More Awesome Than You!

It seems like when your business ranking gets higher and you get more loyal customers, it will be just as easy to sell a plasma tv (11000 simoleon at regular price tag) as selling a book on a shelf (69 simoleons)
So say, why would anyone who wanna make big $ open a food/flower store and not a Plasma tv store or hot tub store?

My community business lot generated 230k in ONE session (the session was about 30 hours or so) and i was mainly selling computers (the expensive one), and a few plasma tv, im curious what kind of money ill make if i only sell plasma tv or hot tubs.
FYI, the business ranking is 10, 5 employees (gold sales x 2, silver restockerx1, gold registerx1, and a manager who i assigned to be register) my own family (1 human and 2 servos) helped but the whole thing was relatively autonomous
the snapdragon really helped tho, i place those all over the place to keep my customers and employees in better mood (only one or two in one spot so energy wont drain too fast)

There really is no reason other than to get your rank up fast. Once you've reach 10, there's absolutely no point.

Kind of lame if you ask me, but that's the way the game is set up. *shrug*

Yea it is pretty unrealistic, cuz in rl, shops like wal-mart or mcdonalds that sells alot of cheap things makes more money than say any car-dealership.

Can anyone with a prima guide tell me whats the exact formula to determine if a Dazzle interaction succeed or fail?
It looks like there is something to do with business ranking, cuz when i first got gold sales at my home business i used it on customers and failed a LOT. so i was afraid to use it and now i tried again on my level 10 electronic store and i succeed everytime except once and i checked using mind-control mirror, the customer was in a negative mood.

IIRC, business rank has no effect and I've in fact used it successfully with a low rank.

I believe having some relationship with the sim helps, and the sim's personality may make a difference as well as your sim's mood. I'm at work but if no one else beats me to it, I check when I get home and tell you exactly what it says.

im not saying i didnt succeed at low ranking, but i didnt succeed very often, but it almost always work now
and i dont have any kind of relationship with most of my customers if at all.
and the only time i failed the customer had like 30 daily with me (compare to 0 daily of most others)

Well I'm going off of memory here mind you, but I'm pretty sure I don't remember the guide saying anything about the business rank effecting the chances of dazzle's success.

If someone else has access to the book right now please feel free to confirm or correct this.

then may be it has something to do with customer loyalty?

Dazzle's success depends upon mood of customer, relationship of customer to salesman, and personality of customer (more outgoing, more likely to succeed).

Business Rank effect customer traffic and of course, perks available.

Dazzle works well (only available with Gold Sales) but does take a hit on the energy of the salesperson. I'd only use it for big ticket items and/or if an Energizer is nearby. 

So basically, an assess before a dazzle is useful. Schmoozing the customers so you get some sort of relationship is useful. You could also use the glasses to get the relationship up even more and/or the perk that boosts initial relationships. I'm not sure how to tell who is outgoing unless they get naked in a hot tub or are a known house barger in the neighborhood. ;)

AHHHHH the mood!!!!!!!!!
that must be it!!! the snapdragon strikes again! LOL
those magic flowers keeps the customers happy and that is why my dazzle succeed more often than my home business (with no snapdragon)

Snapdragons are.. way too good.

Conclusion: flower-arranging is THE first talent you should learn for any successful business

Or hire an employee with a gold badge to make some. ;)

If you don't have snapdragons and don't have access, then I can at least say you should watch out for making sales pitches to pregnant sims. Their needs go down really fast and their mood along with it. :O

I know this is off on a tangent, but does the snapdragon deplete energy when it boosts the other moods?

No, it doesn't replenish but does slow energy depletion.

So having a lot full of snapdragons you can easily get 24 hour shifts out of your employees before neding a rest.

They are silly overpowered.

Haha, but the evil stinky snapdragon does the reverse and drains needs as well as omitting a foul odor.  ;D

Dazzle only ever works for me on customers with 3 loyalty rating or higher.  It works on customers with 2 IF they are very good mood, i always ignore the relationship with the sims.

I got a few customers on 5 ranking, when they walk in i show them plasma tvs over and over and dazzle them.  I can rake up some big dollars that way.

Rally Forth is overpowered! My servo got it (from home business that he owns, but can be used anywhere)
since servo only has 3 needs, and rally forth  does NOT drain power (does drain energy but NOT power), i went to my community business with him only and kept rally forth rally forth rally forth in where my employees are, and then find someone to play kicky balls to quickly replenish social and use macro-kick stuffs to fix fun, i keep doing for like 4 whole days now and all my employees are green mood. i only need to stop once for a looooong time to recharge under the sun (its quick)

Heheh, count on us to find all the abusive loopholes.

