Laura’s Winning Ideas

TECHNOLOGY ALERT from The Wall Street Journal.
Dec. 18, 2007

Best Buy’s quarterly profit soared 52% amid strong sales of videogame consoles, laptops and flat-panel TVs and less discounting than last holiday season. The company said its profit margin benefited from a “more rational” retail environment, especially in the home theater segment. Revenue rose 17% to $9.93 billion, thanks in part to the opening of 127 new stores. Same-store sales rose 6.7%, which included a 2.5 percentage-point gain from an extra week of post-Thanksgiving sales versus a year earlier. U.S. same-store sales climbed 6.1%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119798557779536701.html??mod=djemalertTECH

I’m not surprised by these results, in fact I’m very pleased. I like to hear Best Buy is doing well because they did well by me this year. Considering the great treatment I got, management is doing something right in encouraging an atmosphere that causes us to open our wallets wide.

In my case, both the Geek Squad agents  and the store managers helped me salvage my business from a computer disaster when we had a crash and were forced into purchasing a Windows Vista machine in that dark few weeks when retailers were not allowed to sell XP machines.

I’ve liked Best Buy in the past, but now I’m an evangelist for them. No doubt I’m in good company.

Funny how profit follows fearless support for customers.

In your past performance database, you should be capturing more than the dry recitation of facts about your firm’s success. DIG for the story behind the facts. The Wall Street Journal is obligated to report facts. You have the luxury of putting a face on the numbers by sleuthing for the story behind the numbers.

You can tell when there is a good story because the technical staff want to talk about the project. Play roaming cub reporter and ask questions to find the story behind the numbers.  

You’ll use these stories in a sidebar if there isn’t room in the project experience section of your proposal. And storytelling strengthens the cultural bond in your firm. Storytelling warms teams up like a campfire. Collect stories and help spread them around. It will do your culture good, and reinforce the best your firm has to offer. 

We learn more about how to succeed from storytelling about folks accomplishing great things, than any amount of training. We learn to be fearless in the face of looming deadlines and threatening obstacles.

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