Preparing for Valentine's Day 2024: Essential Tips for Flower Shop Owners

Episode 212: In this virtual staff meeting episode, join Vonda, Lori and the Flower Clique team as they share valuable information and tips for flower shop owners to prepare for the upcoming busiest day of the year - Valentine's Day 2024.

Vonda shares design productivity tips while Lori discusses sales tips and projections, providing insights into the estimated dollars customers are planning to spend on Valentine's Day this year, as reported by the National Retail Federation (NRF). These valuable statistics will help flower shop owners understand market trends and strategize their sales approach.
Communication between all team members is necessary for a successful holiday and a great Delivery driver is essential, as they are the face of the company as they deliver the final product. 

Whether you're a seasoned flower shop owner or just starting out in the industry, this episode offers valuable insights and recommendations to help you and your staff prepare for the demanding Valentine's Day season. Don't miss this opportunity to gain helpful tips from Vonda, Lori, and the experienced Flower Clique team.

If you want to see the entire webinar, it's available on YouTube here. 

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

The way I sell is going to be totally different than the way you sell. So I can throw words out, and they are nothing but words.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And Lori Wilson, and we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Hey clickers, so glad you're here. Less than a month from now, you guys will be crazy busy with Valentine's Day, which is great. We're looking forward to the busyness, but you also know how important it is to prepare for that day so that you don't have a chaotic day. And to start that organization, it's always good to have a staff meeting so everyone is on the same page. And I know Lori and I have talked about that before. Well, last week, FlowerClick had a webinar that was open to everyone. We had our members and we had non-members alike and really shared some great information on what you should cover in a staff meeting. And we also shared some designing tips, which obviously we can't show here. But if you want to see the whole session, if you didn't join in that session live or receive the recording, just click on the link in the show notes and you'll be able to see what I'm going to be talking about. But this audio session, we have kind of pared down a little bit, given you the highlights. So let's listen in and join the virtual staff meeting. Welcome to the staff meeting. We're glad you're here.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yes, exactly. So just for like a quick second, we want you to pretend that we are all in this staff meeting together. Um, if you brought your employees, wonderful. We are gonna kind of set the stage and talk to you guys as if we are all employees together or working for the same company. If you don't have any employees with you and you just came for some design inspiration and sales tips, we love that too. So let's go.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

This is our agenda. I'm trying to keep it on track. Is first we're gonna welcome everyone. We're gonna talk about expectations and scheduling, communication, and the importance thereof. Designers, I'm gonna speak especially to you. That's why we see all these flowers here. Sales, that's Lori. She's gonna talk to sales, staff, and everything you need to know about sales for the holiday. And then, of course, we can't forget the driver and the importance of that delivery driver. So let's get going. First and foremost, thank you for coming. Every one of the employees that you have or we have at our establishment is important. It's really interesting that so many times we think, oh, I'm I just work here. No, that's not the case. You have an important role in the shop, and we're so happy that you're here and able to be part of our team. It's important for us to set the expectations. And the first one that's super important is Valentine's Day is the single busiest day of the year. Hands down. Many of you go, oh, I know it's one of those crazy kind of times, but truly, the idea is for it to be fun. It shouldn't be total chaos, it should be something that, as we're all working together as a team, that we're enjoying what we're doing. And the key to that really is the organization that happens beforehand. We want to continue to offer superior customer service. We do it year-round, we don't want to change that, right? That's how important it is. We need to make sure we talk about schedule. Most of you know what's expected of you. Lori, do you want to elaborate on that just a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Well, I am sure that you owners and managers, if you haven't already, you plan to have one-on-ones with your team members about schedule to know who's gonna be doing what and at what time. But I want to just remind you that it's really important to go over those schedules as a group for a few reasons. First being it's important for everyone to know what the other person's gonna be doing during those two first two weeks of February. If I am answering the phone, if that's my primary job, it's really good for me to know at any given time what everybody else is gonna be doing. So that if I need help with something, I can think of, oh, I'm gonna ask Ellie. And then I'm like, no, she's working on this, or I need Cammy. Well, Cammy's working on this. So it's important for all of us to know what everybody's doing. The other reason it's important is sometimes when we get really, really busy and we're working really, really hard because we're human and because we are flawed, sometimes we can get frustrated. And in our frustration, when we don't know or can't see what the other people are doing, sometimes we think because we can't see it, we assume they're not doing anything. So it's important that at the beginning, you owners and managers set the stage and share with your whole team, yes, everybody's working. Everybody has a job. It just might look different than what your job is.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Which kind of segues right into flowers, right? The when they're arriving, the days they're arriving, what team needs to be responsible for processing those flowers? Because we know care and handling is so important. And maybe the whole team is jumping in to do that. But knowing that the flowers are coming on certain days and what the expectations on how quickly they need to be put in the cooler or in water, others are vases. Do we need to do bows? What is it that we need to do with our candy or our plush or our add-ons? We need to know what we have and that they're ready to be able to make into bundles and go out the door. And remember, we're all on the same team. We're not competing. We want to work together, and that's how we make it fun, is with that culture in our shop, that's what makes it fun. All right, a few more expectations.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

