The Valentine's Day 2022 Playbook

Episode 108: In a digital workshop this week, The Flower Clique Gals presented some really valuable information to prepare for Valentine's Day 2022. Vonda, Lori, and Kami shared a LOT of information, from projecting sales and preparing your sales staff, to website must-knows and marketing ideas. You'll find the short version here, but if you want to take a deeper dive, click here for the full webinar.
On another note, it's not too late to join Flower Clique!

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Yeah, I'd like to think the website's the MVP of this game. I might be a little biased, so let me talk about that. The reason I say it's the MVP is because, as you know, your website not only serves as an extra employee to take orders, which everybody needs right now, it also serves as a menu for customers that call in while they're looking at your website.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

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

SPEAKER_03 0:34

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

SPEAKER_01 0:44

It's so great having you here with me today. Last week, the Flower Click Gals gave a fantastic webinar on Valentine's Day playbook. The team really put together some great information to really make a difference and prepare you for the upcoming Valentine's Day. The playbook is really complete, and it is up on YouTube, and I'll drop that link in the show notes. But I want to give you the highlights and some of the most important takeaways from that webinar. So let's listen in.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

First is really knowing your game. A lot of you have gone through this before and you have a really good idea of what to expect for Valentine's Day on Monday. But let's walk through that. The best days for Valentine's Day are Wednesdays and Thursdays. Best days. They have time to plan, they make early orders, they're great. But the worst days are Saturdays and Sundays. We look back to 2011, that was the last time Valentine's Day was on Monday. We really can't do any comparisons to 2011, right? The world has changed since then. So we look at the last three years. We have one of the best, one of the worst, and one of the middle. So it makes sense for us to use those numbers to be able to come up with our game plan.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

In the webinar, I shared the step-by-step process in order to come up with the actual projections for that Valentine's Day period. Again, it's in the show notes if you want to look at that YouTube because the slides actually really help connect the dots on how to do those projections. So let's listen to Lori as she talks about the sales team.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

