a lot of dealers put more focus on sales than anything else. When you walk in and say "I want a new tractor", the sales guys will swarm you like stink on you know what. But if you need service? They avoid you. Ask ourselves why that is. I did a job (at a dealer) that required a lot of customer interaction. If I had 100 customers, 90 of them were less than happy to see me and then out of the other 10, maybe 3 were really happy to come say hi. The 90? Those are the ones that stick out at you and can ruin your day. So if I know the majority of customers that walk through the door are gonna be mad about their stuff being broken, it's going to make for a long day-one which I'm less than excited about at 0700 in the morning when I clock in.
--but--when the sales guys show up at 0400 or whatever time they get there, they see more happy people than mad people. Secondly and probably more importantly in this discussion, the sales guys are happy to see everyone knowing what they get paid. In the case of that dealer, it's a substantial pay difference. Think about it. Shop guys waller in grease, sweat their nuts off out in the heat and freeze up in the cold, and deal with mad people all day every day, they know that they are gonna have to buy MORE tools because the shop "ain't got the money" for that special tool, they know they're gonna go home with a paycheck of say, $500 for the week. But the sales guys? They sit in an air conditioned cubicle or office, make a lot of phone calls, talk to customers that are happy to spend money, and they bring home a paycheck of, say, $2500 a week.
And we wonder why us techs aren't excited about going to work and why they don't stick around. I realize every dealer is different and there are exceptions, but I also know that sales is heavily favored in the majority of dealers.
