The Floral Hustle

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Hello flower friends, this is Jen and you're listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's mini sowed I am going to talk about ghosting and the one thing that you can implement in your business that is going to help drastically reduce Being ghosted by clients and this is like a rather simple thing and something that I consistently see people just like completely bitching and moaning that they are going into and doing all of this work and they are surprised that their client is not responding to them.

So let's talk about like why that could be. The first thing, I'm guessing we are not on the same page as far as like what flowers are going to cost. And from a, like, standpoint of consumerism, that is something that we're not used to. There are price tags everywhere in the world. Target, Amazon, at your wholesaler, you can get a priceless.

There is no one size fits all pricing in flowers. And then on top of it, they can go and meet with two different florists and get completely different pricing. And then we're surprised that with providing them no fricking clue, what flowers are going to cost that. They're, they're not responding to us when we send them a quote that maybe we didn't do enough digging in what their actual budget is to begin with as well, and asked really great questions during our consultation to help guide and, for one, coerce them into really understanding like, what budgets look like.

And, This is a science, like pushing someone to, you know, really, they're guarded. It's like going in to buy you for a car. You don't, they don't want to ask you what you want to pay. They're, they're afraid, they're, people are afraid because they think that they're conditioned to get taken advantage of if they tell someone their budget.

So we as the service provider need to do better. And I, I mean, I bring this back to selling cars because obviously, like I spent a lot of my life selling cars and that type of interaction. I have an immense amount of sales experience. And in that, I have seen time and time again, because I worked with, for a large chunk of that time for a best price dealer, which means that you get your best price up front.

What if wedding flowers were like that? What if somebody could just know what flowers cost? And it's not that we as the service provider need to pigeonhole ourself into like, We're over delivering or under promising, you know, whatever. We're just giving them like, if you want a centerpiece that has flowers in it, that it, it can cost starting at this much.

It's a pretty easy thing for me to explain to someone, Hey, this is my starting at pricing for these items. And, you know, your Pinterest board could potentially be different, the flower choices that you want, but I can make some type of flower arrangement starting at this price. So they can at least understand, like, here is where things start at.

Here's where I start playing Wedding Flowers. Okay, I need ten tables of centerpieces. Okay. So I need nine bridesmaids bouquets. I need ten corsages. I need whatever it is. Like, you have this start of where things really can, can start to, to be realized from a dollar perspective in their wedding. And this transparency, I deliver this in two ways.

With my a la carte flowers program that is on my website and with my, um, it's, it's really just like a brochure. That's talking about me, how I do business, about how I grow flowers. It's talking about, um, you know, here are my kind of three or two service offerings. Uh, and then I have a third level in there that is just like, that would include like more high touch, tear down things like that.

So like this brochure is my gateway to communicating those starting at pricing to help educate. Those clients on this is what flowers cost. And it's so fascinating to me that we are so afraid to talk about pricing in the society that we live in, that there's so much transparency in what things cost. We are being the used car salesman of florists.

If we do not have some type of pricing transparency process built into our business. So mine is my brochure and my a la carte flowers. I'm also using my brochure to help them understand timelines. I'm getting them to understand like, of course, so starting at pricing, I'm getting them to self identify based on the budgets I've delineated for my full service.

If they are an a la carte flowers or a full service floor, floral client. So my brochure is a way to say, Hey. Like, I'm not hiding anything. Like, this is what things start at. And I use that word, start at. That might not be theirs, but that doesn't mean that they can't get flowers for that price. Just like when you open up, like, a newspaper and you see a lease payment for a car.

That says that you can lease this new car for 150, 300 a month. But of course, with not driving very many miles and with 10, 000 down, whatever it is, you could still realistically get that car at that payment. But. It would change if you drive more miles. It would change if you're putting less money down.

Like all of those things are there to really help just be a starting point. And you mentioned the starting point. These are my starting at prices. I mean, even that car at 149 a month, you might need an automatic transmission and it's a manual. That means you change it. Like, that is the great thing about having some baseline pricing because at least then you know this is like where we start.

Then you can do whatever quotes that you need to do to customize it to their exact specifications. You can make it easy. Like, how easy is that? To just say, you know what? I need to, um, you know, I can for sure quote that out. Obviously this is going to be more than the starting app because that we're customizing things here.