Here we go. I cannot stress to you guys enough. And again, Vonda talked about all of the culminating years we have of experience together. Um, and in the 10, 11, going on to 12 years of that I've been in this industry, the most important thing you need to do is have that staff meeting to get everybody ready for Valentine's Day. So, so many of you, because of COVID, um, have new employees. Some of you have like this revolving door of employees that have kind of gone in and out. I bet 50% of you have people that have never even been through Valentine's Day before. Or maybe they have at another shop, but they've not been like yours. Every shop's gonna be a little bit different. So have that meeting now. I keep thinking to myself, again, we're trying to do the play on the Super Bowl, like rally your team, right? It's time to rally your team. If you want to think of it from that perspective, you've got just like on a field, you've got offense and defense. So in your shop, you have front of house, back of house. You have your designers, and then you have your salespeople. You got to bring them together to watch the game film, right? They may not be on the on the field at the same time, but they still have to know exactly what the other part of the team is going to be doing. So that's really what this staff meeting is going to be about. When you have it, just super simple pieces of advice, be excited, be enthusiastic. It's all you're setting the tone for how those now to Valentine's Day is going to be. If you come into that and you're super stressed or frustrated, they're going to feel it and they're going to kind of start. If any of them are teetering on whether they want to be there or not, they're going to go, oh, this sounds hard. I don't want to do it. But if you come into it and you bring snacks to the meeting, because I'm a big believer in bringing snacks to the meeting, um, have some fun, talk about what you did well last year. I know Vonda is talking about financially, don't look at your numbers, but I'm talking about from a person because we're still in a pandemic. So it's okay to kind of look at what went well last year. What do we maybe need to work on this year? So talk through those things. And number three here, I say do the crayon exercise. I got this from an article I was reading about things great leaders do. And you, as the owner or manager, you are that great leader. So your job is to draw the picture of how you want Valentine's Day to be. But then it's also your job to give each one of them a crayon and say, now help me fill it in. Where does it need to be brighter? Where do we need to shade it? Where do we need to completely black out? Because we don't want to do that. Because when you do that, it gives them skin in the game, right? It makes them feel part of a team. So when it comes to getting into execution mode, meaning those first two weeks of Valentine's Day, since they colored on your picture and they helped paint it, they're going to help you because they want to at the end of the day go, wow, we did that. I helped do that. I helped build this. So help that makes sense to you. The hardest part for a leader or a boss to execute this meeting is you're not prepared. So before you prepare them, you need to get a plan. You have to have your playbook completely ready. And then each little page might have a little allowance for substitute if somebody goes, you know what, remember when we did that last year and it didn't work? How about we flip it this way? Be open-minded, but you have to have a set playbook ready before you can even start that meeting.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Now let's get down to the players, right? So your design team, your number one focus here is to be sure to communicate the expectations. Nothing is worse than having somebody come in standing there and they're designing slow, which can happen, right? And they know that you expected them to do four an hour, six an hour, however many designs you expected them to do, they they didn't know that, right? So they don't know that they're not meeting your expectations. So clearly outline what it is you expect them to be able to produce in a certain amount of time. So you know that they're gonna be doing that, you're gonna say, but I want you to design and I want you to answer the phone, and you need a weigh in customers, you you might have to look at those expectations and say, you know what, maybe they're not realistic. So set up realistic expectations, let everybody know who's doing what for the the week before Valentine's Day, and maybe it shifts. So setting the expectations really is number one. Let them know, are you working on Saturday and Sunday to prep? Because if you are, you need to let them know that now or ask them, say, you know what, I really like you to work for prep times on Saturday and Sunday to get ready. Let them know that. If they don't know that, then when it comes to that day and they're not there, you can't blame anybody but yourself. All right. Do they know what's on your website? These are gonna be the top-selling designs, and they need to know how to design it. So if they have this on the website, they need to know that that's gonna be something that's boy, that's what's they're gonna have to be knocking out a lot of. And possibly as you're designing the tips here, um, do an assembly line. You know, it's one of those things that yeah, I go through and I can put through the base, then Cami can go through and do the carnations, or I can do all strumeria, and Audrey has a good eye, so she's gonna finish up with finishing touches and make sure it looks good to go into the cooler to put tags on later. So that's something that definitely can be done. Um, give your designer an assistant, as I mentioned, an assistant setup, everything, so that I can produce my designs really at least five times faster. You know, some people are gonna say four, other people are gonna say ten. But I have it all set up. Yeah, a good designer, which you guys are good designers or no good designers, set them up for success by giving them something to assist them through that. And then, of course, as you all know, don't just design one at a time. You're doing one, two, three. You know, you can do them just as fast by doing multiples. So that kind of gives us an overview on the design team. What about the sales team, Rory?

