Go-Getters May Find a Place to Grow in Retail

The Broadway’s distribution center on North Mission Road, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, is the size of 42 football fields, and a sense of team purpose pervades just about every yard of it.

In room after room, groups of the department store’s sales personnel sit attentively through hours of coaching by supervisors and occasionally do role-playing, pretending to be customers with complaints.

Play-acting might seem like fun, but the Broadway considers such training to be serious business, designed to get employees tuned in to customers’ needs and prepared to solve problems lickety-split on the sales floor.

“Our basic objective is to satisfy the customer,” said Kim Villeneuve, divisional vice president for training and development at the 42-store chain. “To care for and serve the customer. That’s what our focus has been concentrated on for the last two years.”

The Broadway is not alone in putting greater emphasis on customer satisfaction. Squeezed by competition from upscale specialty stores and discounters, department stores throughout Southern California have recognized a need to shift strength from the back office to the sales floor.

And therein lie some meaty opportunities for friendly, outgoing individuals who like being part of a team and are interested in helping people.

“I think retailing is probably going to pop out as one of the strongest sectors over the next year,” said Phillip E. Vincent, a First Interstate Bank economist in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects retail selling to be the eighth-fastest-growing occupation between now and 1995, with the number of jobs predicted to swell by 343,000 nationwide to just over 3 million then.

Whereas some other Southern California industries--notably energy--have been beset by downturns, retail employment has enjoyed good growth. The number of jobs in Southland retail establishments, including restaurants, rose in the second quarter to 1.15 million, 3.4% above the same time last year.

In the year ahead, the new tax legislation is expected to be a boon for retailers that could result in many new jobs. Lower tax rates will free up cash for merchants’ expansion and hiring, and the law will give consumers more disposable income for shopping, said Adrian Sanchez, an assistant economist at Los Angeles-based Security Pacific National Bank.

More than many other fields, retailing can accommodate workers from diverse age, experience and education levels. This is one career where a good track record can take an employee farther than a college education can.

“I don’t have a hang-up about any sort of educational background,” said John D. Woodward, the Broadway’s vice president of human resources.

That goes for Bullock’s and Bullocks Wilshire, also. “We’re looking at attracting into our sales force that individual who interfaces well with the consumer, somebody who really exudes confidence and has the ability to meet (customers’) needs,” said Duane V. Johnson, the stores’ director of personnel services. “It’s more a combination of intelligence, a desire to do well and service people, and pride in output.”

Traditionally, retailing has been a field tailor made for part-time workers interested in picking up evening and weekend hours. This is still the case to a degree, but the Broadway and Bullock’s both indicate that they now seek more full-time employees who view retailing as a potential career. Full-timers, the stores figure, will be more dedicated to building and serving a strong customer base.

The Broadway is close to a goal of having 70% to 75% of its sales “associates” on full-time schedules, up from 40% in the past. Bullock’s, meanwhile, intends to gradually ease more full-time workers into its mix, which stands at 60% full time and 40% part time.

Even so, stores invariably bolster their staffs with part-timers for the important Christmas shopping season.

“Each year we do the same thing. We beef up our staff going into November, and we start that process in the September period,” said Edward S. Mangiafico, chairman of May Co. California, which has about 13,000 employees. Between 1,500 and 3,000 workers are hired on this temporary seasonal basis, with some working full time and some part time, he added.

The Broadway and Bullock’s stress that sales associates who excel can expect to be considered for management-level posts. “Very often people running stores for us were salespeople or stock people,” said Johnson of Bullock’s, who started in the company’s stockrooms 15 years ago while a student at Cal State Los Angeles.

With the greater emphasis on customer service, the Broadway recently followed Nordstrom’s lead by putting all sales employees on commission, a system that gives go-getters an advantage. The more they sell, the more they make.

“Before, we’d probably be starting people somewhere around $4 to $4.50 an hour,” Woodward said. “Now if a person sells $100 an hour, at 6.5% commission they’d be making $6.50 an hour. That is not an unusual rate to sell, and some people are making a lot more.”

At those Bullock’s stores where workers are on commission, “a person can reasonably expect to make $16,000 to $25,000 (a year),” Johnson said, adding, “Obviously, there’s no limit. Some earn well in excess of $50,000.”

However, he added, “you don’t develop that kind of expertise without some time on the job. You have to build a clientele. It’s the person who develops that kind of singular following who tends to bring home the money.” He said Bullock’s is considering putting more workers on commission.

The California Employment Development Department reported that average hourly earnings in the retail trade, excluding eating establishments, rose to $9.74 per hour in June, a 7.5% increase over the same month last year. Vincent, the First Interstate economist, called that “a pretty good” jump. Considering that average wages in the oil and gas sector fell 1.5% in the same period, he said, “you can do a lot worse than being in the retail industry.”

The customer-satisfaction push has had at least one entrepreneurial side effect. Robi Banks, a Southern California retail consultant, recently started offering workshops for sales staffs of small department stores. “We train them in servicing customers and being more creative with their selling,” she said. “We take clerks and turn them into sales consultants with more depth and understanding.”

When it’s time to hire more sales help, many stores, including Bullock’s and the Broadway, recruit on college campuses and hold job fairs at stores or hotels. Stores also post openings in newspaper classified ad sections, of course. Before Bullock’s opened its downtown store in August, an ad in the main news section drew 3,000 applicants for 200 jobs. Normally, Johnson said, only 700 to 800 would have applied.

One never knows when a good attitude toward customers might pay off. The Broadway has trained department managers to be constantly on the lookout for people with strong customer orientations, even in unlikely places.

Said Villeneuve of the chain’s training program: “If a department manager is eating out and gets terrific service, they’ll recruit that person.”