Continuing education is one of the best investments floral professionals can make in their careers. The Society of American Florists’ annual convention offers more than 20 educational sessions to help your business grow and stay profitable. Want to get a feel for the caliber of the education you can expect at this year’s convention, SAF Orlando 2022, happening in Florida Sept. 6-8? Career Connection has a sampling of programs available from the 2021 convention, covering topics such as online advertising, incentive plans and plant breeding.
The sessions include:
- Panel Discussion: Best Practices for Online Advertising: Hear how a panel of seasoned retailers implemented paid search and other online advertising tactics and learned lessons along the way. They share their own best practices for optimizing your paid acquisition strategy.
- Incentive Plans That Motivate & Retain Teams: Discover how incentive programs can revolutionize your business and how you can scale a program based on your business size and model.
- Searching for the End of Uncertainty: Keynote & Panel Discussion: The uncertainty of COVID forced florists to reimagine business models and implement within months changes that would have taken years before. After adapting to these new ways of doing business the industry is now in a vastly different economic climate. Driven by research and real examples from the past year, Charlie Hall, Ph.D., provides a snapshot of the state of the supply chain, the economic outlook for the post-pandemic world and how the industry will evolve over the coming years, including the changing role of the traditional florist, the increased importance of vertical coordination between segments and the consumer behavior trends guiding these insights.
- Seed Your Future: Learn how Seed Your Future is driving interest in careers in floriculture and horticulture, and how you can use their tools to do the same in your community.
- How I Did It: Profiles in Change, Grit, and Perseverance: Hear industry members share stories of dramatic transformations – to their operations, their teams, culture, their product lines, and themselves, personally.
- Milestones and Wonders of Ornamental Plant Breeding: Follow along as the team from Ball SB breed, trial and launch a new seed variety into the market. Get an inside look at how plant breeders work alongside nature to bring new and exciting color and textures to life and brighten our world.
Free for convention attendees, SAF members who didn’t attend SAF Orlando 2021 can purchase each session for $24.95, or all sessions for $74.95. Non-members can purchase each session for $34.95, or all sessions for $134.95.
Use these courses to help your team grow this summer, and register for SAF Orlando 2022 to continue learning this fall!
Stephanie Brady is the project manager for the Society of American Florists.