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Well, the sales team, I mean, some of those rules apply to sales too. My biggest thing here is make sure all of your employees are doing what they're best at during the holidays. For example, let's say you've got a personality employee, somebody's super vibrant, fun, loves to talk, love, you know, those are the people you're gonna want either on the floor if you have a lot of traffic, or you want on the phone. What you don't want is someone on the phone who might be super monotone, maybe they um tend to be more of a negative personality. I'm not saying they're mean, but just maybe they're just not as eloquent in their speaking abilities. I don't know. You have to look at these things because it will make or break a sale, and it also can cost you a review. So look at your staff. Um, I was reading an article, it's Brian Nordstrom or whatever the Nordstrom. When they interview people, their biggest thing is, you know, you can teach pretty much anyone a skill, but you can't teach attitude. You can't teach personality. People can try to change your personality and fake it for a little while, but chances are it they're gonna they're gonna go back to who they too really are. So you can teach a skill to pretty much everybody, but you can't teach attitude. So that would be my my biggest thing. Once everybody is in place, whether you're on the phone, whether you are doing the deliveries, whether you're doing the design, whatever you are, everyone in the shop needs to be aware of what the bound Time Stay specials are. That means the salespeople need to be talking to the designers, they need to be looking in the cooler, they need to know what are our specials. Those few weeks, you guys know how fast-paced and crazy it is. You need to be, it just needs to roll off the tongue, roll off the tongue. We suggest a script visual description of how to talk about one of your designs. Tell everyone that's going to be on the phone, say, hey, I want you to take this and then I want you to recreate your own script of what specials we're gonna be having. Everyone has to do it in their own tone. Um, like the words I would use to describe a design a design would be very different than the way Vonda would describe a design because we're different people. Um, so it's every everybody is going to be more confident if they have created their own scripts. Don't memorize it, but just be able to look and go, oh, we can do this, this, and this. Salespeople need to be knowing what's in the back, the the designers. If you have an abundance of flowers, uh, let's say you have a bunch of purple roses and you guys haven't really sold any, and you're like, we need to get rid of these, we need to get pushing these out. Make sure your front staff knows. Also, come up with some designs to throw in the cooler with those, right, Vonda? I mean, create some cool designs. So when I'm on the phone, I can look over and go, oh my gosh, our designers just put them as gorgeous lavender roses and whatever it is, and describe it. That's how you move your inventory. Um, painting the visual picture, we've talked about this a hundred times. If you guys, if this is your first time on here, it is so important for the salesperson to create the picture in the customer's head of this gorgeous thing that is going to be sent to the love of their life. It is your job. They need to know that what you're sending is going to look pretty much like what's in their head. If you have a texting program and you send them that, or if you email them, awesome. If you don't, then you need to make sure they understand how big this is going to be, the colors that are going in it, and the type of container. You don't want to sell them this beautiful little arrangement and them thinking it's going to be this tall glass base, but then they get a little cube. Then they're just going to be mad and it's going to be really difficult to and costly to make that whole thing better. Know what your add-ons are. Here's a challenge that I have. Every salesperson needs to look around your store. For those of you that work in stores that you do have walk-in, you have other things. Yes, a lot of you do chocolates. Yes, a lot of you do strawberries, balloons, all of those things, those are great. But think outside the box, what else do you have that would go really well with the flowers that they're ordering? If you think about it, if a man or woman, but I'm just going to use a man for now, if he's going to spend $300 on his wife or girlfriend or whatever, he should spend every penny in your store. He shouldn't have to just buy a $150 arrangement and then go next door for something, and next door for something, and next door for something. You should be able to sell him an entire bundle right there and take all of his money. It should all go to your company. Just be creative. And the last thing I'm going to say to you, if there's any employees on here, you have to know your website. You have to know it. You don't want to take a call from somebody going, hey, I'm looking at your website and I see this beautiful in blue. And you say, I don't, what is it? You know, you don't want them to have to describe it to you. If they say what the just go, oh, what are you looking at? And they give you the name. If you don't know it, you better be right by a computer, typing it and going, oh yeah, it's so pretty. It's great. Or, you know what? It is great. We don't have the particular flower, but we have something else that's going to look just as good in it. Always have an option for them. Especially now. We're going to be having to do substitutes all the time between now and Valentine's Day. You guys are probably already doing them. You don't say it in a negative way. Be excited. So, you know what? We don't have that, but we actually have something even better. And this is what it is. So that's that's what I got.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

