The Floral Hustle

  📍 Hello, flower friend. This is Jen and you are listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's episode. I want to talk about all things making doing estimates and proposals faster. We, I know some florists who invest. So much time and energy and mental bandwidth into that, those very things like those fundamental things.

Obviously, you need to do estimates. You need to do proposals to be able to get clients booked and they will get lost in all the tiny details of making this proposal just so over the top out of this world that this person just can't say no. There are ways to really still have, amazing, accurate estimates and amazing proposals, but in less time.

So the first thing I want to talk about is your actual estimates. If you do not have my pricing guide, please go download it. It is so helpful because it is. For one, explaining how to price properly to begin with, but also I have in there a whole section on pricing per square foot. Pricing per square foot is such an easy way to do.

Installation estimates from a, um, not only a pricing standpoint, but from a product standpoint as well. Plus, then you're laying out very clear definitions because I actually go and take and put my sizes on my proposals. So there's no, I thought it was going to be bigger. There's no, I thought it was going to be wider.

There's none of that detail being missed because you are sharing it. You're putting it in your proposal and you're being really transparent so that there's no gray area that expectations will not align with that pricing per square foot that you can find in my pricing guide. That is just a 1 way to help save time.

So I can price a 4, 000 installation in 2 minutes by figuring out my square foot, what it has in there, my supplies, and then. It's really just doing simple math to figure out what my price per square foot and then times that by how many linear square feet are in the item. You can also do this with tall centerpieces because you can count the linear feet around and then your height to get a accurate quote that way.

But also. From a pricing standpoint, if you have go to recipes that are, okay, normally when I'm in a bride bouquet, I'm going to use 17 to 21 roses because it's going to be a real rose have heavy bouquet. Then I'm going to use five line flowers and those. Costs around this and I'm going to do a filler flower, a green and then some type of dancer flower.

If you have those type of templates, it's pretty easy to figure out what your base price of your bouquet will be. But I also, because of my a la carte flowers program that I have, and in my brochure, I have pricing transparency in there, I have done some initial groundwork of what do I need from a minimum budget standpoint.

With my pricing on how that it fundamentally works with my markup and my labor and adding any supplies in what is my base cost of a bouquet. So if I figured. If I'm doing a simple bridal bouquet, I really don't want to go under 155 for an average size bouquet. And with that 155, I have X amount to use towards product.

And then I creatively work into what product in this color palette can I fill that with? Okay, I could probably get 17 roses, or I can get 15 roses, and then I can get You know, four filler flower stems, five line flower stems, some dancers, whatever that is. And so I just have a basic starting at price already figured out, already established and already accessible to people.

So if someone reaches out to me and they're not establishing what their budget is to me yet, I can say here is my pricing brochure with my starting at pricing for you to go and look at and as long as that's in alignment with what you're thinking. You know, I'd be happy to meet with you at that point, but this starting at pricing is just really helpful for you to understand, okay, if I'm going outside of this core recipe and I'm buying product that.

Let's just say instead of a rose, which is a 1. 50 or a 1. 65, I'm getting into the 5 peony flower, market. I can easily just say, well, if I'm going to take five of my roses away and I'm going to put peonies in there, I'm adding 3. 50 per stem off of my base recipe, and I'm using five stems in that, so then I'm going to be at 18.

So, really easy way that I am not going and figuring out exact I don't have to at this point because I've done this so many times, I can tell if from my base recipe, if I change, five stems or I do something, then I can just make that adjustment to that bouquet. Okay. Or you can just be like, I think that this is going to take.

To get it to look like the photo. I think it's going to take 40 of flowers, or I think it's going to take 50 of flowers. And so then you just do your math that this bouquet is going to cost 250 or it, to me, I don't make huge product mistakes on making decisions or making math formulas based on like, I feel like I'm going to need 50 because I backed in.

to this recipe so many times that I know with 50 I can get to this look as long as some variable isn't super crazy bananas, which normally isn't. But I'm also going in and establishing base pricing for other standard items that I have outside of bouquets. So my boutonnieres have a standard price. If somebody wants one of those.

