Jenny (00:29)
It's pretty gut-wrenching when a potential customer just ghosts you out of nowhere. Especially if you've spent time answering their questions or putting together an email response or, you know, something that you've spent time on communicating with them back and forth, and then they just like ghost. I've worked with three separate flower farmers on this exact problem over the past couple of months. And what happens is they get event.
Or a wedding or even like a bulk bucket inquiry in their inbox. And they reply kindly with the information the person requested, maybe a pricing guide, a A calendar link to book a console, and then nothing. Now, this happens to most of us in this day and age. So, you know, don't be upset if this has happened to you or if it happens to you a lot, but
What we're talking about today is that there are very simple actionable steps you can take to greatly decrease the likelihood of this happening and sometimes can, I mean, almost eliminate the ghosting completely. And today I'm gonna give you three simple steps that you can put in place today, plus talk through some other sales tips that can help. And this is not like bro sales or sleazy sales today. I'm just talking about some super simple, easy things you can do that
Most people don't, and it will put you ahead of like 90% of other flower farmers. before we dive into that, I just wanna be up front and say that this episode is kind of centered around like farmer florists, people who are selling weddings or events, or like people who do consultations with their potential customers. However, if you don't do weddings and events or anything like that, you can still take all these sales principles that we're gonna talk about today and apply them to.
your other sales outlets, it might just look slightly different. But I think most people can agree that getting ghosted is not a fun feeling, but I'm gonna help you solve that problem today. So here's the thing: when farmers or farmer florists get ghosted, most of the time you're not losing the sale, you're not getting ghosted because of your prices or your flowers or your designs or your offer or your personality. It's usually
Because someone else responded faster. For real. You usually lose a sale and get ghosted because someone else gets to them faster than you. And this is actually really good news for you because speed, like responding quickly, is one of the easiest things that you can improve in your business. In Sales Lingo, this is called speed to lead.
lead is just a potential customer, basically. speed to lead. And when you nail this, when you get this right, it can dramatically increase your booking rates and decrease getting ghosted. But this is important because the first business to have a real conversation with a customer has an enormous advantage. Just think about it. Think about if you were somebody who is getting married and you are looking for a florist for your wedding flowers, when you sit down.
To figure that out, you have a problem that has to be solved. You're like, I need wedding flowers. Or just an example. that customer or potential customer, that person may be sitting down and filling out inquiry forms for three or four local farms or florists. They're motivated to fix this right now. They're thinking about their wedding or event right now. They have their phone in their hand, their computer in front of them right in that moment. So
Later, they're gonna be picking up their kid from school, tomorrow they're at work, then they're gonna be making dinner. Then they're moving on mentally from solving that problem in the moment. And so if you can get to somebody while they're still thinking about it, while it's fresh in their mind, while they're trying to solve that problem of finding somebody to get flowers from or, you know, book a workshop with or whatever it is, if you can get to them while they're in that moment.
You are so much more likely to book with them than if you don't get back to them for a couple of days or even a day later. Like, how many of us, and myself included in this, in the past, or maybe you're doing this now, you get around to your inbox like in between farm work or when you have time, and you're not actually answering emails or getting back to people like immediately. Like, if that's you right now, I totally get it. I've also been there before, but
This is the priority to have in your business if you actually want to get revenue and make sales. Okay. So we want to get back to people super, super fast. And so here is a super simple three-step system I help flower farmers put in place. So inside knowledge here, this is what I do with the flower farmers I work with a lot of times. So to prevent getting ghosted and to book more sales or, you know, close more of your bookings, as we would say in sales lingo.
Here's the three-step system. Number one, get notified immediately. So this means you would set up notifications so you know the moment someone sends a new inquiry to you. So usually how this works is you have an inquiry form on your website, somebody fills it out, and then that little inquiry form information goes to your email inbox. If you can set this up where you get notified as soon as an inquiry comes in.
That's what you want. So I'm personally not a huge fan of using like regular email notifications. you can do that. So you're notified on your phone or whatever, you get a text or notification as soon as somebody submits an email to you. not my favorite because I don't want to know every single time I get an email or anything. Like I don't have notifications set up on my phone ever because it's so distracting and really hard to get productive work done. However, a really, really important
Important email that can lead to sales and increasing your business gets priority. And so some email inboxes you can set it up so you're notified when certain emails come in. We have used a tool called Zapier in the past to set this up. It's basically just a third-party software that makes different tools talk to each other. So it's called Zapier Z-A-P-I-E-R. You can Google it and you can Google how to use it and set it up, but basically you can use a tool like that.
