Episode 069: Motivating your team can sometimes be a challenge. Then there’s the question, do you do it individually or as an overall team? Lori has worked intimately with flower shop owners and shares incentive experiences of successful, highly productive Flower Cliques member shops. There might just be an idea here to bring your team to the next level! 😊
Link to the Teleflora Magical Mother's Day Webinar w/ Jerome Raska AIFD, AAF, PFCI and Vonda LaFever AIFD, CFD, PFCI
Our Sponsors:
Flower Clique
Flower Prep School
Sales Prep School
The Business and Pleasure of Flowers
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist
Episode 069: Motivating your team can sometimes be a challenge. Then there’s the question, do you do it individually or as an overall team? Lori has worked intimately with flower shop owners and shares incentive experiences of successful, highly productive Flower Cliques member shops. There might just be an idea here to bring your team to the next level! 😊
Link to the Teleflora Magical Mother's Day Webinar w/ Jerome Raska AIFD, AAF, PFCI and Vonda LaFever AIFD, CFD, PFCI
Our Sponsors:
Flower Clique
Flower Prep School
Sales Prep School
The Business and Pleasure of Flowers
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist
And they get excited. Like they start looking forward to the holiday instead of going, Oh crap, it's going to be so busy. Welcome to the business
Speaker 2:And pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts?
Speaker 1:Fondle of fever and Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and Fen are a perfect combination. Kind of like us. Wanda[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Vonda, Sue Lefevre. How are ya? I am great. How are you? Lori? Brock Wilson. I don't even know your middle name. How's that name? You got her, right? You know my name? I'm doing great. I am sitting here looking at you because we are on camera. Even though the podcast will then see us. And I'm seeing beautiful foliage and flowers and plants and all of these things behind you, you look like you're in a flower shop. I do. I kind of feel like I'm in a flower shop. It's just a nice heavenly smell too, because all the flowers love and love those free spirit roses. Are those the most frequent of everything you have back there? Yes. The free spirit would be my most fragrant variety behind me right now. Yes, those are very, very bright. And those I'm assuming those are our bundles flower click bundles. Yes. They are flower click bundles, Jerome Rasta. And I did a program last night for Teleflora and it was all about mother's day magic. Yes. We can drop that link in here. It was a great program. Gave people a lot of great ideas. I think it was. And I watched it because, you know, I'm all about supporting my boss. I was there and it was, it was really good. He's, he's quite the character. He's very animated. So he kept my attention the entire time it was designing. And I'm always fascinated when I watch people design because it's like any kind of artistry, right. They start out and I'm always like, what in the world are they making? And by the end, it's just gorgeous. So it was good. And you went over all of the tools of ISA, right? I did the things that you really need to know how to do to run your Teleflora website for the holidays. Yep. Great job. Great job. There was a lot of Q and a, I ended up having to leave because I had to go make dinner, so, okay, well, sorry. It's all good. So today we're going to talk about incentives and how to incentivize your team at the flower shop. So I was going to start off to ask, because I should know this as your boss, right? What is it that incentivizes you, if what makes you want to work harder that you could never do?
Speaker 3:That is such a good question, because I've actually thought about this, especially when we were getting ready to do our webinar for our members about, you know, one of the slides that we had, one of the first thing is ask your team, like what motivates you? You know, they, if your employees don't know and you don't know, got to figure something out, but I have to say, I, I think I'm a little weird. Maybe when I say that I'm not motivated by money. That doesn't mean I don't need money and I don't appreciate money. And I don't, you know, I'm not grateful for what I have right. Clear there. What drives me is like coming together with a team and winning something actually, and that could be completing a project, right? Not necessarily having to win a sport, but I did love that I was a big sports team player type person, but that is what drives me, is being in group think
Speaker 2:Types of things. So when there's
Speaker 3:Something that I did in, in our business that had caused somebody else in leadership to say, Hey, we want you to be a part of this to me. That's my reward like feely. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. Like, I don't know. I don't know. It's it's right. And I love to have time off. And I do it. One thing that used to say, and I think we'll probably talk about it later is I love one of the incentives you use to give to your staff when you under flower shop. Like that would have been a big incentive for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll talk about that for sure. But I can say you be the person who likes to win when you go to an escape room and you're like one they're like think, think, think, think, yes, we are one together, right? Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Not a big fan of individual.
