How to Wedding Florist Consults

How to Wedding Florist Consults With Ease – 5 Questions to Ask Your Clients

Struggling to figure how to wedding florist consults? Here's my go-to approach to making it easier for you (and your prospective clients)!

In 2018, I must have held the record for most wedding consults done and the least number of bookings made.

When it came to figuring out finding answers on "how to wedding florist consults" I was so lost!

Seriously. It felt like a crazy hamster wheel where I would show up for the consult, ask the questions, tell them I'd send them the quote and then either get ghosted or finally hear back that they went with someone cheaper. It was happening to me every single week.

Overcoming that challenge taught me so much and, most importantly, it got me to question how I was consulting my client consults and finding new, more efficient ways to do things.

Since that time, I've really mastered the art of the wedding enquiry process and started to really see that the process of how to wedding florist consult itself isn't the end-all, be-all. Rather, it's just one step in the customer experience we're providing our clients. It's like that one meeting is simply one piece of a bigger sales process, an experience you're providing your clients.

Rule #1: There Is No One 'Right' Way To Do Consults

We all have different strengths and different personalities. Don't shy away from that and don't assume that someone else's template is going to fit you perfectly.

Instead, I want you to think about your wedding consultation process as something that is intrinsically yours, built on your strengths and structure in a way that makes it easy for you to navigate.

Make your wedding flower consult process your own and, remember, you can forever be refining it, changing it and adjusting it.

Below, I've mapped out my five favourite questions to ask clients during a consultation – feel free to use them, try them out for yourself. But also, don't feel you must stick to this formula. Make the questions your own. Play around with the specific words you use and the order you sort through the details with.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember when it comes to wedding consults is that this is about building a relationship. You want to show up with professionalism and focus on building trust, really getting to know your clients and understanding what makes them tick.

As crazy as it sounds, how you navigate your consultations can set you up for a huge amount of creative freedom. If you can get a sense from your clients about their vision for the day, their priorities, what they're worried about and really dig into their priorities, you'll get such a clear picture of where you can push the creative experience and where you need to stick to a specific box.

BONUS TIP: Not sure what to include on your wedding flower enquiry form? Check out this YouTube Video: 3 Questions Every Florist Should Include On Their Enquiry Form

How to Wedding Florist Consults: 5 Questions to Ask Your Clients

QUESTION 1: Paint me a vision for the day. How do you see the day unfolding?

I like to lead with this question for two reasons: yes, it's helpful to get them to explain how they see their day going. But just as important: get them talking, have them share their vision and dedicate a bit of time getting comfortable with one another at the beginning of the session.

This question is all about setting the tone for the consult and building rapport. Your clients are as nervous as you are. Use the first 5-10 minutes to settle in, generate excitement and build that personal connection.

QUESTION 2: What are you most excited about on your wedding day?

This one question is incredibly powerful because it shows you where their values are and what really matters to the two of them.

A word of warning: don't be surprised if they aren't quite sure or they each have sort of conflicting ideas of what matters.

Not having a clear answer to this question is super common and in fact, it presents you with the opportunity to become truly indispensable.

Be the one who helps them sort out their priorities and they will take your guidance and input on all the things (particularly when it comes to prioritising budgets, colour palettes and flowers to feature).

Don't be shy about sharing your point of view and bringing them back to the task at hand: prioritisation.

QUESTION 3: What is your budget?

Yes, talking about money can feel uncomfortable but this one question serves your clients as much as it serves you.

This is one area I really shied away from in the early years of my business. I didn't want to talk about money and I didn't want to feel the awkwardness. But I know, my hesitation to talk about budgets is one of the reasons I wasted so much time and got ghosted by so many clients.

Now, just like you, most humans hate talking about money. This is true for your clients as well.

Your clients are going to feel embarrassed to bring it up and might even be filled with a sense of shame because they are convinced they don't have enough money (this is true no matter how small or big their budget is).

HOT TIP: I like to include this question on their initial enquiry form to avoid that uber awkward first money conversation. It's much easier to repeat the information from their initial enquiry form than it is to have them be the first to throw their hat into the ring.

At the end of the day, 99% of our clients don't have enough money to afford their entire wish list (that's why it's called a wish list, right?).

That's OK. Remember, you are the expert. You're there to help. Make it your goal to pass along your guidance and expertise and give them the information they need for them to make the right decision for them.

