, but the best sign of success will be if the new Micro Centers are still around in a year or so.