Speaker 2:Like I like as a team,
Speaker 3:I like, we went as a team. We go down together as a team. Like we're all one.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, there's so many things in a flower shop that you look at and you're saying, how can I get my team there individually? Or as a team together to really work harder or achieve the goals that I want to channel them to achieve.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. I talked to business owners all the time that their employees are doing okay, they're fine. You know, finding this average, they know it can be taken as, at least as next level. Right. Elevated. How do you do that? And so one of the first things you need to do is figure out, okay, well, what drives your team? Are they collectively driven together or are they more, well, I don't care if she gets a bonus, I want my bonus. And so it really depends on the culture of your shop. First. I always challenge owners if they don't know that culture, if they're not aware of what their culture is to take a day and assess to sit back and observe, watch the team dynamic and how it works and write things down, like write down the first words that come to your mind as far as who's, where are they, you know, coming together as a team, are they all very like siloed, which used to be a big trendy word where, you know, they do everything by themselves. What's the team dynamic first and then go in for the ask. And I would ask each one of them individually, first
Speaker 2:As you're observing, you're going to probably find one is kind of an influencer, right. Or that the person gravitates to or away from
Speaker 3:Yes, yes. It could be positive or negative influencer. That's the first thing you want to look at your team. And again, you know, I think we talked about a blog. I wrote a while back and it's on our flower click website, I think, is that what you're saying? And it talks about what type of influence you have on your employees, but it talks about how to determine what motivates them and why they're not being productive. If you see a lack in productivity and it could be two things, right? The first thing could be, they were never trained properly. So that would be that beyond me. Right. That will be on me. Right. If I hear my employee answered the phone and that person is looking for peonies and they're clearly not in season for another six months, but yet my employee says ma'am, those are not in season for another six months. And they hang up. That could be a skill. They were not trained on how you don't say that. What could you say instead? So that's an easy fix, right? You train your staff or you find a company that can train your staff. You, you put them through the course and you get that done. If it's a will problem, that means they it's lack of desire and they just don't care. They do.
Speaker 2:You can't fix that. You can't much as you try because you think, I really think I can make an influence on this person. I think they can get there, but if they don't have that natural desire or will, as you're saying here to do it, it's, it's not fixable. I kind of want to clarify because there's different types of will. There is, will that the term we would probably use more is just flat out lazy. They don't wanna, right. But there's also a type of employee and this isn't a bad employee, but it can be frustrating for some owners that are trying to elevate their business. And here's a real example I will share with you. This was about six months ago, I was talking to one of our flower click shop owners. And they were very frustrated because they had an employee, an employee that they're not a full-on designer, but they're very creative and they're really good at it. Good at a lot of different things. And this owner was having conversations with her saying, listen, I want to put you through this course. I want you to be, you know, a full-on designer. And then I think he could really help for these weddings on the weekends. And she was like, I don't want to, if it's okay, I want to work my hours. And then I want to go home and be with my kids. And he was so frustrated and I'm like, well, now you're at a stand point where you have to realize, can you live with her boundaries? She's creating again. She CA it's a will. It's it's her boundary. I don't want to do that on the weekends. I don't want to stay late and come early and do these extra courses. I'm happy where I am, because I also have this other priority if that's okay. And he said that he was like, well, you know, I'll give you time and a half. I'll get. And she's like, I don't want it. And I think that's an interesting scenario because it's, it's not that she doesn't have the skill. She doesn't have the will, but that's because she also has little priority. So as a business owner, you gotta go, okay, well, you know, you got to decide if you need her to keep going and elevate and she won't do it. I would look at that and say, you could still elevate that person and incentivize them to work faster and incentivize them that way, because they could get more done in a shorter amount of time and still get home and do what they need to do. Right. You're a ways, it sounds like she likes what she's doing. She enjoys that. Right. You know what? I got to get home to my family right now. I don't want to work weekends work that she has, but I do believe the majority of employees are great. They're good people. Very few. You're going to find have just the, I don't want attitude cause there's, they don't last. Let's be honest. You figure those out pretty quick. And either out the door, you have them on that two months, first