Dear Friends,

The snow seems to be staying south of us again in this week’s snowstorms. This seems to be the pattern that has developed over the past few years. As the storms work their way up the east coast, high pressure seems to keep the snow pushed south. Nevertheless, we have had enough snow that the ski areas are happy and the snowmobile trails are open. Seed catalogs have started to arrive and it is just over a month to Town Meeting Day when it is traditional to start the tomato plants for the garden.

We have three universal job requirements at Small Dog Electronics. Each employee is required to meet all three each year. The first is Apple training. Apple has a series of educational modules and exams that constitute their online sales training. There are four levels of accomplishment: Silver, Gold, Apple Product Professional and Apple Sales Professional. Every member of Small Dog Electronics is required to reach Apple Product Professional and all sales people are required to reach Apple Sale Pro. Each year in April we hold our Apple Sales Professional dinner which started out with 6 people five years ago but this year we have 36 people out of 50 that have reached the highest level of Apple Sales training and 100% that are Apple Product Professionals. We will be hiring a bus this year to bring the folks from Vermont over to meet up with the folks from our Manchester store for this annual event.

The second job requirement is that each employee take a paid day off to perform community service. I do not dictate what community service they do, only that I get an email with a description. We have had employees help their neighbors, work with Special Olympics, create websites for the local library, work in the schools or clear trails for hiking. I was very proud of this commitment to community service until one day, I was visiting Ben & Jerry’s headquarters and mentioned this commitment to community service to the CEO. He nodded politely and said, “that is great; we give our employees up to 40 hours paid time for community service.” I guess we have some work to do get there, but this is a key element in the People part of how we measure our success.

The last of these requirements is a weekly report. This is the hardest to get compliance from the team, but we are well over 90% each week. This weekly report is sent to their manager, Hapy and me. The format for these reports is as follows:

• What were your accomplishments this week and how did you do versus your plans for the week?
• What are your plans for next week?
• What obstacles did you encounter and how did you resolve them?
• What resources do you need to do your job more productively?
• Tell us about one customer encounter this week.
• Please make one suggestion for the company, and list any other commentary you may have.

With over 50 employees, I find these reports to be an extremely valuable management tool. Just as we want to take advantage of every opportunity to talk to you, our customers, I find these weekly reports from my team to be packed with valuable information, ideas and opportunity.