QUESTION 4: What is stressing you out the most?

This question is there to really built trust and create a better bond between you and your clients.

I've found that most couples getting married don't feel like they have enough people advocating for them, cheering them on or giving them the support to make decisions from a place of empowerment. Instead, they're trying to make sure they're not hurting anyone's feelings or hoping mum doesn't blow a gasket when she hears how much that archway is.

Become your client's #1 fan and be their #1 cheer person. They'll love you for it!

In addition to building a better bond with your clients, this question is really helpful to give you a bit of a heads up as to what to watch for on the big day.

Weddings bring up all sorts of emotions for all of us and it's helpful for us to know what we're walking into on the big day, right?

For example, it's super helpful to know if the bride is super stressed about being the centre of attention or if one of the pair is dreading what their Aunt Judy is going to do on the dancefloor.

Shortcut your progress and get access to the full suite of templates + how to guides with my Wedding Enquiry Masterclass. This course is part of the Flower Boss Bootcamp study vault. Join today and fast track your enquiry process!

QUESTION 5: If you could ask me anything, what would it be?

Yep. Give them a few minutes to ask any questions they might have. And give them permission to ask anything (quite literally, tell them it's OK if they think it sounds silly).

Remember, your clients haven't done this before (or if they have, they did 10+ years ago).

Be patient and shower them in kindness. A the end of the day, I have found this approach really does help set the foundation for being able to create an even bigger, better 'wow' client experience on the day.

Go Deeper: Wedding Consults Like a BOSS

It's normal to feel super intimated and overwhelmed navigating wedding consults. Most of us spend a lot of time worrying about how to respond to questions like "how many weddings have you done before?" or "show me your portfolio?"

We stay stuck, paralysed by our own insecurities and are afraid we're going to get called out as a fraud, feeling like an imposter. This is a totally normal human response when we're doing new things.

The remedy: create a plan for success.

Yes. When it comes to how to wedding florist consults, there is a simple formula to follow.

And it doesn't need to be super-duper complicated.

In this week's podcast episode I'm sharing some of my favourite principles for sorting through your approach to conducting wedding consult and giving you the tools to show up like a Boss at your next consult.

What you'll learn from this episode:

Why most florists approach how to wedding florist consults backwards (and how to make sure you're not!)

My five-part wedding consult framework

The fastest way to win a client's trust and book better clients – even if you're new

My #1 tip for showing up with confidence at your next wedding flower consult

Listen to the full episode here

 

Full Episode Transcript

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florist business plan 2022

Florist Business Plan for 2022

Business planning sounds boring, doesn't it? I totally get it. The idea of creating a florist business plan for 2022 makes you want to run screaming the other direction. Like one of those, can-I-please-poke-my-eyes-out-with-a-hot-skewer-instead sort of activities.

And if you Google "Florist Business Plan for 2022", it gets worse. All you're presented with is these epically long documents and heaps of questions to fill in.

That's precisely why I wanted to put together this blog post, to show you how simple business planning for your flower business can be.

Business Planning for Florists Doesn't Need to Be Hard

99% of the reason we resist planning is that it feels totally overwhelming and a lot of work for not a lot of impact. It's so much easier to just keep going with what you've been doing and hope the rest sorts itself out, right?

We tell ourselves to just keep doing stuff, filling our time, posting to Instagram with no plan, making random updates to our websites and just basically checking all the things off the list...but not seeing the results you really want to create in your flower business.

"If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there."
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The single most powerful reason a business plan helps you grow your flower business is it encourages you to shift your perspective.

It's like a North Star for your flower business. It gives you focus and makes it easier for you to make more informed decisions about the way forward.

We're bombarded with messages on social media, encouraging us to be grateful for what we have. But when you hear the call to start your own business, it requires you to channel your ambition and dive, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone every day.

The shift here is to be grateful for what you have AND still feel the drive to want more. It's not an either-or sorta situation. It's an opportunity for 'yes and'.

Once you begin to articulate a handful of numbers and set a clear revenue goal, you'll see how big you need to start thinking – and you'll start to understand just how much your drive and ambition are going to serve you in growing your flowe business.

 

4 Simple Steps – Florist Business Plan for 2022

Yes, you can spend hours and days and months crafting the perfect business plan. But then you'll never get to work, taking action, evaluating your results and making progress.

