Hacker News Reader

Comment by GigabyteCoin | Hacker News Reader

This article starts out with a fallacy that immediately made me stop reading:

Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H.

No. The ~$3M dollars that apple spends on advertising daily (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Apple-products-guru-m...) are what put Jordan Golson in the position of seeing $750,000 worth of purchases be made in front of his cash register within 3 months of his working there.

Jordan Golson probably didn't have to "sell" a single customer who walked through that door.

All I see in the 'Apple vs. Tiffany' image on the left side of the NY Times page is a more efficient business model on the left.

View on HN

All the money Apple puts into engineering and marketing counts for squat if someone goes into an Apple Store and has to deal with salesperson who is unhelpful or not knowledgeable. Best case you end up with an unhappy customer, worst case you loose a sale or a customer for life.

The Apple Store isn't Walmart, the people that work there aren't just cashiers. Hang out in the Apple store for 10 minutes and listen to the people there talking to customers, now do the same thing at Best Buy.

I have. In both cases I had to leave quickly before while I could still suppress the urge to commit violence.

The only difference was a greater amount of smug condescension in the apple store, and a greater amount of brofest bra' salesmanship in Best Buy.

Apple store employees are no different than BestBuy employees when it comes to knowledge level. The help they provide is the same as well, they get the stuff from the back.

If they were knowledgeable, they wouldn't be working at an Apple store.

/Mac user, won't waste my time walking into another Apple Store.

Not to mention that an apple store employee has to have significantly less knowledge than a best buy employee to be just as helpful. In the average best buy employee's department, there are probably a couple hundred products that they might receive questions about, plus a couple thousand more products that don't really require knowledge, like cables or cases. An apple store employee has to know apple's entire lineup, which by my count looks like less than 20 products (not counting variations or configurations).

Part of this goes back to Apple Store employees being trained to be helpful and knowledgeable, while Best Buy's employees are trained to upsell and prevent shrink.

I've come to realise this is a New York thing, but every experience I've had an Apple Stores has been filled with smiley, doltish people who are terrible at honouring appointments on time. I go to the Apple Store when I'm willing to trade sanity for immediacy; otherwise I far prefer ordering online.

The Cupertino and Phoenix Apple Stores I've been to were different, but comparing apples to apples (no pun intended) I've had great retail experiences in other New York stores.

> I go to the Apple Store when I'm willing to trade sanity for immediacy; otherwise I far prefer ordering online.

I've learned that the Apple Store is not where I want to go for immediacy, either. Unless you are going when it's not filled with people, buying something is a pain. I cannot fathom the need to wait for a "sales" person to buy something specific.

If I want to buy an Apple product, I go someplace else. Apple stores have never been a prompt or efficient shopping experience for me.

I've had a lot of problems with the bay area Apple Stores, albeit not the Cupertino one.

Yes, I read the first line and stopped reading, switching instead to these comments. I'm sure he sold a couple of people but the vats majority of those "sales" are going to happen either way. Apple has a huge "marketing force" in their rabid fans (for good or for ill) and they probably deserve a lot of the credit along side apples official marketing.

Agreed - I would like to suggest that 100% of the 8-10 iPhones, iPod Touches, iMacs, iPads, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs that were purchased by friends, and family (that weren't already using Macs) - were sold by _me_ in conjunction with Apple's great Marketing and track record of supporting their product. Particularly the one Android User and one Blackberry user.

The employee in the Apple store (and I take nothing away from them) - were responsible for taking a credit card number, email address, getting the box from the store room, and putting it in a bag. I even pre-sold applecare for them.

I agree completely.

Sales requires a lot of talent and should pay commission. Certainly. But "Specialists" at the Apple store need only to be cordial, competent and informed. While not sales, that does deserve a premium above the wage offered at a fast-food counter, which at $11/hr they are getting.

I do, however, think the jobs should be in the $15-20/hr range not the $10-12/hr. That is the difference between a paycheck and a living wage in a lot of places. And Apple certainly can afford it. I'd look to Whole Foods for an example.

> This article starts out with a fallacy that immediately made me stop reading

You are 100% correct about the fallacy, but you missed out on a very interesting article. The fallacy is not a central part of it, it's just how they open.

Meta comment: The New York Times has really got a burr up its shorts about Apple these days, what with this piece and its "iEconomy" articles. Yet the NYT's market cap is only $1B:

https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NYT

The Times wouldn't have attacked Apple like this if Jobs were still alive. For that matter, after the first negative NYT article came out, he might have simply bought the NYT for $1B and pointed it against its traditional rivals. None would be the wiser. This is what Gates did with Slate, and Soros with ThinkProgress. And at Apple's scale, that actually makes sense: better $1B out of pocket than a negative NYT article knocking 1% (nowadays $6B) off your market cap.

After all, the NYT isn't writing exposes on Carlos Slim Helu, who owns an 8% stake.

> After all, the NYT isn't writing exposes on Carlos Slim Helu, who owns an 8% stake.

Amusingly, the NYT reporters like to bite the hand that feeds them:

nytimes.com/2009/02/16/business/media/16slim.html?pagewanted=all

To wit:

"Notoriously thin-skinned, he does not have to pick up the phone and bellow at those who publish and broadcast something he does not like. His vast resources often translate into less-than-critical coverage.

Mr. Slim declined through his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elias, to be interviewed for this article."

All the advertising in the world doesn't close sales, it just gets people in the store (or to the website). If salespeople were not important, Apple wouldn't carry the burden of 30,000 of them.

I'm going to assume that the NYTimes didn't think it's readers were too stupid to figure that out. He was still the person who finalised $750,000 worth of business.

Besides, the most effective marketing apple has is still it's fans and I'm sure Apple store staff have evangelised Apple products plenty outside of work hours too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com