That's great, Lori. That's a lot because the sales team is so important. And I think that's what sometimes they get pushed on the back burn and they're like, ah, sales, sales. No, the sales are really um the more important job at Valentine's Day because designers, obviously, you have to get everything done, but the sales staff has to sell it. And then the driver has to deliver it with confidence. They have to look like they uh work in your store, right? So their attire is important, you know, what they're wearing, they need to be cheerful, they need to be smiling. You don't want a grumpy person delivering the flowers to your door, right? They need to be upping and as excited as you are, because then when the person who receives the flowers, they're gonna be excited too. So set them up for success. Let them know what's expected. Are you calling me for? Yes or no? Make sure that the not home tags are in the van, written, ready to go. What is the policy for that? If something tips over in the van, are they supposed to bring it back? Or do you have a water jug in the car that you can fill it up? Little things like that. Think through that process because it's not going to be just your usual delivery person. You're gonna have extra drivers. Make sure that you have things written down so that they're aware of what it takes to get those deliveries out on a time frame that they're expected to do. So, you know, now, Cami, let's turn it over to your most valuable player.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, I'd like to think the website's the MVP of this game. I might be a little biased. So let me talk about that. The reason I say it's the MVP is because, as you know, your website not only serves as an extra employee to take orders, which everybody needs right now, it also serves as a menu for customers that call in while they're looking at your website. How often do you hear? You know, I'm looking, I'm on your website and they're, you know, talking to you. So it serves as like a menu, as if they're at a restaurant, right? And it even serves as a sales tool for your staff, as Lori said, as customers walk in, as customers call in, they might use the website as a sales tool to talk about and describe the different designs over the phone. So if it serves as all of these things, we need to take the time and make sure it's done right and make sure that it's ready for the big day. So I want to start by tackling the big hitting website things first, the designs or the mix of arrangements offered on the website. If you haven't already done so, I suggest the website is actually one of the first things to get in line. And I'll just let you know I'm really busy right now this time of year, because the the florists that I work with are getting it lined out ahead of time. Now we do it for them, but they always kind of have their own little, you know, changes and additions and make it their own. So we're really busy right now. They they know this, they get their website in line first, and everything else follows. So here are a few website musts at Valentine's Day. So the first one, you tell the customers what to buy. You set the menu. You are not a victim to your website. You can take control, right? Make your website match your cooler, make your website match what you have in your inventory. It's very important that the mix reflects what you want to sell and that it's priced appropriately. Right. Everybody has had things that have been way too low on their website. I mean, even it every now and then a customer will find one that we're like, oh my gosh, where did they come up with this? Where did they find this? I thought I laid eyes on everything, you know. But so, but it is important to lay eyes on everything, even do some searches or remove the search bar completely. Like I just can't stress that enough. So the second bullet point is skinny the mix. Start with Valentine's Day. And then once you have Valentine's Day figured out, your homepage and other categories can follow. Um, so once you have Valentine's Day, rinse and repeat, and then build out the rest of your categories. That's what we do. So if you're a Flower Click member, you can kind of just sit back and you know put your feet up right now because we do skinny the website for our members. We set Valentine's Day and then we and then we skinny the website. Usually around this year, I think we're going to do it on the 27th and 28th of January and keep the website kind of in skinny mode. Product crossover is fine. So we do this all the time, actually. We have quite a bit of product crossover within the categories. But during Valentine's Day, for example, you might have a few more reds and pinks in get well and birthday than usual. A few more red roses here, you know, scattered throughout, just because that's what's going to be in your inventory. And then less is more. A lot of times we think that we have to have a lot of options on the website, that more is better. But having too many products on the site causes a lot of headaches for you. I know a lot of people are probably nodding right now. Um, number one, it's impossible to fill all those orders. So, so skinny it down, um, set the right expectations of what you actually have. And then secondly, what you might not realize is it's actually overwhelming for the customer to have so many options on the website. Um, you know, we do know men are shopping a lot at Valentine's Day, right? Let's just keep it simple. Let's let's show them what is it that they need to buy. And so just remember less is more. And I think I would think that would make me take a deep breath right now as a florist. Like I don't have to have pages and pages of product. And then finally, the last bullet point, make sure items are priced correctly.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

to hear us say that a couple of times it just astounds me how often I see you know things that are just right up there on the home page 39 39 39 49 49 that's the only options available and they're like huge you know tall all around designs and and there's no way the the florists that you guys are making any money on that so make sure they're profitably priced yeah from a voca just said um this part that you're doing she says it makes me so relieved to be a flower click member it is worth every single thing because what you're saying it's it roll it like Vonda talking about profit it just rolls off your tongue but to a person that isn't this isn't their favorite thing they're probably having a little bit of a yeah symptoms so and that's what first of all it's not too late to become a member that's my little progress there you know I always like to it's not too late um and secondly I am trying to kind of simplify it though because I'll just tell you what our practice is and I'm showing you right here we set Valentine's Day first.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

We look at it Vonda and I sit down in I don't know late November and we're like what do the florists want to sell this Valentine's Day? What did well last Valentine's Day? We were already doing all this but um we're looking at you know we need to offer a half a dozen red roses a full dozen red roses a mixed dozen you know we have all those in there but then we offered those bestsellers from last year that were maybe a $69 design that's a mixed arrangement. And then from there once we get our Valentine's Day priced out and established then we build an anniversary and romance category um you're probably thinking okay I can come up with the mix but how do I actually put it up on the website? That is where we come in but I will tell you most hosts you know if you send them an email of this is what I want in each category, they'll probably make it happen for you. So I'm just putting that out there too.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

