Tips for Success in Floristry
Ideas and Suggestions
Q. Do you have a record you can easily review of your weekly takings?
If you do not keep a record of your weekly takings start from this week onwards. - Keep them in an Excel spreadsheet so that you can compare on a like for like basis how your business is progressing.
If you cannot measure it you cannot manage it!
Use your till buttons to record what you are selling - the results may surprise you!. Keep a spreadsheet of the sales breakdown so you can spot trends.
Positive trends do more of that.
Negative trends investigate and withdraw that line.
Do not over look waste - keeping a record of waste will help you buy better and plan for the future.
Q. Do you know where your sales are coming form?
When the telephone rings or a customer has completed a transaction - ask if they have used you before, and where did they get your number from. If you ask this question subtly no-one will mind giving you the answer. Making a purchase can cause customers to feel a little stressed, having a few seconds of relaxing chat at the end of the transaction can create a very positive feeling and enable you to gain very valuable market research.
The trick is to keep this data with your sales for the week data so that you can review which of your advertising is working and which is not.
Q. Are you familiar with the term Life Time Value? (the largest competitors in the floristry industry are very familiar with this term).
With a lot of advertising it is not easy to measure accurately what it is really worth to you in the first 18 months of analysis because of a feature referred to as life time value - LTV.
Taking the following scenarios - an advert cost £100 in the local newspaper and it is reported
that as a result of the advert 5 orders were received worth an average order value of £30 plus
delivery.
Revenue in £150
Less cost of the advert £100
less cost of flowers £50
- On the face of it one might conclude that the exercise was scarcely worth while.
However, you could see this a different way. The shop now has 5 new customers who had not bought before - with a gentle reminder 3 out of the 5 might buy this time next year. Cost of mailing 5 customers at 50p per customer = £2.50.
If of those 5, 3 purchase at £30 per order
Revenue in £90
Less £2.50 cost of mailing
Less £30 for flowers
Suddenly the equation looks far more attractive.
The morale of the story is that unless you keep in touch with customers many forms of advertising are simply too expensive.
Yet all companies need new customers because however perfect your service every company loses some customers each year and therefore all companies need to keep recruiting new customers - so once you have got them on board stay in touch.
Hoping customers will come back - is not something the largest retailers in the UK do. - The largest retailer in the UK keeps in touch with its customers via regular communications.
If they are not prepared to rely on customers simply coming back when they are ready there is little chance most smaller retailers can rely on customers coming back unprompted.
Going back to the concept of Life Time Value with a bit of luck your good service and excellent product a customer who has started to order flowers from your shop might purchase a couple of times per year and at £30 per time that makes the customer worth £60 per year on average.
If they order for an average of say 3-years before dropping off then the LTV of that customer is 3-years x £60 = £180
So initially the cost of the advert looked like at best hardly worthwhile, but if from the £100
advert the 5 new customers spend
5 x £180=£900
Suddenly the cost of advertising does not look too bad after all!
Oh, if it was so easy - but you can see the picture. They keep coming back because you keep your name in front of them.
If you do not keep in touch with your customers as sure as eggs are eggs someone else will.
Which loops back to the need to keep an eye on which advertising is working and which is not bearing in mind the concept - life time value.
Interestingly not all methods of advertising are equal. You may well find that customers recruited from different media have different life time values.
Being a small florist shop you cannot spend hours and hours fiddling around with statistics, but with just a few minutes spent recording details on a daily and weekly basis you will build up a picture of what works for your location.
One thing which will almost certainly prove true is that reducing the amount you spend on telephone directory advertising will not significantly affect your sales - if you spread that money around elsewhere - indeed it will probably increases your sales. What is likely to be worth while investing in is a link from e.g. Yell to your website.
Yell.com receives a lot of traffic and a link from that to your website should be seriously investigated.
One point worth being aware of is the Yell websites I have reviewed are not search engine friendly and do not come up well in Google. - In stark contrast to Miraquel websites which are often found at the top of the first page of results.
Whilst Yell dominates the directory market Thompson's should not be ignored it will not generate as much traffic but providing you only pay 1/4 of what you spend on Yell it should be worth looking at.
Websites + Google etc.
Q. Do you have a search engine friendly website?
Most florists do not have a search engine friendly website - this is a very costly mistake.
People looking to organise a wedding very often turn to the internet - if you have not got a presence then you are losing business.
If you have just suffered a bereavement you may very well look for a florist to handle the flowers by searching online
As a florist you know how much your customers typically spend on a wedding or funeral and therefore what the cost of losing such business is...
Similarly for other occasions such as: -
- Anniversaries
- Valentines Day
- Mothers Day etc...
More and more people turn to Google etc. to find a supplier - you need at least 5 pages on your website.
If you are an independent florist then probably asking customers to telephone to place an order is the best option - if you have not got any red roses, but you have some beautiful lilies you can sell those instead.
Telephone ordering is quick for them and you, secure, and provides them with reassurance.
- They will probably want the flowers delivered the same day which the largest suppliers in the market often struggle with. Plus with a telephone order it provides you with a chance to sell up and a chance for you to confirm you understand their instructions.
Do not overlook...
Have plenty of ready to go items at varying price points and see how high you can stretch your market - you may well find that people will pay £50 for a ready to go item.
Make sure your lighting inside and outside the shop is working as effectively as it could, consider a switch will trigger the outside lighting when the dusk comes to ensure your display always looks great.
Get yourself a digital camera and more importantly use it! most florists confess to having a digital camera but never taking any photos of their best work. Create yourself a photo both where an item can be put down photographed and then delivered.
Search for selling "hot spots" and make sure that they are always stocked with ready to go items.
Invest in a colour printer or certainly a black laser to create your own point of sale. Programs such as Word can be used to create point of sale on the spot. If you laminate your tickets they will last for months.
Save money on consumables for your printer..
I recommend this technique - get an inkjet colour printer for point of sale and only use it for point of sale items to provide colour as well as black. For sending out letters use a black laser printer. Brother are exceptionally good black laser printers. You can connect both to one computer and buy a switch box to enable you to change from one to the other.
Summarising
- Record where your sales are coming from
- Keep in touch with customers
- Make sure that they can find you on the internet - because if they cannot find you - they will find someone else.
Miraquel might not be able to produce a beautiful bouquet of flowers, but we can provide you with a database to keep in touch with your customers and a search engine friendly website.
Today these are key ingredients for success and will become more important in the future - indeed if you have not got these tools working for you in the future your business will be simply "stolen" by those who have.
To get yourself a database and a search engine friendly website order on line or contact Miraquel for more information.
Please feel free to << Using next page FAQs >>
Miraquel
105 Shawhurst Lane
Hollywood
Birmingham
West Midlands
B47 5JP
Tel: 01564 829055 Fax: 0870 138 7679
Email: info@floristsdatabase.co.uk