Floral Management contributor Tim Huckabee has a new column for 2019 that involves analysis of real flower order phone calls.
A new year means a new column for long-time Floral Management author Tim Huckabee. Throughout 2019, the FloralStrategies founder will share “Tim’s Calling,” featuring real examples of his undercover test orders (with full audio available online) and call analysis in the magazine.
In this month’s issue, Huckabee posed as a devoted brother calling from a distance to order flowers for his sister’s birthday.
In his introduction, Huckabee professed he knew “nothing” about flowers and requested the florist’s guidance in making an appropriate selection. With his card message — “Happy 40th birthday! We love you. We miss you. Love, all your family in the Big Apple.” — he also dropped some pretty big hints that this order should be pretty substantial.
What unfolded? A very common scenario. A customer was ready to spend money but instead was underserved and undersold. “Though friendly, the employee simply did not listen,” Huckabee said. “She missed an opportunity to make a bigger sale and a better impression on the customer.”
Chances are, you have a sales person (or more) with similar tendencies. You can correct these issues by:
- Coaching your team to take the card message first. This offers clues about the prestige of the occasion and the number of people the flowers represent.
- Stressing that customers are the ones paying for the flowers, not your staff. No one should sell based on their own budgets.
To read the full column, click here.
Katie Hendrick Vincent is the senior contributing editor of Floral Management.