And this is when it comes to basically the quality. Every single thing that goes out of this store is a reflection of the name on the store, right? And that is the owner's name. So quality, quality, quality, every single thing. So that means if any employee has the slightest bit of hesitation of a stem or a card or a flush or anything that's walking out that door thinking, maybe that is not the prettiest thing we have, or maybe that has a stain on it, or maybe that stop, turn around, and get a second opinion before you send it out. Better safe than sorry before you send anything out that door. The next thing is everyone needs to be in sync on what you are selling for Valentine's Day. You should always be in sync on what you're gonna sell, but especially those few weeks of Valentine's Day. That means know what your specials are, know what's on your website. If you're a Flower Clip member and your website is skinny down, know what that is. Know what's on your homepage, know what you have. To further that, know what you're gonna be low on, know what your sold-out items are so that when someone calls and asks for something that's sold out, you don't go, sure, what size do you want? And you place that order only to find out you're sold out of that. The other thing you need to know is to step up when someone else needs a break. Sometimes this is really hard because you're all running 500 miles an hour, but this requires awareness. It requires for you to be aware of how other people are doing, and it requires you to be aware of how you are doing. So we have to have some self-awareness, plus awareness of others. If you need a break, it is your responsibility to go to your manager and be open and honest and communicate. Go listen, I need five. I don't know, set up buzzwords, set up whatever code words, whatever you need to do, something that where you can tag team with somebody and say, I just need five minutes and take a walk or take a breather, go get a diet coke, go do what you need. On the other side of that, be looking around at your teammates to see if they need a break. Because here's what happens: you're on the phone, you've been on the phone all day long, you've been selling your heart out, and you've been doing a fabulous job, but you're exhausted. You answer that next call, your tone of voice is not what it was at 8:30 that morning when you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to sell the world, and your sale doesn't go that well, and the person hangs up and they're like, ah, that shop isn't very friendly. And they receive the product, or their people received the product, and it was an okay product, but to them it was really bad. And then you get a negative, a negative review. That's how that kind of thing happens, all because of the way you answered the phone. That set the tone for the whole scenario. So that's why it's so important to be aware of your surroundings. The next thing is take some breaths before you respond to any kind of problem because you're going to have problems. We have problems every week, but you're going to have disgruntled customers, you're going to have broken stems, you're just going to have things happen. Take some breaths before you respond to a problem.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