So when an inquiry lands in your inbox, you get a text immediately saying you have an inquiry. Right? So that's step one. Just get notified as soon as the inquiry form comes in. Step number two, pick up the phone. I know this is scary for a lot of people out there, but it doesn't have to be. It's not that scary. Pick up your phone, make an actual phone call. Call the person inquiring with you. If they don't answer.
Leave a voicemail and follow it up with a quick text. Okay. Even if they do answer, you're gonna follow up with a text. Now I am a big fan of this because according to Harvard Business Review, calling a potential client within one minute yields up to a 391% higher sales rate. Okay, I'm sorry. What just making a phone call within one minute yields up to a 391%
Higher sales rate. And reaching out within five minutes makes you a hundred times more likely to connect with a potential client rather than waiting 30 minutes. Okay, so hardcore businesses will set up like automations and call centers to make this happen literally within a minute or five minutes. I don't think that flower farmers need to be doing that, but I do think.
If they call during a reasonable hour, I'm sorry, if you get an inquiry within a reasonable hour, you know, not three in the morning, just give them a phone call. And then if an inquiry does come in at like three in the morning, first thing in the morning, first thing that you do is call them. Okay. This is how big businesses win a lot, a lot of sales conversations. So all you're gonna do is just give them a call, a no-pressure call. It's super simple.
Just quick, caring phone call. And if they don't answer, you leave a message. A lot of people won't answer because who really answers their phone from an unknown number these days? Not very many people. And I recommend using a script. So you basically say the same thing every time. I'll talk more about why in just a second. But I would say something like, Hey Sarah, this is Jenny from Trademarks Flower Farm. I just saw your inquiry come through for your September 19th wedding.
Congratulations to you and Ben. I'd love to hear a little more about what you're envisioning for the day and talk through how we can help you. I'm gonna send you a quick email and text right now with a link to my calendar so you can grab a time that works for you. but before I do, is there anything specific you'd like me prepared to talk through when we connect? again, this is Jenny from Trademarks Flower Farm. Keep an eye out for my email and text, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about your wedding. Okay, that was my phone voice. Everybody has a phone voice, right?
I probably have a podcast voice as well. I'm just not aware of it. I just realized that. But anyhow, have this little script saved in your phone. Like just have it saved in a notes app. So when you call them, you can just read it off and you just insert the, you know, people's names and their wedding date. And have the little text script that you'll send to them via email and text as well. So you will send them an email and a text.
Basically saying the same exact thing, but you'll have a link to your consult calendar where they can book a call with you. And as soon as you get off that phone, you're done leaving that voicemail, send that to them. Okay, do it right then and there. And if you do get them on the phone, if you actually speak to them on the phone, get them to book a consult with you on the phone if you can. This honestly takes less than five minutes. And eventually you can hire somebody else, like a VA.
Or some or you know, a virtual assistant, that's what a VA is, or an admin person to do this for you. Okay.
And you can do this if you're in the field. You could do this when you're working outside or in the greenhouse. It's gonna be hard to do this if you're at like the farmer's market. Probably if you're already selling to customers in some capacity, you know, this may get delegated to somebody else, or you may call them as soon as you're done with the farmer's market or whatever. Let's not get super bogged down in the details here. The point is you're calling them and you're giving them a reason to talk to you. Now, about this little script I just read off.
When you leave a message or when you talk to somebody. This is carefully crafted. Let me break down why each piece of the script matters. I'm pretty much gonna go through this like line by line, and no, I'm not crazy. Because yes, if you want to win, this is sometimes a level of detail that it takes. Just being real with you guys. Now, the first thing that I basically say is the person's name. So this is not like a canned response.