Well, you can start selling ridiculously expensive bathtubs and whateverelse once you reached a certain level of sucess with ur business...

You cannot do that if you are starting out and no cheating. 'cos the capital cost for those expensive stuff is high and not to mention you need a certain shop size to accomdate all the items.

Selling hot tubs is waay too cool. I put the item off sale after business hours got those silly romantics to woo hoo in it like crazy and sell the bathub (ahem, used bathtub) off at $11,700 and more next day and no one is none the wiser or wider :P

Life is waay too good in the Sims. If real life is like that, no more slogging!  :D

"Depreciation" also has no effect on your item's sale cost. Neither does being broken or dirty. I have a store for selling used cars, "Honest John's Used Autos", right across the street from a store for selling used terlets, "Honest Otto's Used Johns".

Business rank means nothing, also. The important factor to selling anything is having a gold sales badge. Dazzle can sell ice to Eskimos. No matter how ridiculously expensive it is, or how USELESS it is, Dazzle can sell it. Even a puddle of piss can be sold.

If deprecation means nothing...

But does decoration helps? I mean having those huge ninjas statues, do they actually count towards something towards customer preference to purchase?

Dazzle doesn't always work. When it doesn't, the whinny customer get a dark cloud exploding over his head.

The Big Ninja by Big Yard Dudes, Inc.

price: 5,500

need effects: fun 3 (view)   environment 10

need max: fun up to 95 (view)



from the guide

correct me if im wrong, but it seems like the buy bars goes up on its own and the higher your business rank the fast it climbs (on its own) sometimes my customers buy plasma tv without my sales employee helping at all (they were too buy helping other customers)
also I noticed that hard sell doesn't decrease customer loyalty but increases it. and it adds a large amount to the buy bar , not as much as dazzle does but it doesnt drain energy

Manipulate lowers loyalty. hard sell doesn't if it works.

If it fails you get a nice hit to daily and should get a loyalty hit.


And rank DOES play a role. There are more suckers to buy your crap.

Anyway, with a gold sales badge, Max outgoing, high nice, and snapdragons around, you can pretty much spam sell plasma TVs at 10k+ as fast as you can restock them. Its like using a cheat for money if you are a SLLLLLOOOOWWW typist. One dazzle will complete the sale, then invite them to look at the one next to it, dazzle, repeat....

I want to know which is the most successful business! :D

Yes and no. More suckers to buy your crap is not really an issue because you can keep peddling crap to the same sucker. More suckers, after a very early point, will simply saturate your sales bandwidth. When your prices are all "Ridiculously Expensive", you will probably not get a sale unless a salesperson manipulates the customer into buying it. Therefore, having more customers than salespeople by a significant margin simply doesn't help.

Why sell boring tvs and hot tubs and waste your time trying to max out money in a game that already gives you too much money when you can create poor hippie kids and have them sell glowing crystals and incense out of their home never earning more than just enough to live on while they raise (and ignore) their tribe of free love kiddos (who all tend to want to grow up and become business peoples)?

There is a perk that helps all your sales interactions go more smoothly, I forget what it's called but it's in the second column from the left.

i think thats the 4th level perception perk, it gives 30% to the effectiveness of your sales interaction, but its only for your business owner, and if you hire npc sales to do your selling (like i do) then its worthless

Does that actually work for you? I gave up getting any employees, except the manager who I control, to sell. They are stupid and useless and keep doing the wrong things even if I max at their pay and they have a gold sales badge.  >:(

npc employees are pretty good, at least the 2 i hired are doing fine.
the only and pretty serious problem they have is that they use "Sell at cheap" etc alot which really screw up my profit margin. (no sell cheap hack possible ? ;D ;D ;D)
and i would also be much happier if they can spend more time on the customers who are buying more expensive stuffs, right now they just pick a random customer and do sales action, which isnt that bad once your buisness is on track.
Hopefully Pescado can make some kind of "efficient sales hack"
Overall I think you should have at least one npc, and you can have your own sim help to do it more efficiently
but the whole point of a successful business should be that it can run autonomously without much of your interference and still generate a good profits, and to do that you have to have npc sales.

I agree, they aren't very smart. They seem to pick the customers they chose, the sales pitches they use and the items they show them quite at random.

On the other hand, it's a pain in the butt for me to manually sell all the time. A lot of repetitive clicking. Did macrotastics add a sell macro yet? I have the newest version from today but have not had a chance to test it yet.

