I used to assume wedding proposals needed to be some fancy, flashy, complicated thing. Turns out, that’s not true.
How did I figure it out? Ummmmm the super hard, really awkward way.
I was getting enquiries, hosting formal consultations but I wasn’t booking many of these customers.
I was being ghosted a lot. Like every single week, even though I had invested a lot of time and energy into the relationship.
Because I wasn’t getting the result I wanted, I started experimenting with different formats and processes.
Lesson learned! It turns out, a complicated, detailed proposal isn’t what’s needed to book more clients.
Wedding Proposal Template for Florists - The Basics
In 2018, my calendar was packed with wedding consultations. Back then, my process looked something like this (1) enquiry (2) consultation (3) detailed proposal and quote.
I booked less than 10% of the clients I met with. From a pure numbers perspective, it wasn’t working – my effort “in” wasn’t matching the outcome I wanted.
In a traditional sales context, the objective is to set up an enquiry process that enables you to effortlessly book25% of the customers who enquire. If you’re receiving 20 enquiries, your mission is to set up a sales process that lands 5 of those clients.
5 / 20 = 25%
A 25% close rate is awesome. My close rate in 2018 wasn’t awesome.
I knew I needed to change my approach.
Three Tips for Booking More Clients
In the end, through a lot of trial and error, I’ve finally figured out a process that works. The system we’ve created is built on three key insights:
- Be quick to respond – more than 50% of clients go with the vendor who responds first. So, set up a system that gets you back in their inbox within 48 hours. And I don’t just mean an autoresponder. I mean providing real, tangible value to your clients quickly.
- Talk about budgets first – yep. One of the best things we did to increase our booking rate was to flip our entire system on its head. We learned that being upfront about budgets, being open with pricing and making that our first step in the consultation process got us from enquiry to booking with way less effort. As a matter of fact, we started booking $8-$10,000 clients in just a few emails.
- Skip the complicated proposals – you bet. I give you permission to break all the traditional approaches. We don’t use fancy software, we don’t do fancy mood boards. We keep it all unsexy and boring. Why? Refer to point #1.
I know it’s typical in our industry for florists to invest in expensive, complicated software. I used to think the prettier the proposal, the more legitimate we’d appear.
It didn’t work. Fancy wedding proposals templates for florists slowed us down.
When we followed the traditional approach, I wasted a lot of time talking to clients about colour palettes, flowers and big visions for their wedding. And spend a lot of time putting pen to paper, resting fancy proposals and quotes.
And eventually, when it came to $$$$, we’d be so out of alignment with what our clients were expecting that they would just run the other direction. Literally. We’d never hear from them again.
Start Here - Wedding Proposal Template for Florists
Your wedding enquiry process is one of the most important systems to create in your business. And it’s something that takes time to finesse but it’s worth every ounce of energy!
To begin, the best thing you can do is sit down and put yourself in your client’s shoes. What would they like to see/hear/have access to that would be helpful?
Forget about what is normally done in this industry or what your flower friends focus on. What does your client need?
Yes, question all of your assumptions. I know it sounds crazy, but don’t assume that the traditional fancy proposal approach is required. In fact, our enquiry process is so streamlined these days that, most of the time, we don’t do formal consultations.
Instead, we focused on dialling in our marketing messages, our enquiry form and our planning tools – to a point where clients are sold on us by the time we send them the first quick quote.
Our enquiry process has been refined over thousands of enquiries and I’ve spent so much time thinking about my clients that I can almost predict their behaviour.
[As an aside, if you decide, having a pretty PDF or cute mood board is a helpful part of your progress, jump over to Canva.com and check out their templates.]
Our approach is awesome because we don’t worry about custom quotes, detailed mood boards or a fancy wedding proposal template for florists until after they’ve made their first payment.
It works for us.
We got to this place because we questioned all the assumptions. We focused on what mattered most to our customers and kept tweaking and refining our approach.
Need Help?
Want to fast track your progress? Want to get access to our exact enquiry process (including all our planning templates, emails and the exact questions we ask our clients)?
Sign up for my Flower Boss Bootcamp (click here).
Inside my program, I have created specific training on our wedding enquiry process. We include all the templates and tools you need to get real good at responding to clients – and show you what really matters when it comes to attracting better clients.
It’s not as complicated as you think.
Your Current Knowledge + Experience are Enough.
We’re here to make it easier for you to make more money in your flower business!
You don’t need to have a flower shop or qualifications. Nor do you need to have thousands of Instagram followers or worry about being featured on a fancy blog.
All you need are the tools to get you focused and pointed in the right direction.
That’s where our Flower Boss Bootcamp comes in. It’s like a 90-day business school for florists. If you’re on a mission to make more money in your flower business, this is the program for you!
We’re here to fast track your progress, to give you the tools you need to change the trajectory of your flower business. Click here to learn more about my Flower Boss Bootcamp and we’ll see you on the inside.
Imagine where your flower business could be in 90 days? Learn more here.