So with that, uh, I mean, I sometimes, if I'm, I'm really getting a sense that budget is a big concern here and they're really, they don't understand their budget, but if, if I can sense that I I'll start doing some basic math and I'll use my starting app pricing. So when somebody is saying, like, I actually, I have this exact incident sitting in my inbox right now, there is a planner that I absolutely would love to work with.

They also own a rental company that has amazing rentals, like really cool pedestals, really cool bars, really cool tables that like, I mean, just curated wedding stuff. So And they sent me, after I did, um, the last Installation Rockstar event, they sent me a email, because I think they saw how amazeballs everything was, uh, on their table, because we actually used their table for our cake installation.

And they said, hey, can you quote this wedding out? And I'm like, sure. And I said, do you have any idea of budget? And they said, no. Well, I sent them a close to 7, 000 estimate and today they said they finally met with a client and they didn't do their due diligence in the process somehow because they want to spend 3, 000 and they were just saying, Oh, can we make the bridesmaids bouquets smaller?

Can we do this? So like, I just have to speak just simple math. That doesn't work. So they had like a ceremony, they had something on the fireplace, they had, um, they were using like some centerpieces for a ceremony thing. And like, they're like, just shrink these things. And I'm like, the math just doesn't work.

So if you have someone that just blatantly the math is just off, don't waste your time doing a proposal. Just say, you know what, let me, I'm just going to do some simple math to see if we're on the same page for budget. Okay, so if you have eight bridesmaids, okay, and so if, if I do like petite bouquets and they're around like 100 each, let's just do even math.

I can price it out for sure, but just to have rough numbers. Okay, so we're at 800 right there. And then if we put your bouquet in the mix, For another 2. 50, so we're at 1, 050 just there. And then you're telling me you want something for your ceremony. And, you know, really the starting at price for a, some arch flowers, you know, would probably be around like 500.

And so if we do something simple, we could be around 500. And then, so right now we're at like 1, 550. And then you're telling me you have like 15 tables, did you say? Okay, 15 tables. And, you know, if we just do something really simple. Like start my starting at kind of centerpiece prices for let's just say 95.

I mean we're putting like three hydrangeas and a couple things in a in a vase for them um Okay, so then i'm coming up that we're around Like 3500 and I still need to charge tax I still need to set up and deliver and I don't know if you need my help tearing it down at the end of The night, um, but that would be an additional charge as well Like, let's not wait for them to get the email and get that same basic math.

Let's just, like, call it out, call it how it is, and then you get their reaction on camera or in person. I would much rather be able to read someone and their reaction to a situation than have it in their jammies at 11 o'clock at night when they're finally getting to my email. So you can do the same thing.

Just have those conversations be like, Hey, like this is, this is something that is a part of our business. We have to navigate pricing, just like discussion situations. We have to sometimes call people out. Like they just don't understand. And it's our job to educate them. It's our job to actually service our clients.

And I know you can do it. And if this is something you are struggling with and you're like, I don't even know how the hell I'm going to make a brochure head to like, you need to check out my new course. It is florist foundations and it is a, like, I'm going to teach you all my processes. I'm going to teach you how to have pricing discussions.

I'm going to teach you like how to make a brochure that really shares like your kind of fundamental of, of like how you would want your business set up and how you want to communicate to your clients in a way to help attract your ideal client and repel. We can repel the ones that we don't like. We can repel those people that are going to ghost us just by making our process so dialed in.

So, if this is something that seems interesting to you, head to thefloralhustle. com forward slash foundations. This is a twelve week program that we will be in like week two, but something so easy to catch up on because in the first week we were talking about fundamental systems, how So, really just get, um, your head wrapped around like, owning a business, being a business owner, because that's not always the easiest thing in the beginning.

So, head there, check it out. This program is going to give you the templates for all of these things. I'm going to teach you the word tracks, I'm going to teach you how to sell, For the impact this could have on your business. You could make this over like so many times. The investment, especially comparatively to other courses that are, I mean, honestly, this is the most comprehensive course that I've seen out there like this, uh, and those courses were 2, 000.

So this is like, I mean, under half, well under half of that. So check it out at the floral hustle. com forward slash 📍 foundations. Mhm.