Many people who have been in sales know that in order to sell a product or service, sales treats customers with enthusiasm and proactively promotes the goods. In many companies, there are specialized sales departments. When I traveled in North Korea, I found that very few people in North Korea were engaged in sales. Our tour guide was a young girl, and when I talked to her, she asked me what I was doing, and when I said I was in sales, she looked confused and didn’t know what sales was for.
In fact, it is quite normal. North Korea has a planned economy, factories are responsible for the production of goods, a lot of goods produced are not for sale, there is no pressure to sell, most of the goods are directly used for distribution. Because the North Korean people’s daily necessities, most of them rely on the distribution. Some factories in North Korea, not only do not need to sell, and basically do not need to advertise. Traveling in North Korea, you will find that it is a country with a very light business atmosphere.
Although there are many stores in North Korea, almost all of them are state-run. The salespersons inside are also employees of the state-run organizations. They commute to work on time and receive a fixed salary. They don’t treat customers too warmly.
I have seen scenes of local people shopping. Very often, when local people go to a store to buy something, the salespersons don’t even raise their heads, and it doesn’t seem to be important to them whether or not the customers are shopping. As tourists, we can only go to specialized foreign stores to store, where the campers are relatively more enthusiastic, but they will not take the initiative to sell their products.
Their main task in the store was to count the money, what the tourists bought, they used the computer to calculate the total price. Never do they steer tourists towards what products to buy. While shopping at a foreign store in Kaesong, North Korea, I noticed that one of the salespersons inside spoke Chinese. Chatting with her, she asked me what I did for a living. I came back and said, “I also sell things. She was very curious and asked me if boys also work as salesmen in China. In North Korea, only boys work as salesmen.
Then she asked me how I usually sell things. I laughed and joked that I usually sell things by standing in front of the door with a loudspeaker and shouting Three dollars, three dollars, three dollars, three dollars, three dollars, you can’t buy to lose Hearing me say this, the North Korean girl bent over in laughter.
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