Sears Store Closing - Appliance Technicians that are Facing Lay Offs or Need a Job

I had a cousin who worked for Sears his entire working career - he could fix anything and I never understood why he didn't start his own repair business. He said it was 'too risky' and his job was a 'sure thing'. I expect many losing those retail jobs now believe the same as he did.

I think you have an excellent idea - in fact, you might consider creating a product (an ebook/how to manual) to sell on Amazon Kindle, for example. Or run local workshop or training sessions if the layoffs are in your area.

A service business means knowing how to perform the service AND how to run a business. That second part is where many of these laid off workers will need help.

One consideration - more people are buying major appliances online now than ever before. I've done it myself and finding qualified people to install gas and electric appliances is not easy when you don't buy from the offline 'sales and service' stores.

This really is an awesome idea. You've found a desperate niche and know how to help them turn the table and use their skills in a better way. Good job.

The first thing most of those unemployed people will do is hit their local unemployment office. The second thing they'll do is start mandatory job searching required by the unemployment office.

You could advertise different ways.

• Local paper flyers
• Local Craigslist
• Targeted facebook advertising
• Linkedin research

Setup some kind of referral bounty because each Sears location will have a dozen service techs. So when you find one service tech you've basically gained access to a dozen other techs (example). I'm sure all those local techs stay in contact via cell phones.

This is not something that "suddenly" happened. It's been going on for at least the last ten years in the retail industry - beginning with cutting employees' hours, layoffs, salary freezes etc among many of the major retail stores including Kmart, Walmart, Target, JC Penney, Macy's ... etc.

This trend will continue for years to come, as the retail landscape shifts increasingly to e-commerce. The stores that survive will most likely restructure their business model similar to Amazon.

I have no idea what to do specifically for the appliance technicians, but there is a whole lot of talent in sales and management for example that is transferable to small business.

What I have done for many years is run "business opportunity" ads in the classified section of metro area newspapers along with full-page "advertorials" and articles in special interest magazines. I have found this to be more effective than any other method including online advertising for this particular demographic.

Thanks to those of you that have taken the time to reply to this post. I really appreciate it. You have given me some very good ideas on how to get the word out to the appliance repair technicians that need work.

Kay King;

I think you have an excellent idea - in fact, you might consider creating a product (an ebook/how to manual) to sell on Amazon Kindle, for example. Or run local workshop or training sessions if the layoffs are in your area.

A service business means knowing how to perform the service AND how to run a business. That second part is where many of these laid off workers will need help.

I do have my own product Appliance Training Course that I created a little over a year ago to help those that are in this same predicament. I don't want to break in WF rules, but for those that are interested you can check out my link to my website.

Yukon;

Awesome idea about contacting some of the Sears Techs (never would have thought of that resource). Also, thanks for the advertising tips. I will start to implement them shortly.

Myob,

I will start to advertise for "Business Oportunity".

Thanks Again
Chris

On paper, making people redundant is an easy financial decision to keep a company alive.

In reality many employers are loathe to make people who have worked for them, sometimes for decades, unemployed.

To make it more palatable, and as an internal PR exercise for those employees not affected by redundancy, companies try and soften the blow.

Large companies especially will financially cost out redundancy to include not just renumeration but funding of programmes to help those affected

Usually a well respected external recruitment agency who will help with CV writing, interview techniques and access their databases of jobs.

Additionally there may be Financial Advisers if the redundancy packages are generous and also 'How to start a small business' type of workshops.

I am not saying 100% this happens in the US or that these two companies do this as I am in the UK

So, if what I have written is not out of the norm for large companies in the US who have funds I would be approaching the HR depts at the local level and the HR Director at a national level to offer my services on how I could help them look good.

Dan

PS: The military have what are called Resettlement programmes for when soldiers leave. Contact your local base or ask anyone you know still in or just left who the resettlement officer is. (Might not be called resettlement in US but you get the idea)

You can search for their resumes on Indeed (you'll need to sign up for a Free account to do this).

1. Go to Indeed.com and click "Find Resumes" at the top.
2. Click on Advanced Search.
3. Under "Company of latest job"- type in "Sears or Kmart"
4. Under "Title of last job" type in- "Appliance Technician"
5. You can email them directly from Indeed.

Good luck.

There are a couple of separate issues here.

Your main question was how do I reach them.

Simple. Run ads for "experienced appliance repair technicians wanted".
You can do it on classified, Facebook etc...
You will now have them coming to you...

Next issue is what you do with them of course and I assume you already have some sort of plan.

I visited your site and see you sell a course to train techs and get them working.
In this case you can eliminate the training part
but
be warned that they will be no closer to converting than folks that never repaired an appliance.
In fact believe it or not it may be harder to get these guys to work for themselves than someone that never repaired an appliance because they obviously have had the choice to switch over for a long time but their belief structure is rather ingrained.

I also think you will find many that dabbled at being self employed and their crappy results have re-enforced their belief that its too hard to get clients etc...

Personally here is what I would do.
Put out ads for qualified techs.
Put them through a sales funnel that makes them qualify themselves.
If they are qualified enough sell them the picks and shovels of the part of the business they have obviously never wanted to do or feel they can't do. In other words just because it is easy for you to get the phone ringing does not mean they will EVER figure it out.

Lots of ways you could do this like sell them actual service calls on a per call fee and the value add for them to come on board with you is you give them a business in a box that they need to put in place so they can get/service those calls. Nothing to do with repair skills, all about business setup...

I have run multi million dollar national campaigns to generate calls for locksmiths, appliance repair, garage door repair etc... Used to do this on monthly fee but now I have moved my business to being paid per call/long form submit (for some niches) so I can tell you that it works... and removes most objections since all they are paying for is the end result...

regards,

Peter

Mainstream classified ad companies and newspapers generally will not allow you to use a headline implying that you have a job opening and then pitch those who respond with a business opportunity or a training program. They consider that false advertising - and with good justification.

So while this approach may sound feasible, it may need to be tweaked.

Marcia Yudkin