hire probation. They never make it the first week. So that's a very small group of people. I agree. Um, the other part is his skill. So that's where we got that whole thing going on. Now we're going to talk about how do you incentivize assuming it's skill and maybe more you're getting them the training that's going to increase. Their productivity is going to increase their education on this. Then what do you do about incentives? First? Let's talk about different types of employees because you want to look at, okay, we can incentivize the driver. We can incentivize the designer and the sales person, and maybe a designer assistant. We have to look at all those avenues and say, we don't want to just incentivize the person who's doing the sales, because then the designers are kind of left out. They're like, right. What do they get extra money when I don't get extra money. Right. And then it causes tension. And one of the biggest things that would be great to incentivize is if the designers weren't stuffing flowers into the arrangements and making my cost of goods. So that one it's like bottom line, I can make more money if I know they're doing things right. So having a cost of goods sold incentive in line for my designers or my design staff would make a lot of sense. Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. For sure. Also makes sense for my designers to be incentivized on productivity now, right now, Lori, that probably isn't an issue. I think they're working harder than ever as far as getting things out the door. So I don't think getting productivity, the number of designs up is going to be as much as really making sure that they're not stuffing arrangements and that my cost of goods sold is in line. So how do you do that though? I mean, you can track that you can, you look at what your sales are in cut flowers, designed arrangements and what you're paying for your arrangement. So there's a, there's an easy formula to do that. And if anybody wants that information, please just send me an email@vondaatflowerclickflowerclique.com. And I will send you out that information because it's an easy formula and it's super important that you're able to track those costs of goods sold. And then of course the other one is sales incentives. Right, right. Before we did this webinar for our members, I reached out to a lot of different members that I knew either did incentives or actually done in the past. And I just wanted their feedback because it's easy for me to say, well, I've done all this research and here's what you should do. The reality is no one knows better how it works than
Speaker 3:Actually calling the shots and saying, how did this work for you? And so I talked to quite a few different people. And what I found is there are quite a few that just choose not to just flat out no incentives at all. Some of those shops made that decision because they are mostly family owned. They have a lot of family and they just aren't doing it. It's not a thing. Other shops are of the mindset. You should be upselling. I'm using air quotations. When I say that anyway, I shouldn't have to pay you to try to sell the more premium products. And then other shops tried incentives. It did not go well. It actually created more dissension among the employees. So they just stopped it. Those were the three reasons that I got from real life chopper.
Speaker 2:And so that's why it's so important to go back to what you said before, knowing the culture of your shop, right. And to know what motivates the individual employee.
Speaker 3:Right. Exactly. So then I talked to other shops that do incentive. And so I had this, all of these certain questions that I asked them and one shop I talked to, they do individual incentives and it works really, really well. It's very important to her business that each employee know how to pull their own average sale out of the POS system. So she teaches that's part of their training. When they're hired, you can log in the end of the week, you can see here was Sally's average sale. So she has a dry erase board in the back of her store, like in the design room somewhere. And it has everybody's name on it. And it's like a grid when they come in, they're supposed to put their average tests that she wants them to fill those parts out. So at the end of the month, whoever has the highest gets a bonus for it's cash, a cash bonus. The other thing she does is below all of that. She does it as a whole, as a business. Here's our average sale because she thinks it's important to incorporate both. And she said, what she likes about it. And again, she doesn't have, um, you know, a lot of her, um, employees have been there awhile. So it is a pretty, it's a pretty solid team. Um, and she said, it's interesting to see the employees once they take that responsibility and they pull those numbers themselves and they're putting it up there, they start kind of getting into it a little more. And they're like, Oh, wait a minute. Why is hers$2 more than mine? And so the next week they remember it because they act again, you know, we about talked about associative, not associated, it's associate of learning here because she's teaching them how to do it. So they have a memory of how they did it. What takes is transparency
Speaker 2:In the owner or manager they're allowing that employee to get in and actually see details of the business itself. When yes, I know some managers are like, no, no, no, no. I don't want my employees to see all that I agree, I think is great. I mean, if we are transparent, they're going to learn. They're going to know what's going on. And then they can elevate themselves based on that.