And I promise you will be a little more clear-headed. Great tips, Lori. So now we want to move into the design room, I think. Yes. And at this point in a staff meeting, we would move from our chairs, go back to the design area, take your snacks, which Lori, I just want you to know I do have the cinnamon hearts here for you. Just I brought them especially for you. Oh jealous. It's your favorite. I want to make sure that all our staff has all the little snacks they want. So we're going to move into the back room and talk a little bit about productivity. Productivity during the holiday is key to the success of the shop because the more productive we are, the more we can get out the door, the more customers that we can have that are satisfied and have just a really great Valentine's Day. Productivity is somewhat of a challenge. Those designers, friends of mine and myself, it's like, how quick can I do designs, right? Four designs, all the same. I had the roses, this is one of our uh free spirit roses, four vases of flowers. I did these four designs in 30 minutes. So these are seven and a half minutes per vase of flowers that I designed. I should be able to do faster, right? I should be able to go five minutes per per design, but I didn't quite get it. So next time that I do that, I'm going to work myself up to go a little faster. So that productivity is key. But also, we don't want to forget the attention to detail because when I get those done, then I want someone to come behind me and make sure that there's nothing on each one of these, just spin them around, quick spin, make sure there's no petals that are done, any leaves that are broken, so that we have a perfectly beautiful design that's going out to the customers, even though we're being more and more productive. So my tip is make sure you're doing at least four at a time. If you have a special and you can set it up so that you have even 10. If you have a long table, you know, some on each side, and maybe you're tag teaming it. Huge difference if you can just go along and do all of these at the same time. It will be so much faster. And you want to do these ahead of time. I'm always surprised because some people say we don't do the orders until we have them in. We don't do any productivity, we don't produce anything until I have an order in hand. My tip to you, and I would strongly encourage you know you're gonna sell red roses, free spirit roses, whatever those specials are that you have. Make sure you have, you know, whether it's 12 or 14 or 24 or 36 done of each one of those, put them in the cooler. Then when that order is coming off your website or the customer comes in, all you have to do is put the card on it and go out the door. So don't wait for the order to come in. You're gonna sell the orders that you have done, which was what Lori's gonna talk about here in a minute. Yes. So Lori, here I have a dozen of the free spirit. I also have six. I have a six free spirit in an arrangement, and then I have a dozen help our staff transition from a six, which is done a little bit more designer style, rather than just which you could do it either one. Right. A dozen.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

First, what I would say to every employee is the way I sell is gonna be totally different than the way you sell. So I can throw words out, and they are nothing but words. So you have to find your own language, or it's just gonna sound ridiculous if you try to use what I say. So I would challenge any salesperson. Your job is to look at your specials. So let's pretend those are your specials, right? And what do I see differently? How am I going to style these kinds of things? There's three things that you always want to focus on, right? You're gonna look at how it's going to look in a home or wherever it's going to be delivered, because you want the person that's buying it to say the size, and you're going to talk about color, and you want to paint that picture of containers. So those are really three things across the board. Anyone you talk to is going to talk about those. So you're trying to paint that picture in their mind. So the first thing I would do is highlight the fact that these corally colors have that pop of the 2024 color of the year, which is that peachy color. And so I would congratulate them on being trendy and touching on that peach vibe. And it's popular. And when you do things like that, they're like, ooh, look at me knowing what's trendy and cool. That's a compliment to them, right? So I would start there and kind of you know play around with that. The other thing I would do is use Valentine language. I was telling you, I was having a little too much fun with this. I started just typing out words like intimate and sweet and charming and blissful and flirty and loving and playful, like using that kind of language when you are describing these types of designs to because remember, it's Valentine's Day. And if you're sending this to your loved one or your girlfriend, I would find out is this long-term girlfriend or is this somebody new? Is this traditional, the taller one? Then I would use that more like lovely or romantic. These are romantic peach colored, or the the shorter one is a little more modern, more flirty. So that's how I would go.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

So then, Lauren, what would we do with this one?

