Last Laugh: MJ Chanski

Published

12 years ago

September 5, 2011

Last Laugh: MJ Chanski

Love For Sale

An out-of-work newlywed took a temporary job in jewelry sales. After three days of intensive training, the sales manager told him to go home and practice his pitch on his wife. The next morning, the manager asked the novice how he made out. “Well,” the man began, “I did what you said, and after I finished, I asked her if she would buy the ring from me. She said ‘Yes.’ Then I asked her why. She replied, ‘Because I love you.”

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“When you sell diamonds, you become a friend, a confidant, even a psychologist!” says MJ Chanski, manager of Hannoush Jewelers in Rutland, VT. Chanski has bachelor’s degrees in professional writing and publications and in management, but she claims that neither has taught her as much as 12 years in the hospitality industry did. “The ability to read your customers and anticipate their needs in the first few moments is nothing you can learn in a book.” In her spare time, she takes GIA courses online, loves her boyfriend, Bob, and takes care her “children,” a boxer named Vito and an American bulldog named Ellie Mae.

[span class=note]This story originally appeared in the September 2011 edition of INSTORE. [/span]

Time for More “Me Time”? Time to Call Wilkerson

Rick White, owner of White’s & Co. Jewelry in Rogers, Ark., knew it was time to retire. Since the age of 18, jewelry had been his life. Now it was time to get that “me time” every retailer dreams about. So, he chose Wilkerson to manage his going-out-of-business sale. White says he’d done plenty of sales on his own, but this was different. “Wilkerson has been a very, very good experience. I’ve had the best salespeople in the history of jewelry,” he says. “I recommend Wilkerson because they are really the icon of the jewelry business and going-out-of-business sales. They’ve been doing it for decades. I just think they’re the best.”