Speaker 3:It depends on the owner. And that, it's interesting that you use the word transparency because that's the very first thing out of her mouth. When she started explaining to me, she said, I run a very transparent business. It is important to me that my employees know what's going on, the good and the bad, you know, so that's what she does. And it works well. The other thing she does that I love is if she has an employee that takes initiative, okay, let's say they're seeing around. Maybe it's a tad slow, which I know there's no such thing right now, but let's pretend it's kind of slow. And they decide to lock the design room just out of the blue. That's not on their task list. They just decide, Hey, this is dirty. I'm going to sweep up. I'm going to mop. I'm going to do whatever she will go. And she will give them cash and she will make sure everybody sees it. And she will just say, thank you for saving me two hours today. You just made my life easier. And I love that because they never know when that's going to happen. And she said she doesn't do it for just the ordinary. Cause she might have an employee go the next day. Cause they saw that, Oh, I'm going to go dust that one shelf. I'm like, yeah, well you should have dusted that anyway. Like right. It's it is above and beyond. It's like, you know, if you have, your kid has three chores, they have to make their bed. They have to unload the dishwasher and they have to clean the bathroom sink. And that is our weekly chore. That's all they're getting. But if they go in and clean the bathtub too, and then not only unload the dishwasher, but load it, then you might want to give them a little more because they made your life easier. Right. So it's right above. It works for them in it. And it frees up her time too. She doesn't have to micromanage because she has them working like a little well-oiled machine.
Speaker 2:What I like is what you called it originally. You said it's called, caught being good.
Speaker 3:Oh yes. Well the telling me this, I was like, Oh my gosh. When I taught school and we brought it over to when I would teach vacation Bible school or we, you know, we had our, all our little church things when the kids were little, we would have closed pins. Okay. Closed pins, like get dry. You know, we would clip those on, we'd walk around a room. If kids are working nicely, if they're sharing and they would get clothes pinned, that means they got caught being good. And it was a big deal on them. You know, they got to go the reward.
Speaker 2:And so when she was telling me this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, you mean they got caught being good. And I love that. I just think that was great. Yeah. I could see a lot of shops doing that and maybe they're not going to do cash. They could do gift card, visa, gift cards, or gas cards, anything just like, Hey, you know what, thank you for elevating your job today, elevate right.
Speaker 3:Us. Right. And making your boss's life a little bit easier. Yep. Just a little bit easier. So here's a$25 Starbucks card or, you know, I actually think it, and again, it's, cause I'm not super driven by cash constantly. I love a little present. And so if that's the type of team you have, have a little stack of gift cards in the back, whoever likes what I don't know. Okay.
