May 4, 20172 min read

The man who sold smiles

There was once a man who started a business. He sold smiles. He charged people only what they could afford to pay. He had a great smile. He shared it often. And the more people that were made happy, the deeper and more sincere his smile became. Even with the very generous pricing model in place, he still made a good living.

The business was good, really good. He was so busy that he could not meet the customer demand. The answer: train more people to sell smiles. He trained three more people so he could meet the demand for smiles. He took his time and trained the team well – weeks of training and mentoring. Business became much better. He and the three new solicitors of smiles were knocking it out of the park.

The more growth, led to more customers which led the need for more people trained to sell smiles. This time instead of training 3, in a slow and intentional way, he thought, “I will train 30 people in one large room, in one day.”

He trained the 30, and business kept growing, but there was nagging in the pit of his stomach that something that was not right – but he kept pushing forward.

By this time, he was no longer on the sales floor, because he was now trying to develop a series of policies and protocols to manage his sales staff. He developed it and demanded compliance. He also put all training exercises in video form and wrote a curriculum to full the training requirements. No need to for a whole day training with a leader. It could all be accessed and done on line. The streamlining of the smile was in full effect.

Smiles Inc. kept expanding and expanding. But something strange started happening. People started complaining about the quality of smiles that were not like they were before. So the man who sold smiles formed a board, a committee of sorts to fix the problem.

More policies, more protocols, more positions hired to manage and police.

Short gains and then bigger dips. The problem could not be solved.