500 New Jobs in Hawaii

Nordstrom will be opening in Honolulu on March 7, and WILL BE hiring 500 new salespeople in a market where I continue to hear, “We can’t find people”. We have even had stores go out of business citing that as the reason. How will Nordstrom find those people, and where will they come from? They will find them right here under our noses and many of them will come from retailers already hurting for staff.

Think about how smart and clever this ad is:

Wanted:
Retail sales associate capable of earning more than $100,000 a year

Read the ad carefully and you will see that they are looking for ONE person CAPABLE of earning that money. They have already had 1,600 apply.
Nordstrom has 30,000 salespeople, and 123 (less than 1/2 of one percent) of them earned that amount of money last year. But the ad is factual as stated and hundreds, if not thousands of Honolulu salespeople will respond without analyzing the “fine print”. They WILL FIND the 500 salespeople they need to open that store on March 7.

Nordstrom has always been known for their generous commission plan. When “good old Liberty House” was here, those in the Nordstrom run shoe department were famous for their great service and also made the most money. It’s too bad that the rest of the company didn’t recognize the lesson in front of them. If so, they might still be here today. If Macy’s doesn’t wake up pretty soon we will be reading about their demise and hearing them blame Nordstrom in some way.

I read The Nordstrom Way by Robert Spector in the 70’s. That was before I had discovered retail myself. It was also at least 20 years before I had enough experience to write Retail Selling Made Easy. When I finished reading The Nordstrom Way, I contacted Robert and found him to be as EASY to talk to as being a customer in Nordstrom was. I am sure that many of those principles helped me form my Pro-Active, No-Pressure Selling System.

How big is your company handbook? Nordstrom’s employee “handbook” is printed on a paper card listing one rule: “Use your good judgment in all situations.”

That says it ALL! Welcome to town Nordstrom. You will be a great model for many others to follow, and a great excuse for some to fail.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 9:10 am and is filed under What's New?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.