By Bruce Wright
What’s new in the world of B2B? For one thing, corporate clients are getting younger — and these millennial buyers want many of the same things all millennials seek from florists: Experiences, fast service, and personalized attention.
That’s according to florists who shared their best practices in the August 2018 issue of Floral Management. “It’s very much the classic thing with the millennials,” said Robbin Yelverton, AAF, AIFD, PFCI of Blumz…by JR Designs in Detroit and Ferndale, Michigan. “In the end, they’re all about the experience.”
They want to come in to your shop, check out possible product and be personally involved in selecting materials and the overall look.
“The day of having the client who just picks up the phone and says, ‘I trust you, do whatever’ is over,” he said. “This age group likes unique things, and nicer things. Even if they’re buying for a corporate group, on a corporate budget, they’re buying it because they personally like it.”
Catering to this desire for personal engagement, Yelverton has pitched the shop’s build-your-own-terrarium class to corporate clients as a team-building exercise. Jeanne Ha, AIFD, of Park Florist in Takoma Park, Maryland takes a similar tack. For corporate clients that host lots of events, she suggests holding a 30-minute flower arranging demonstration for planners.
“It’s a fun event for them, during their lunch hour maybe,” she said. “They get to have more knowledge about flowers. In turn, I get to know them better, they get to know me, and since we’re friends now, they’re not going to go anywhere else!”
Ha gives the audience her cell phone number, “so that on the morning of a corporate event, if they need to, they can call and say, ‘I counted the number of tables wrong,’ and I can easily make the change,” she said. “That’s how you build relationships.”
Price is not the biggest motivator with corporate clients; a personal touch also guides them.
“They want to make a connection with you,” Ha said. “When they want to say something about flowers, they want to talk with you directly. For the people in the office, the cubicle, they care about these flowers. This is their joy.”
Bruce Wright is a freelance writer with 30 years’ experience writing about the floral industry.
