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The Wall Street Journal has published a report which shows how strict are Apple’s guidelines for store employees and how it was one of the company’s biggest strengths in recent years. According to Apple’s quarterly earnings, more than $12 billion of its total revenue come from the company’s physical stores where the employees try to persuade people into buying an iOS or Mac OS X device.

Apple is training its employees using rules created by Steve Jobs himself several years ago. The WSJ got a hold of an inside training manual which says that the employees must give the customers the impression that they’re not trying to sell a product, instead they’re helping the customer deciding what he wants.

It’s not an easy job to be an Apple Store employee because you have to be smart enough to know what the customer needs even though the customer himself doesn’t actually know what he needs. Basically, Steve Jobs wanted his employees to make customer think they need something.

Apparently, the Apple Store philosophy is called APPLE as the employees have to approach, probe, present, listen, and end which translates like this: first, employees approach the customers and welcome them to the store. Then they will have to probe in a polite manner to understand what the customer needs, and after that, present them a solution. Eventually, they will listen to any concerns the customers might have. After everything has been achieved, employees will end the meeting with a farewell and invite the customers to return to the store.

It may sound easy, but it’s pretty complicated and if you fail to comply with the demands, then you might lose your job. The store employees must not give complicated answers to the customers and they have to issues limited responses like “I understand.”

Apple store employees will get a one week training program and he will work 5 days and 40 hours per week. The difference lies in the Genius staff who will get more training weeks.

In order to add more stress to the store employees, Apple urged them to be very polite with the customers therefore they aren’t allowed to correct the customers. If someone mispronounces a product, then the person in the Apple must not correct him.

Retail workers aren’t allowed to be late 3 times in 6 months, bur if you come to work at the right time each day for 6 months then you are allowed to be late 6 times in the following 6 months. In addition, store employees are paid up to $15 per hour, while Genius workers are paid $30 per hour.