Crafting the right business plan for your flower business is about finding a balance (your business, your rules, yeah?). No matter how you decide to approach planning for 2022, here are four fundamental topics to address:

  1. Your Annual Revenue Target
  2. Your Monthly (or Weekly) Target
  3. Obstacles to Making it Work
  4. Strategies to Make it Happen

Your Annual Revenue Target

In most cases, the reason florists fail to keep their doors open and call it quits is that their goals are either (1) non-existent or (2) too small.

This one little bit of math helps shift your thinking and realises you need to set your sights higher.

Let's do some super simple math. When it comes to setting a revenue target for your flower business, the very basic formula I like to follow is: Annual Revenue Target = personal income goal x 5 

Now, I am not a financial advisor or accountant but I find this simple formula helps provide clarity. If you want to bring home £40,000 a year, your business' revenue target is £200,000. If you want to earn $100,000 per year, your business's revenue target is $500,000. Yeah?

Monthly (or Weekly) Target

I find it really helpful to take the annual target and beak it down into a number I can wrap my head around. It's hard to imagine $500,000 but it's much easier to envision 8 orders a day, right?

Your monthly (or weekly) target is going to depend on what niche you're focused on. But here are two examples to help show you how to break it down:

Daily Flower Deliveries:
Target Average Order Value = $120, including delivery
Annual Sales Target $250,000
$250,000 / $120 = 2084 orders per year
2084 orders per year / 12 months = 174 orders per month
2084 orders per year / 52 weeks = 40 orders per week

Weddings:
Average Order Value = $5,000
Annual Sales Target $250,000
$250,000 / $5,000 = 50 weddings per year

Obstacles to Making it Work

This is where my approach to creating a florist business plan for 2022 diverts from others. I'm here to keep it super-duper simple so you can get clear on the road forward and start taking massive action.

As soon as you start playing around with the numbers, you're going to hear that little voice in your head come up with 1235 reasons why it's not possible, why you won't be able to make your revenue goal happen. That's normal. In fact, it's to be expected. (If you don't hear that voice, are you even human?)

The next step in crafting your business plan is to think about the obstacles to you creating this volume of sales in your flower business. Yes, there is going to be shiz you gotta overcome to make it work.

Where we get in our own way is that we are convinced nothing should go wrong, nothing should get in our way to make it happen and it should all be smooth sailing.

And then you hit your first hurdle and you use that as a reason to stop.

Don't do that.

When you take the time, in advance, to identify the obstacles to creating your revenue goal, you're not as shocked when you hit the obstacle. In fact, you know you're doing it right when XYZ obstacle pops up.

That's the value of this one exercise – it gives you the markers to move forward. It literally shows you where to focus your time and energy.

Strategies to Make it Happen

This is the definition of planning ahead. With each obstacle you've identified from above, think about what steps you can take to overcome that obstacle.

  • Not good with tech? Who can you enlist the help of to make it work?
  • Want to make time to take care of the family? How can you plan ahead and ensure you make time to also focus on growing your business?
  • Not good with numbers? Is there a piece of software, an app or another human who can make it easier on you?
  • Not comfortable with a certain mechanic or design style (and you really want to learn to make it), who can you learn from? How can you prioritise personal growth and intentional practice and still make progress in your business?

Remember, no one was born knowing all the things. Building a successful flower business requires you to learn a lot of things. Not just flower care, mechanics and colour theory. But also, SEO, marketing strategies, sales tactics, customer service, team leadership and more.

This approach saves you so much of the additional frustration, distractedness and overwhelm we experience when we're expecting our path to building a business should be easy.

Taking time to map out a plan, identify the obstacles and strategies to make it work gives you room to evaluate your options and sort through different ways forward.

Planning for 2022

When it comes to planning for my flower business, I like to do it in two shorter sessions. In hour one, I'll set an annual sales target and then a 90-day sales target and I map out the obstacles, the hurdles that I know will get in the way of making it happen. I then take a second session to map out my strategies forward.

Y'all thought your creativity was limited to your flowering. Good news – that's just the tip of the iceberg baby!

Just like design, planning is a process. And, as with everything I teach, I'm here to deal it to you straight and cut out the fluff. This approach works well for me so feel free to use it, and make it your own.

 

Want more FREE goodness?

Check out this recent blog post: How to Increase Sales – 3 Steps to Success (click here) 

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