How One Veteran Salesman Performs on the Most Critical Shopping Day of the Year

Spotting a woman struggling with an armful of designer slacks and sport coats, Sandy Kenar swoops in to help. He gathers up the clothes, whose price tags total more than $1,000, and escorts the Macy’s shopper to the cash register.

It was Kenar’s easiest sale last Saturday, the biggest shopping day of the year.

For commissioned salespeople such as Kenar, the Saturday before Christmas is critical. If the lines of people loaded down with purchases is steady, they can make big money through commissions--usually ranging from 6% to 7%--that helps compensate for slack selling periods during the rest of the year.

But high-commission sales are harder to come by this holiday season for those like Kenar, who earn between $30,000 and $40,000 a year. Macy’s and other department stores are reporting lackluster results, with men’s and women’s apparel doing especially poorly.

Kenar, a top men’s clothing salesman at Macy’s in Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, had come to the store prepared Saturday--suit pressed, new shoes gleaming. Based on the pace of sales since Thanksgiving, he hoped to sell $7,500 worth of men’s clothing that day.

Before his shift was over, Kenar would see a bratty teen throwing clothes at his mother, a dishonest shopper using a pen to change prices, and an indecisive woman who had him pulling ties from a case for 20 minutes before walking away without making a purchase.

Through it all, Kenar kept his cool--and his eye on his sales goal.

Using a technique honed over three decades, he continually scanned the sales floor for the best prospective customers. (Designer clothing and expensive handbags are promising signs.) Kenar’s radar went off when he spied an elegant older woman poring over racks of sweaters.

“Are you looking for a certain sweater?” he asked helpfully. “What size is he?”

Kenar quickly converted American sizes to European for the woman, a tourist from Israel. When she hesitated, Kenar whisked her across the floor to another sweater display, confiding to her which of the items were comfortable and which itch.

“He’s very patient,” said Hana Meirov as she forked over several hundred dollars for sweaters and slacks. “He advises you. . . . He’s something special.”

Kenar, 50, is a Mens Store specialist--a position Macy’s created for him. He got started in retailing as a teenager, hoping to make enough money to buy a stereo. In the process, he became hooked on selling clothes. After a stint in junior college, he went into retailing full time.

At Macy’s, he is assigned to help customers put outfits together, guiding them from department to department to select coordinating suits, shirts, sweaters and slacks.

The job requires not only a sense of style, but an ability to put customers at ease.

“He’s very passionate about what he does,” said Jeff Manick, manager of the Sherman Oaks Macy’s. “He’s my own personal shopper.”

But Kenar’s position, which gives him freedom to cross departments and create his own work schedule, has sparked resentment among co-workers.

Some of them complain that Kenar makes big sales because he steals their customers when their backs are turned. Others complain that he goes too far to please customers.

“He’s aggressive, which is good,” said co-worker Igor Marder. “But a salesman has to stand with his head up. Sometimes I think he lets customers cross the line.”

Kenar isn’t bothered by such talk. He says that personal attention and persistence are essential to making a sale. Inexperienced salespeople give up too easily, he said.

“They are so eager to get the sale finished that they are walking back to the counter multiplying their commission in their heads when they should be pressing them to see if they need anything else,” he said.

“You never know--they could buy five suits instead of one,” he said.

For Kenar, Saturday starts off with promise, but the $1,000 in slacks and sport coats are to be his largest sale of the day. After he sells a sport coat and several other slacks and sweater combinations, business begins to fizzle. Few people are making big purchases, lured by the red 40% and 50% off signs posted throughout the store. They come to the register with one or two $17.99 flannel shirts, intent on filling out their shopping list, not putting together a wardrobe.

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But Kenar keeps moving, drifting across the floor in search of the next big sale.

“Can I be of some assistance?” he asks a woman rifling through a rack of coats. When she shakes her head, he moves on.

It’s becoming clearer that the day will be a lackluster one, even for Kenar. He will sell a shirt and tie to a man after matching them up and draping his own black jacket over the shirt to show how it looks. And he will sell a couple of casual Perry Ellis pieces after pressing the collar of the shirt so the customer doesn’t have to.

Along the way, he will have to deal with some pretty tough customers, such as the teenage boy who pitches a $400 suit at his mother after reluctantly trying it on. (His mother buys the suit.)

Then there’s the man who tries to create his own sale by writing new prices on the tags of several pieces of designer wear. Kenar, unaware of the ruse, has offered to hold the merchandise at the register as the man looks for a friend. But as Kenar folds the clothes, he notices that the $195 shirt has been slashed to $69 and the $85 T-shirt marked down to $38. Suspicious, he scans the bar code on the tag.

“I knew it,” he says. The shirts are not on sale. He calls security, even though he is sure the man won’t be back.

Determined to keep his sales up, Kenar assesses his performance throughout the day, even while on a cigarette break.

By 4 p.m., halfway through his eight-hour shift, it’s clear he will not make his goal. There are no lines snaking around the retail counters and the purchases are mostly modest. By 8 p.m., Kenar has sold $4,700 worth of men’s clothing, about 60% of his goal.

Still, he remains upbeat.

“I think what everybody thought about today will happen tomorrow,” he assures himself. “I bet it will get more crowded then,” he says before walking off to help one of his last customers.