The employee sellers work best when in a room of SnapDragons (not the ones that emit green gas though), the buyers are more responsive too.  I think every shop I have will be using those flowers near the registers and workbenches.  Once you have a functioning Flowershop Community business with Snapdragons for sale, you can send your other sims to that lot and buy them for their own businesses so they don't all need to be expert flower arrangers.  I love this EP :)

If you have the skill/perk and want an NPC to have it, you can promote them to manager, and then pass on the skill.

Sorry about off topic, but I have a quick question, are you able to pass on your skills more than once (to various sims)?

I agree, it's a pain to micromanage the selling all the time.  My question is, how do you get NPC employees to sell at all?  I have only been able to get them to be cashier, restock, or craft items.  There doesn't seem to be an option to assign employees to sales, or a way to click on them and tell them to sell.  Or am I missing something?  My businesses are mostly at level 1, so maybe this is an option that gets unlocked at a higher level.

Karen

It's a dialog option.  You click on the target sim, and choose Management / Assign / Sales. I'm pretty sure that's the dialog tree.

 - Gus

Then it must be at a higher level, because I've never seen it.

I am sure you can. I haven't tried it though. You may have to relearn the perk though. I think it actually passes the perk on. But any of those ltw=5 high rated business sims have plenty of spare points (30 to be specific).

It's not level dependent.  It was one of the first things I did after opening a business.  In retrospect, it was a mistake, because my saleswoman kept using inappropriate sales pitches that got negative reactions.  In one case, over and over until the customer had -3 loyalty.  I almost never get a bad reaction when doing it myself, and I know enough not to try something that already failed once.

 - Gus

Passing on the perk does not remove it from the sim that passes it on, so yes, you could in theory pass it from the mother to 7 children if you want to, and have the patience, cause passing on a perk takes nigh on forever....

It's might be worth if for servos and maybe vamps and zombies if you can tolerate running a business with one of them, but I don't think it's worth it for kids imo. It's a lot faster just to have them open the business themselves. I suppose it might be faster for servos too but at least if I spend all the time on them they're not going to croak after I wasted a 3rd of their life passing on perks. :p

I started out with a flower shop and decided to add a garden section to it.  Now that the owner and two other adults are all gold in sales I go from one fountain-statue to the next (they are all arranged from most expensive to less expensive)and will sell every one of them.  The average sales are about $20K now.  I sold all the little flowers-kept the ones I like cause I want my sims to by them for there houses.  But for townies and NPC's  all expensive items.  I added toys cause the townie she married has a gold in toy making--not a good money maker but I want my sims to have them.  All it takes is Hard sell,basic sale, and dazzle(the clincher)and they will buy anything.  I try to have the sim that already has a relationship with the customer or is attracted to them--seems to help if they are attracted--must be cause the relationship accelerates quicker.  They got business of the year the third session--that really helps.  It's cute--everyone(including the customers)that walk past it will nod in approval--too cute.  I had to build A LOT(home business)so it took a while to go green--they are about $50K in the green.

Passing on perks can be quick and simple or hellish, i know because i did it for the daughter of one of my sims.  There also doesn't seem to be any kind of limit since i tried briefly the pass on when she was still a teenager.  The annoying part is that you are passing on only a single perk each time not the entire chain as you'd expect for a 24+ hour job.  To do it simple and probably cheating tell your sim to start the training, disable it and reenable it.  It will boost the bar by a decent amount.  Repeat this over and over and your sim will learn the perk in a couple hours.

Now call me a cheat but i found this way and used it to pass on 7 out of 8 of my skills.  I also will continue to use it as i seriously dislike the time frame.  Seriously 24 hours is WAY too much to learn a single perk.  Especially if you want to do it for multiple sims.

Can somebody with a Prima Guide shed any light on this?  What triggers the Management...Assign...Sales?  I have seen Assign...Cashier, Assign...Stylist, but never Assign...Sales.  Do I have to have a particular object on the lot in order for this to work?

Karen

It should just be there. As long as you have at least one employee, you should have that option. I always have. They don't even need to have any sales badges either, though I wouldn't reccomend sending them to autonomously do it if they don't.

Weird.  Maybe I have a hack conflict somewhere....

EDIT:  I went into one of my business lots with testingcheatsenabled turned on.  I got an error just about every time my Sim tried to click on a customer.  Error log is attached.  I don't know how to read these things, can anybody help?

Karen

[404'ed!]

I figured out what was causing my problem.  I narrowed it down to a hack called "lovepotiondisappearfix", which was originally intended to fix the NL bug where buying a love potion from the gypsy caused the active Sim to disappear.  With this hack installed, most of the Sales... and Management... options are not displayed.  Without it, everything seems normal, and I am finally able to see the options I've been hearing about, like telling employees to take a break, or assigning employees to sell.

Karen