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Oh, well, that's what I would call. What is it? Our our one of our members, Martha, calls big and bougie.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Big and bougie. That's what Martha says. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I would 100% say, if you want big and bougie, you are gonna want this one. And and I would go on and on and on about the same colors, but the only way to describe this is big and bougie. And and you're elevating the design, elevating the design with the corals and the peaches and the touch of green, and the top of the hot pink crispedia is like something you can't even describe. It's really hard to put into words. What I also want people to understand when you're on the phone, it's okay to say this is really hard to put into words how beautiful this is. That's your testimony. And most people understand that because you're like, wow, that's amazing. Like, I want to see that. I absolutely want to see that, but that's totally big and bougie.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

And the other thing on this, as many of you know with the free spirit roses, the fragrance. You know, make sure you're selling that fragrance too. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

That is definitely the elevate and elaborate version of yes.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

And so then we have red roses, which we know are a fave, right? Valentine's Day, red roses, number one seller. And there's a lot we can't do to move away from that. And that's okay, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:56

But right, absolutely, but you can you can do a modern contemporary style again. I think you and I were talking about these earlier. To me, this would depend on the person I had on the phone, their age as to which one I might start with. If that was my 23-year-old son, I would start with the more modern, little heart-shaped, because I think he'd be more open to that. If it was my father who loves nothing more than tall traditional red roses, as you know, because that's what he always bought my mom. I would start with that, but I would absolutely elevate that to probably 24. Because my thought is when you've been married that long, you don't need just a dozen.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

So a couple of questions from uh in the chat, the rose arrangement, I think it was one of the free spirits. Is that an eight by four cylinder? It is a three by eight cylinder.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Actually, it's one of those that's from the Dollar Tree. So it's like a C007 size. It's a it's that right rose basically.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Great. And then as you talk, think about how to explain to customers those big open roses that they're not old. They don't sometimes like it if the roses are that open and blooming. So that was a comment by somebody too.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

And that's totally understandable. I think last time when we took our roses with the free spirit for the website, we took them much more open for that reason. Because I think when people see them, and and maybe when you're selling those, that selling point is I just want you to know those beautiful Free Spirit roses are very open, but they hold, they last and last. So don't be worried if they, you know, come in that they look like they're more open than you're used to, because that's the variety of rose we're using today.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, I would even say they're bred to be that garden style where they're big and open and fluffy. That's that's the variety that they're bred for specifically. So that also could be a selling point on, you know, this is more of a unique rose, not your standard typical.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

And the word garden rose always gets most people. They understand though.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

So that's yeah, like a garden rose. I think that's important. Like not is, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:11

Right, like a garden rose. And on this, there's just a couple little things, and in we've all seen this many times, and that's just the little love knots that you can do in the roses. This is just lily grass. You truly just put a knot in it and use that because it's a selling point. Oh, our roses, our dozen roses, our six roses. We have some beautiful lily grass that we use that have little love knots in. It's just that added touch that our designers like to do. Something on that line. Well, then, Lori, we have one other design before we move on to all your sales things because this is one that's going to be very popular for the holiday. And this is Juliet. And this one is designed actually in florist netting or chicken wire, and that's how I'm able to get such a nice design and curve with this one. Makes it super easy. Before I tell you how I would sell that, is that like a crescent? It is. Lori, it is. It's it's a crescent, it's kind of that modern style that people are going for, and it's very difficult to do if you're just doing it in water. And so, either in floral foam, which is some people like to use and others do not, but this is in the chicken wire, the yes, or a snetting. And what it allows is for me to easily put that into another vague.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

If you make it ahead of time and have to change the water and clear, then you can easily somebody can just hold that and you can change the water quick.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Yeah. And we've done that, haven't we, Ellie?