We're gonna stop Cammy right there. She actually goes on to share more tips on preparing your website for Valentine's Day if you want to listen in we're gonna move on to Lori as she shares some marketing ideas.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

The biggest marketing tip bang for your buck is going to be taking the time to pre-call your top customers I don't know what magic happens in the POS system but I know you can pull your top paying customers if you don't know what magic happens in that get back to us I'll Bonda and Cami can help you they can because they know how to do that. Get your list pulled get your pre-calling script get those calls made do not look at it as you're telemarketing trying to sell you're not doing that at all your biggest reason for doing this is to remind them hey Valentine's is coming up you don't want to miss it. You want to get this done also I don't know if you guys know but there's a bit of a weird container flour shortage you're not quite sure you want to get this will help you balance your inventory going into those few weeks it also helps with all of those last minute congestion of people that forget and they call you and then they want something and it's on your website but you forgot to have Kami remove it and you don't have it and there's chaos. So we've all been there. So pre-calling gives you a little bit of control in some weird way to do it. My suggestions are block off chunks of time if I was going to do this I would start my calling probably on January 27th which I believe is a Thursday. So I would block off chunks of time a couple of hours on Thursday a couple hours on Friday and then I would have all my calls done by February 3rd depending on how many you want to make the other thing is you got to think through who's going to be making these calls. It needs to be somebody that has a nice tone of voice that actually cares about your business majority of the time it's going to be the owner making these calls but if you have someone on staff that's really good at it put them on there. Put them in a room don't have them answer the phone between things because that's how they get distracted and it just doesn't work well. They need to have one hour two hours whatever block of time completely blocked off to be making these calls here's the thing you're gonna go straight to voicemail 80% of the time and that's okay. It's totally okay you're leaving them a message reminding them Valentine's Day is coming up you have a lot of specials you know you're just calling your customers that ordered last year to give them a heads up we can get this already done check it off your list whatever you want to say but get it done because if they if they're gonna order flowers they're gonna go oh wow that's great call them back they'll call you back you can get an order check it off your list here as you heard Lori has shared her most valuable marketing tip and she moves on to share other tips on marketing that you might want to listen in on but I've asked her now to talk about something that's so important and that's your mindset. Lori let's talk about mindset this is the hardest part I think especially coming off of Christmas coming into another year where we're gonna have the same issues we've had for 2020 21 I think um a lot of people have this mindset right now of they're tired you know but if you can flip that narrative just a little bit and go you know what I'm gonna choose courage and not comfort we have gotten comfortable with the uh you know that's the oh I can describe just the frustration and the disappointment we don't have to stay in that we can choose right now to you know what it's gonna be hard it's gonna be scary bondo the quote you have over here I love but I'm gonna choose courage to make the changes necessary to keep my business going it's so important that we choose courage over comfort courage is going to get us further ahead than we are right now.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Many times we feel like oh no no no no I can't make any change because what I'm in right now I know like she mentions take the courage to do something different and get yourself ahead. So let's talk about the most important takeaways of the webinar and of our session today. Number one that I think is the most important is that you price things correctly in your store for the holiday. Every day of course but when you're looking at the elevated prices you're gonna be paying for all your flowers for this Valentine's Day I want you to take a close look at what you're gonna be putting on your website and in your store and make sure it's profitable. Take the time to change your prices in store and on your website. And speaking of your website make sure you don't have too many offerings on your website strategically peering down your website makes your life easier and makes your customer decision that much easier like Cammy mentioned you know you take control and then get your staff in line and let them know what the expectations are for the upcoming holiday. Make sure you have a weather plan and a COVID plan right what if people are going out with COVID what's your game plan and for weather again make sure you have those game plans in place for the holiday. Hopefully this playbook has given you a few ideas for the upcoming Valentine's Day or have allowed you to say to yourself, check it off the list I've got that done. So we'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Have a great week 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.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

We look forward to seeing you next week. 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