Speaker 2:I love that. Love it. So then there's also team incentives, right? Instead of individual incentivize your team.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And so I talked to quite a few shops that realized individual incentives just didn't work. Um, it, it just turned ugly sometimes. Um, because like you said, at the very beginning, you know, there's so many different people in different parts of that up that need to be incentivized. What if I do answer the phone, but that particular day somebody else is on the phone. So I'm back scrubbing buckets all day, but then she's getting all the incentive I may be going well, that's not fair. So I don't know, just depending so many shops try to individual didn't work. So they do teams and I got a lot of really fun ideas. One shop in particular, she does seasonal incentives. She does not do year round. And I actually kind of affirmed her because I had been reading about incentives for the last however many months and the problem with doing it every month, every week, every day is it kind of gets old. It's not fun anymore. It's lost its luster. Right. And so people kind of forget to do it or they just don't want to do it or whatever. So she removed that and decided I'm just going to do it as a team and we're going to do it individually. And so one of the things she does that I love, she does gift bags. All of her employees are women right now, which not that she doesn't want a man, but it just happens to be. And so before each busy holiday, I would say busy season, but right now every that's year round. Right. But each busy holiday to set up that holiday mind presence and you know, just try to get them ready. They each get a gift bag and it has like really nice things in it. It might have really, really good chocolate that because she has sent us chocolate best chocolate I've ever had in my life. So she'll have a little bit of that. She'll have a, maybe a pretty piece of jewelry. I mean, so these are well thought out, like she ordered flower, click aprons, remember for all of them so fun. So she gets them and they get excited. Like they start looking forward to the holiday instead of going, Oh crap. It's to be so busy. They're like, Oh, I wonder what's going to be at our gift bag. You know? So they get that at the beginning. And then at the end she usually does a really nice dinner, but that's her love language. She loves to cook. She loves to cook elegant dinners or they would go out. But with COVID they haven't gone out at all, but she's been, she and her husband have been hosting. Like they hosted a really nice Christmas dinner. So it works for them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Definitely. Well, after a holiday, like Valentine's day and mother's day at our store, we would always take that Monday and I would send the girls or guys two by two over to get a manicure and pedicure. And it was just, I would pay them for being there. So they would get the two hours they would go and they would sit and relax and love it and then come back and then the next would come. And that was a great bonus because that worked into their love language. Right. They're like, Oh, this is so luxurious. Because a lot of times they wouldn't do it for themselves or didn't have the time to do it for themselves. Right. So it was that worked out well. So it's like, is it money versus gifts sometimes it's yeah.
Speaker 3:Just a treat. You know, that's the word that comes to my mind. It's just being treated to be receiving a nice little treat. Like you go do this and you're relaxing. And my boss is actually saying, go, go for an hour and a half, go have this done. It's already paid for we, you deserve it. It's almost, it's just accolades too.
Speaker 2:You deserve, you deserve it. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's a big incentive. Right? They're just being told job well done.
Speaker 2:We also had a lot of gifts in the store. So oftentimes I would give them a gift certificate for purchasing something in the store. You know, they would get all excited when something new would come in. They're like, Oh my gosh. I think I'd like one of those gift cards, you know, think about that as an owner, it doesn't cost you as much. Right. But the perception is that, Oh my gosh, I get$50 right now. Or a hundred dollars. Whatever the case is. Right
Speaker 3:In college, I had a part-time job. I worked at a store right next to campus called athletic village. And we had like all of the, you know, sorority fraternity, Greek clothing, all that stuff. But we also had shoes. We had ski clothes. We had everything. I'll never forget. We had this little box that had been wrapped in paper. It was up at the front and every month there was a different product we were supposed to highlight. So let's say this for this month, the Nike rep came and it was a certain type of Nike running shoe. Every time you sold one, you could take this little piece of paper, put it in a box, put it in a box. And at the end of the month, our boss would count all of these who had what? And you'd get a Olympic village bucks
Speaker 2:Know, same
Speaker 3:Type of thing. So you could take it and you could, but we only had to pay cost. So if those shoes were a hundred dollars, but cost was, I don't know, 70. And if I had 70 of these, I'm telling you what Vonda to me, this was a game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could.
Speaker 3:I loved it. I loved it so much. I realized my other coworkers hated them because I was into it. And I just remember my manager's office. It was a glass he could see out. Okay. But he'd be behind his desk. And I didn't, cause I was a little naive. I didn't realize he would sit back there and he would laugh because I was
Speaker 2:Selling every night.