Pockets for boutonnieres. This is the set price for them corsages that are pin on. This is the price corsages that are risk corsage. This is just the price. I'm not going in and refiguring that anytime because my base price is going to cover me for whatever I choose to do unless I'm choosing to use a Vanda orchid or something crazy like that.

I will be covered with whatever supplies I'm going to use because I also don't dictate or don't tell people these are the exact flowers I'm going to use because I don't think that that's a good space to be in from a sourcing perspective. Then, from a pricing standpoint, after I've developed all my kind of standard pricing, Which would be great if you wanted to launch an a la carte flowers program, in addition to making these efficiency changes, because you'll have all that numbers, have all that math.

I have prepped myself for time efficient proposals in creating them. So I've crafted ways that my estimates are faster by pricing per square foot, figuring out base pricing on items, figuring out basic recipes that will work for me. But I've also done some work in Canva, which is where I create my proposals.

I have a template that I use and I can duplicate and grab. Certain elements out of those proposals. I also with that have streamlined a lot of my rental inventory that they can, really blend with each other. So I have my yummy taper candle holders that look great with my ribbed votives that I've sourced from Jamalia garden dollar tree and, I think it's also Coil Wholesale, and that looks great with my modern bauble bud vases that I bought on Amazon, and that looks great with some of the tables being my pinfrog mini bowls that I sourced from Target, or my cereal bowl centerpieces that I also sourced from Target. And if you're wondering about these, I have a sourcing guide that is just amazing that has the links to all of them.

The Dollar Tree votives, they're like 1. 25 and I rent them for 2. 25, including a long burning tea light. They go in and out of stock, but if you go to the floralhustle. com forward slash rental, you'll get my complete list of all the best bowls, all the best vases. The tapers that are my best rented item I've ever had.

So check that out at the floral hustle. com forward slash rental. And I'll leave that in the show notes as well, but I've created these streamlined rentals so that I can easily. copy and paste. This is with three bud vases and taper candles. This is with five bud vases and taper candles. This is with three bud vases and three votives.

If somebody is a lower budget potential lower budget, I have my arch arches that I have in my rental inventory with a basic arch flowers and fuller arch flowers. I can just copy and paste those because I remember the proposal name, or I can just scroll through my recents and go, Oh yeah, I just copy and paste it in there.

I've also done the work of going in and loading in my go to flowers, my go to rental items. My go to inspiration pictures, like if you've created something that you are duplicating, that should be in a folder that's easily accessible for you to grab it and then go in and use it in your proposals. If you are going in Google and Googling Playa Blanca Rose and then grabbing it and cutting it in light blue delphinium and cutting and putting it in.

Pink Bondale rose, grabbing it, white Majolica spray rose, and then grabbing it, pulling in. You are going to spend an eternity doing this proposal, and this is not time efficient. I would go in, create this go to flower library in the off season so that you can really craft all of this. information that you would want to use when you are up to bat making that proposal and put that in.

So there's just very streamlined, very simple, very easy. And you have all of these resources in the touch of your fingers. Let's just say you are a busy person and this does not sound like your time idea of fun. If you have a marketing assistant, a virtual assistant, or somebody that is coming to your studio and to support you in other ways, this is potentially something that they could help with.

I think as business owners, we get stuck all the time thinking that we have to do it all. I don't do it all. I'm just really good at outsourcing the things when I am not capable of making that happen. So you could do those same things. Like I'm not, Really, I'm wanting to invest the time perfectly. I don't say I'm bad at it because I don't want to talk to myself in that way.

But I think that my time is better spent spent on revenue producing activities like. Um, interacting with clients interacting with other wedding professionals and me scheduling my own social media posts is not a great use of my time. So I'm going to outsource that to someone that I trust and they are going to do a good job and it's going to be done.

You can make those decisions too, even with something like this. Thank you so much flower friend for listening 📍 and I hope you have an amazing flower filled week.