What if Bill Belichick Ran Quarterly Earnings Calls?

  A memorable ad series is the one Nextel is running, beginning with "What if firefighters ran the world?" and then on to "What if roadies ran the world?"  They are very funny and clever and got me thinking as I was listening to some of my clients' quarterly earnings calls.  CEOs and CFOs of public companies have to be such a patient lot to get through these calls.  The financial analysts are only doing their jobs, of course, but so much of those jobs involves CSI-like analysis of every number presented, along with the tone, pausing and demeanor of the executives running the call itself.  The CEOs and CFOs cannot lose their tempers and have to keep answering more and more arcane questions, sometimes more than once, to satisfy the analysts.  But what if the New England Patriots' inscrutable coach, Bill Belichick, was handling a quarterly earnings call for a public company the way he fields press conferences after games each week?  It might sound something like this:

Operator:  Your next question comes from analyst Justin Facts.

Facts:  Thank you.  Was there a particular reason you decided this quarter not to add additional personnel, particularly regarding revenue generation?

BB:  We made the decisions that made sense for the quarter and for the long run.  It is what it is.

Operator:  Next question comes from analyst Canu Winitall.

Winitall:  Is there any way you can size up your competition for the rest of the year, into Q1 of next year, and give us a sense of how you stack up against them?

BB:  Honestly, I'm not following you.  Do you have a specific question?  I just don't really understand what you're talking about.

Winitall:  Do you think you are well positioned competitively through the end of Q4 and into early 2009?

BB:  We are doing the right things to win.  Period.

Operator:  A followup question from Justin Facts.

Facts:  Should we interpret your response as a signal that you will be raising guidance?

BB:  You can write whatever you think you heard.  I can't control how you interpret things.  And, uh, operator, that's it for questions today.  I've said everything I have to say.

I'm sure public company executives would love to be blunt and to deflect questions they find tedious the way Belichick does so skillfully every week.  But then again, the public company execs don't have the press following them out of every sales call asking a million questions about what just happened and why.

Maybe if firefighters ran quarterly earnings calls -- or roadies . . .