Speaker 3:Right. You can imagine because I wanted the new ski jacket or I wanted a new pair of Nike's still have my entire ski outfit that I purchased with athletic village bucks backwards at that store. I was so driven because it was kind of a game to me. But unfortunately, no one else was playing. He was a team player, but clearly I was not. I still think just something. Yeah. As simple as that, even if you just did it seasonally, not every month because this was a bigger store than like a flower shop. But anyway, I loved it and I still think it's a great idea.
Speaker 2:So Lori, what are our takeaways today? I just want to say, you need to be transparent. If you're going to do some type of incentives, let's just, just all gifts. And it's just like a feel good thing, which is fine too. But I think it all takes some transparency because in a small business, they need to know why you want them to sell more. It's all the why. It's about the why I think people understand better if they, yeah.
Speaker 3:In that part, I went a hundred percent agree. I also think part of the being transparent and going back to the shop that teaches them how to do all of this. If I'm her employee and she's divulging this information to me and I'll trusting me with it, I really do feel like I'm part of this business. Like I take a little bit of pride and ownership in this now because she's trusting me. So I want to make sure and keep that trust. Love that. That's so I think that's really big. So transparency. Um, I think the other thing is you, as the owner, you got to know what drives your team. What motivates them? Are they more, we win as a team. We lose it to the team or are they more siloed? And rather I want to do my thing. You do your thing. That's okay. That's still, uh, can be highly functional too. It's just seems like the shops that are more team inspired have a little bit better cohesiveness, but I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, and the one that example that you shared though, it was individual and team,
Speaker 3:Right? Yep. They absolutely did both. So yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You, you have to be transparent. You have to share with us.
Speaker 3:Here's what, here's what I want to do. And here's why I trust you guys. It's because I want us to grow even more. I mean, you'd be positive. I don't think you go into this conversation with your employees saying, Hey, I'm going to start doing these incentives. You guys got to step it up.
Speaker 2:That's not the conversation you want to have.
Speaker 3:You need to be super positive about this. This is a win-win for all of us. Yeah, absolutely. And if you've never done an incentive, maybe just try it with the holiday first, implement it during a busy time and then
Speaker 2:See how it goes. Yeah. Love it. So transparency find out what moves them. Then decide whether you want to do individual or team and then just get something started and yeah.
Speaker 3:Try it. Motivate your team, motivate that team. So yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, Rhonda, we got to wrap it up. What is inspiring you right now? Well, I have to say what's inspiring me are the beautiful flowers that you mentioned earlier that are behind me and the fragrance that I'm experiencing from these mountains. I room, we say all the time that flowers really do influence our mood. And it is so true. I mean, I don't usually have a problem with my mood, but I'm just like just the beauty that I see, uh, surrounding me. And I'm just like, woo, this is so awesome.
Speaker 3:They are gorgeous. They truly are just every color. It's like a big ice cream Sherbert rainbow.
Speaker 2:It is very, very, very pretty. And what about you, Laurie? How on this dreary day we are having cloudy days, you know, what's inspiring me. You sent me a while back this
Speaker 3:Journal and it on the front, it just says the word gratitude.
Speaker 2:And as simple as it is, I'd love it because
Speaker 3:It is a nice little reminder for me to write down. I'm not even trying to write a book. I'm trying to just write down a word or a sentence every day of what I'm grateful for, because I feel like I can do that every day. Um, sometimes we forget and there's always going to be something to be grateful for. There's my coffee, you know, I'm grateful for it. So I love it. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for my gratitude book and uh, I'm grateful that we have flower click and I'm grateful that we have our clickers listening to us today and we hope they come back next week. Yep. All right. Have a good day, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa, we look forward to seeing you next week. So please come back and join us and discover how
Speaker 1:A bit of knowledge in one small change in your mind
Speaker 3:Can take you to new levels in your life and business.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].