Scoble tells a story about him and Dave Winer going shopping at a Best Buy in East Palo Alto. Their experience was pretty predictable based on my experience with Best Buy.

As part of my "Silicon Valley customer education" I visited a Best Buy in East Palo Alto with Dave Winer. Dave had $3000 burning a hole in his pocket. Well, heating up his Visa card anyway. The Best Buy is literally a mile from Steve Jobs' home in Palo Alto. The center of the technology world. It should be a showcase of retailing excellence. Here's a hint: Dave walked out without buying anything (and we went to Ikea instead for a meatball lunch)

So, what did Best Buy do wrong? Several things and it isn't just Best Buy.

The retail industry seems to be giving up the fight. Everything inside the store screamed "we know you're gonna buy a Dell anyway." I agree with Acer's chairman. This is a big mistake.[The Scobleizer Weblog].

He goes on to talk about suggestions for stores like Best Buy and talks about how he thinks IKEA is doing things better. I'd throw another example into all this. Apple's Stores. Being one of those Mac geeks I usually take a swing through the Apple store when I'm in the mall. Usually it is just to eye something I've been wanting for a while or to play around some on one of the machines that is on my wish list. But I've watched the sales people there a lot. Overall they are really good. They seem to be fairly knowledgeable (though I do think they could be a bit more so). I've watched them actually work with the customer to figure out the best computer for them (at least twice selling them a system that wasn't quite as fancy as they'd come in for and saving them some money).

And I'll add in a second example of how some companies really screw up with their retail outlets: AT&T Wireless. I personally had a good experience when I got my phone. I went in with a friend of mine a month later and the experience was sad. We were asking about some of the new phone models out there and they were clueless. The big difference between the two visits? The salesperson. The person I had was great, was able to answer all my questions, knew about all the different phones, even know about ones they didn't carry (cause I asked about the Sidekick). She was even able to help me figure out if my current dialing plan was still a good deal (btw, for those of you in the Cambridge, MA area, it's Jessica at the Central Square store). The salesperson when I went in with my friend was clueless. He knew some about the phones they had, but seemed to be very uninformed about other phones on the market, even ones from the same manufacturer (we were asking about some of the new Sony-Ericsson phones out there). My personal opinion is that if you're working at a company that is selling cell phones and service you should know as much as you can about the biz. Because these days many customers have done just enough research to have a general idea of what they want, but they're looking for that personal touch to help them make their final decision. Needless to say I left the store thinking, "how does this guy even sell anything?"

In my case I think companies need to train their salespeople better. Maybe include even a few training sessions a week so that they have chances to learn about things. Require them to fit at least one in every other week, anything to help make them a resource for the customer.

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