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Made it! Another spring is on the books. Hopefully, you and your staff have a feeling of great accomplishment resulting from all the hard work that went into meeting sales and profit goals for the first half of the year.

Now is the time to take a minute and reflect on operational issues that worked better than expected and review any obstacles that may have stood in the way of achieving even better results. This very important process is what drives some companies toward continual improvement and requires serious concentration.

Following are columns taken from my weekly communication piece that garden centers in the Garden Center Group receive. Hopefully, you'll pick up some ideas on how to make the most of a variety of business-building opportunities.

From Volume 12, No. 329

People dread opening their e-mail because so much junk makes finding worthwhile information an almost impossible task. Other than a few medical miracles targeted toward us guys or Rolex watches for less than the cost of a tank of gas, my incoming box is usually full of great business information from some really smart people.

And as with all forms of marketing, the good ones are easy to spot. E-mail newsletters are no different than any other form of print marketing. Make it pleasing to the eye, interesting and easy to read, and don't waste my time with tacky self-promotion or worthless information.

With these value-based guidelines, the e-mails I continually open are usually full of ideas and insight that are important to successful business operations. Take these, for example, that are portions from a variety of online sources:

* Office Max, Toys R Us and Pier 1 close a lot of stores each (ranging from 71 to 110).

* Home Depot slows down new store openings. * Albertson's, one of the country's largest grocers, is being sold with large-scale closings.

But it wasn't the obvious problems in this e-mail that grabbed my attention. It was suggestions found in another report that listed what retailers should do to stay out of the next round of closings in any industry:

* Understand how your store functions by establishing and monitoring space and dollar benchmarks.

* Create environments that attract shoppers by replacing weak areas that repel them due to cluttered aisles and uninspired displays.

* Downsize or eliminate underperforming departments, categories or SKUs.

* Respect the consumer's time and effort required to shop your store by making it fast, fun and easy to maneuver.

I was thinking how much I loved receiving these e-mails until I recognized that most of the suggested cures were issues we've been discussing and putting in place at our best centers for years. But it's nice to see a few of our beliefs stated by some real experts.

From Volume 12, No. 332

Two separate but somehow related articles in two magazines arriving on the same day spoke volumes on the plight of small business. The first was the January issue of Inc. with a feature on business valuation. The second was a large graph in the February issue of Floral Management dealing with Valentine's Day.

The Inc. article rated different types of businesses according to their potential resale value. No retail establishments made it into the "premium zone," where companies sell for greater than the company's annual sales. Those spots were achieved by firms involved with telecommunications, medical supply and software.

During the research period, six garden centers sold at a median price of close to $300,000 -- like all retail shops, less than half what the businesses were doing in yearly sales. The 28 florists that sold during the same timeframe fetched an average of $98,000 on sales of close to $250,000, with only bakeries and used furniture stores offering less return.

The graph in the florist magazine may have answered some of the questions as to why.

In a survey of nearly 400 florists, it was discovered that 40 percent of them refuse to take orders on Valentine's Day. Close to 55 percent of the largest firms that do more than $1 million in yearly sales refuse to accommodate potential customer requests.

Let's see, we have an industry that obviously has some serious financial problems telling close to half of its potential customers that they can't get organized enough to take their money. There has to be a correlation there somewhere, and I think it can be found here:

But this isn't just a florist issue. Every business can identify a range of issues that repeatedly cause lost sales and profits. You and your staff know that there are numerous ways sales and profits can be increased if more time was spent figuring out how to deal with peak-season demand. Here's a hint: take the time.

We know when the spending frenzy appears throughout the year. Think like Boy Scouts: be prepared. When people want to give you money, find ways to grant their wish.

From Volume 12, No. 331

During the peak battle of spring, with customers, trucks and staff all lined up wanting a piece of your attention, I'm sure there are moments when you're wondering why you're going through the effort in the first place.

It's because your family, customers and staff expect it. They may not have asked you directly to focus on making your company a better place, but their expectations are the quiet voices you hear when you're alone and wondering what it will take to succeed.

Even after his emphysema required him to be confined to a wheelchair along with an oxygen tank in order for him to breathe, Senor Arnold still found the time and strength to share stories with us. Most were about the years when he first came to the Yucatan, when the only visitors to a deserted beach now called Cancun were a few locals and hundreds of sea turtles. The last few years he stayed in one of the seven rooms at the small hotel in Playa del Carmen where Wendy and I spend each summer.

We would try and visit him every few days to hear more of his adventures and stay only as long as his strength would allow, although it was never long enough. A day or two before our guests would arrive for another Summer Escape business retreat, Senor Arnold would pack up his things and move back to his tent "resort" several miles from town, a beautiful and remote section of beach still untouched by the so-called progress charging down the coast from Cancun.

We told him that we could reduce the number of rooms we needed by one so he would be able to stay at the seven-room hotel instead of the less convenient beach location. He always replied that that wouldn't be nice given the many years we had been staying and bringing guests to his hotel. "Besides," he said, "this is what I do -- rent these rooms to people for their vacation. I have a pretty simple slogan that has seemed to work for a long, long time: 'It's a business doing pleasure with you.'"

Several of us thought about buying the hotel from Senor Arnold's wife the year after he died, but weren't quite ready for the foreign country move. But what he said makes a lot of sense for us garden center types back in the United States who are searching for direction in what is supposed to be a customer service endeavor. Our business model is to provide a means of pleasure for people looking for a short escape from their everyday lives. The work we do is to make our centers a better alternative to any other retail option. "It's a pleasure doing business with you" has to come from both sides of the register counter.

From Volume 12, No. 333

Unfortunately, all of my flights last week were on time, which meant I had to read real fast if I was going to knock out another book. But since I had no interest in watching ice sweeping (this is really a sport?) during the Olympics, I used a couple of evenings to get through a great book on advertising methods.

The really cool thing is that "Ogilvy On Advertising" is more than 20 years old, but is still regarded as one of the best ever written on the topic. Here's a quick review of ideas that can help keep us on track, and my commentary as it relates to garden center marketing:

* "The wrong advertising can actually reduce sales of any product." I believe this has been one of the leading causes of reduced sales for the industry and reduced profits for under-performing retailers.

* "Don't address your customers as if they were gathered together in a stadium. Pretend you are writing one of them a letter, one human being to another." If your advertising looks and sounds like advertising, good luck grabbing anyone's attention.

* "Great ad campaigns become islands of good taste in an ocean of vulgarity." With so much bad advertising being done by most garden centers, it's not that difficult to stand out from the crowd.

* "I won an award at the Cannes Festival once, but it wasn't for a good commercial. I don't want people telling me my ads are creative, I want them to say that my ads sold a lot of their product."

* "If you think all it takes is getting your name out, then put your logo on a gorilla in a jock strap." People don't want to know who until they know why.

From a 30-year industry advertising perspective, the only thing worse than garden center margins is garden center marketing. Bad marketing causes much of the bad margin results.

Boring facts with names and prices or esoteric cuteness with no reason to buy won't excite any generation of potential customers. Tell them a story. Give them a reason. But remember, it's about their needs, not your need for attention.

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© 2006 Branch-Smith Publishing