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Again, when you sent me a picture this morning of just the the colors you were going to be using, the words that came to my mind of selling that are number one, charming. For some reason, those colors to me evoke the word charming, soft, dreamy. They're just dreamy colors. So, what I would challenge people to do is have a list. Take a piece of paper. And again, Flower Click members have this list. They can print out and leave it. Have it by your POS system. Call it a cheat sheet. Call it descriptive words, call it your Valentine language, whatever, and have them typed out so that when you are on the phone, you can look down and see all of these words because sometimes that end of the afternoon, you have no words left in your brain. It's just depleted. And you have to retrieve them and you can look down. And based on the colors they're wanting, you can go, oh, that color. Yes, it's a soft color, or it's a vibrant color, or it's dreamy, or it's vivacious. Language sells the vision. It does. Or red or pink. This that's that's not gonna get the job done anymore. Yes, GPT can help. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

So Lori, I know pretty soon you're gonna start talking about average sale and what to expect for sales for the customer. And so I wanted to show this. That's that same color palette, very similar, but it's a large design. And I actually priced this out in this container, and it is $250, is basically what we're looking at at that. But you could definitely elevate it. If you have some of these containers, this is the teleflora gemstone container. And if I drop this in here, you can see the difference that makes in that container. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

And I know a lot of our members have leftover containers from Teleflora or from wherever. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. I know we're not there yet. It's such a great time to pull out some of the older containers that you want to try to, I'm gonna say get rid of, but that sounds so negative, right? Because they're not bad containers.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

No, but you want to be able to sell those and give them, you know, at the appropriate time of year. Give them a new home, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

A lot of our shops are calling it a vase upgrade. You want to upgrade your vase for next colors and then love it.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah, I love it. I love it. I'm through here, so let's move on back to the front room with Lori at the counter and talk about sales.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yes, we are at the 30-minute marks and we promised 30, so I didn't want everybody to panic.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Here is an example of our sales scripts that our flower clip members get for the holidays. If you're not a flower clip member, you can make your own. We highly suggest that you have sales scripts ready. I was talking about using descriptive language. You have these ready. You put your specials, know what your specials are going to be before the big day arrives. That is a big, big, big time saver. Everyone on staff needs to know what your specials are going to be. Write them out. Short descriptions. Everyone can kind of make their own description if you want. Same product, but how you would sell it, have your different price points. The other thing is make sure your website is in skinny mode. Again, if you're a Flower Click member, that's already done for you. If you are not, what we mean by that is that there is less stuff on your website. That not only helps your customers make decisions and they don't deal with decision overload, decision fatigue, it helps you guys know what your products are gonna be. You want everything in your cooler to match what's on your website. When you have too much on your website, it's gonna be impossible. You're gonna set up for success with tools of easy, seamless conversations. That's again what the sales scripts are for. Communication, what are we out of? What do we need to push? I talked about that at the beginning. Making sure your front of house is always communicating with the back of the house. I don't know if you have 30 employees. I don't know if you have three employees. It doesn't matter. You all need to be communicating all of the time. A couple of things I do want to touch on that are not here but are sales related. When you are selling the arrangement, the fresh flowers, do not forget to offer additional things. Here's an example. I was talking about all of those buzzwords that were buzzing through my brain earlier this morning. When you're talking, when you're selling Valentine's products, use these kind of words. A size, color, container. Here's an example. When you're selling just basic red flowers, rich red roses in a traditional style vase. You can never go wrong with that. When you use things like you can never go wrong with that. That's you telling them your side story, your little testimony. It's giving them the inside scoop. That's what your customer wants to hear. Just like vibrant shaves of chloral with glowy peach five. Hey, FYI, did you know that that's the 2024 color of the year? You are so on trend, my friend. Blah blah blah. That's giving them the side story. They love that. I was reading in some blogs this morning about card messages and how a lot of men and women have a hard time coming up with what to say. Have a few ready that when people call and when you say, What would you like to say on the card? If they're struggling with it, throw out a couple. Maybe they'll take you up on it, maybe they won't. Here's the slide that Vonda was talking about. These are statistics that we pulled when we were doing research. The average person, the average sale is going to be 192.80. Between the ages of 35 and 44 for Valentine's Day is $335.71. 34% of people are going to buy online. I want to throw in a little caveat there and say that doesn't include the amount of people that are going to call you to place an order that have been looking online. I'm going to venture to say that number is in the high 80s, if not 90 percentile. 37% of people are going to buy flowers for Valentine's Day. 57% are going to buy flowers and candy. 40% are going to buy flowers and greeting cards. I'm going to propose to you there is no reason why that person should not be buying flowers and candy and greeting cards, all of those at your place. One stop shopping. So don't forget when you are selling flowers to say, here's what else we have. Why don't we throw in this? Why don't we also throw in this? You can do the plush, the balloons, the candles, the chocolates, which are all great things. And I'm not knocking those. But do you have any out-of-the-box things that you have? Remember, the people that are calling you might not have ever stepped foot in your shop. They have no idea what you have. It is your job to tell them what you have. So every time you come in, look around and pick some stuff that you want to highlight when you're talking to them on the phone. I remember last year when we were doing a webinar, one of our shops, and I cannot remember who they are, so I cannot give credit to them. And I apologize if you're on here, but they had a bunch of little things like up at their front desk at their checkout. And some of the things were like waxed lips, waxed hearts, like fun little things to add, and they could put in one a little clear bag, just cute stuff. They sold out of all of it, all of it, and all of it added up. And so they would sell it over the phone. They would just tell them, you know, we have some kind of cute stuff. We could fill a bag, and it was an extra $25, $28 on top of them. They're like, oh yeah, do that, do that. Little things like that that are kind of off the beaten path. People love it. They love it. If you have it, make sure you're selling it.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

