Sometimes storytelling that teaches a lesson is inadvertent. It’s not intended as “business narrative” or one of Steve Denning’s springboard stories meant to spark change. It’s just good reporting and writing that tells a story that provides a lesson businesses can learn from.
Want to convey the lesson that you should be careful who acquires your business because it may lose everything that made it great and eventually go under? Then read the sad story of gardening-tool importer Smith & Hawken by Jim Welte at marinij.com. Current owner, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., intended to sell Smith & Hawken but decided to liquidate it when it couldn’t sell the subsidiary. As Welte reports, original partner Dave Smith said, “When Scotts bought it and Smith & Hawken was owned by the largest pesticide seller in the U.S., I suggested people boycott it. It had completely lost its roots.” Further:
Both Smith and Hawken said the company that bears their name had long since veered away from being a gardening company and was unable to take advantage of the recent surge in interest in gardening because of that.
“How could you possibly have a gardening store in this economy and go wrong?” Hawken said. “I’ll tell you why. This wasn’t a gardening store anymore.”
Smith and Hawken had not originally sold their company to Scotts. It had gone though several owners before it ended up with Scotts. But perhaps the lesson of this well-written story is that when you sell your business, especially if it bears your name, you may have to be prepared for it to lose its character and even its very existence. Perhaps there are terms of sale that can keep your good name from getting sullied.
How about communicating the message that if you want to sell products, you should probably respond enthusiastically to those who buy those products? A column by Neal Rubin in The Detroit News makes one wonder if indifferent salespeople might be one reason GM is where it is today. Are they really all so demoralized they can’t sell anymore?
Rubin asked a salesperson at a Buick dealership about a redesigned model, the Buick LaCrosse, he’d seen on the highway. The response:
He said I’d probably seen a GM executive on a test drive. If I’d been on the other end of that call, I’d like to think I’d have sensed a potential sale. I probably would have asked for a name and phone number, and promised to get in touch the instant a LaCrosse graced the premises. But nope; that was pretty much the end of our relationship.
Later at another dealership, he asked three questions, including one about the LaCrosse. The response was even worse:
I’d come through his door. I’d asked questions about two vehicles. He didn’t introduce himself, he didn’t offer to show me a [name of the other model Rubin asked about], he didn’t ask if I’d ever driven one.
Keep in mind, this story takes place in Detroit. “We’ve learned in these last months that we’re all in the auto business,” Rubin writes, “and we need it to work better. And I’m tired of asking myself the same question: In our alleged service economy, where the heck is the service?”
Eventually Rubin finds a dealer — referred to him by the National Auto Dealers Association, who offers him encouragement.
Read any stories recently that offer valuable business lessons?