I just want to give a shout out. This was um from the National National Retail Federation. We did not come up with those numbers. Those are posted all over. That was their research. So that is actual numbers that you should expect for Valentine's Day 2024. So then we don't want to forget about the delivery driver because you, the delivery driver, are the face of the company. A lot of people never come in the store and you are the person that they see and you make the impressions. You need to make sure you know the policy, you need to show up with a smile, you know, need to be able to hand those flowers to them with pride. So anything that you see that you're not happy with, that needs to come back to the shop. And you need to have that talk with the designers or whoever is your logistics engineer right there at the shop. Maybe you need an assistant. Talk among yourselves. A lot of time at Valentine's Day, you have a driver and you have a runner. Do you need that? Do you have a lot of deliveries that you need to get out that that extra help will make a difference? And the communication. Make sure that if you're out of delivery place and you've called before and the person didn't answer, you can call back to the shop and communicate with them and say, like, here I am. What do I do? With weather, probably can't leave at this time of year, most places. So make sure you clearly know the policy, have those not home cards in your van with you and be able to, you know, service that customer and get that delivery out the best you can during that time. And always err on the side of caution, right? Don't leave it if you think there's any chance that the person's out of town for an extended period or that the weather is a little iffy. So again, delivery is the most important. It's the last leg of that whole transaction from when the person took the order and you are relaying such an important message. So I can't even tell you how much your job is important to the success of the flower shop.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

And I will just throw in there don't speed if you're behind on your deliveries. When I was driving in high school, somebody called the shop on me and said that I was feeding. So you are representing the business. And if you get in an accident, then you're really not going to be able to deliver anymore. So just uh drive the speed limit. It'll get there when it gets there. Good point. Throw that in there. Life lesson. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Okay, Lori. All right, summary. Here's our alliteration because that's how we roll here around Flower Click. We love them. Flexibility. You gotta be flexible. Things are gonna change, things are gonna happen, snow is gonna happen, weird weather, electricity is gonna go out, flowers aren't gonna show up. You gotta be flexible. Fabulous, fabulous flowers is the number one priority. Everything going out of your shop has to look fabulous. Fun. You gotta have fun. Every single day you wake up for this, it's a choice. We're gonna have fun today. We can do this. And food. You gotta have good snacks this week, the week of Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Yep. Great. I love it. So true.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Thanks everyone for uh coming to the staff meeting. And we hope you have a wonderful, successful Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

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.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.