When I say, hey, this is or hey, Sarah, this is Jenny from Trademarks Power Farm. I saw your inquiry come through for your September 19th wedding. Congrats to you and Ben. This is instantly signaling that it's not a canned response that we're blasting to everybody. I am a real person who recognize that they are recognizes that they are real people and I care, right? When I say I just saw your inquiry come through, I'm communicating responsiveness. Like,
Their inquiry hasn't disappeared into some website form that nobody checks. And when you communicate responsiveness, you're communicating professionalism, right? And obviously I'm saying congratulations because I want to meet them emotionally. I'm obviously happy for them. They're planning something exciting. I'm not just like processing an order for printer paper or something like that. Like these are humans who are celebrating an important
Time in their life. And it doesn't have to be for a wedding, it could be for any kind of event, but you want to have some sort of personal connection to whatever is happening in their lives. And then the next piece of this where I say, I'd love to hear what you are envisioning. This is important because I'm positioning the next conversation around them, about what they want, what their vision is.
Not about me. It's not about what my pricing is. It's not about what I do. It's all about them. And this is why when people immediately respond to inquiries with like a giant PDF of prices, and then you kind of like wait for them to decide what they want from you. That doesn't work a lot of the times. Because at that point, you know, in every flower farm is different. Like obviously, there's a caveat to everything I say, but for
A lot of people, if you are selling full service weddings, a la carte services like pickup or and bulk buckets, you can tailor what they get. You can tailor your service to their budget and what they want. But if you don't open up the conversation around them first and you just send them like a pricing guide, at that point you're kind of turning yourself into a commodity.
Like they're comparing your $1,500 package against someone else's $1,300 package without understanding why they'd actually want to work with you. And responsiveness is one trait that a lot of people are looking for, and that gives them a huge reason to work with you. So just calling them quickly gives them a better reason to work with you over somebody else. But the important point here is that you understand what they're trying to accomplish first.
You're making about them, not about you. Then the next piece of the script where I say, I'm going to email you right now, I'm telling them exactly what the next step is, exactly what happens next. So there's no confusion about what's supposed to happen next. You're telling them exactly what to do. And that's important. You want to give them what's called a call to action. You want to tell them exactly how to take that step. So when you say,
I'm gonna email you right now with a booking link to my calendar. Grab a time that works for you. You're telling them exactly what to do next. And then I always leave a question. I always leave some sort of open loop, some sort of open answer, a reason for them to engage with me. So I say, is there anything specific you want me to be prepared to talk through when we connect? So whenever possible, you wanna leave a question in there so they can have a reason to come back and talk to you.
When you end just saying, like, let me know if you have questions, most people are not going to have questions or they're not gonna know what to ask. And so you are basically taking control of the sales conversation as you begin doing this. You wanna be the one asking all the questions and directing them where you want the conversation to go. So now the whole point of this phone call is to get them to book the consultation.
It the goal isn't to sell your flowers right now. It's not. It's to schedule the conversation where that sale happens. So where you continue guiding the conversation, taking control of it, and not just letting them dump on you with everything that they want. It's very important that you sort of control where the conversation goes. That's a whole other podcast, a whole other thing. But for now, the goal is to get them to just book the conversation with you.
Now, the result of this is that you will get more sales books, more consultations booked, less ghosting, and a much better client experience. Think about it. Like calling somebody who says something in email never can. It tells them, I saw that you inquired, you matter, and I care enough to call. I know when I've worked with companies, like, like for example, I've been looking for a cleaning company lately because we have like a
Big we live in a log cabin that's sort of like timber style framed. And so we have these really big ceilings with beams really high up. And like we have cleaned them ourselves before, but it's like we just don't have the right equipment. It's it's really hard to do. I'm going off on a tangent here, but basically I don't want to do it myself anymore. So I've been looking for a cleaning company that's willing to come up and like go 20 feet up in the air and clean our fan and all of our
Beams and stuff. And as I've been going through the different companies, like I will submit an inquiry and I will get no response back. And immediately, or I don't get a response back for like a week. And immediately I'm like, don't want to work with them. There was one company though that I submitted an inquiry and I submitted it in the morning. And that afternoon, they called me back. And guess who we're gonna hire to go with our clean for our cleaning company? The people who got back to me the fastest.
I'm sure you have examples of this in your own life and your own experience. Like I can think of like a dozen others. Like when I was looking into like daycares and stuff for my son, I called and sent an email inquiry to like three different daycares, and none of them got back to me. Didn't no, not even like a courtesy response, like, we're full at the moment, but we'll have more spots open up. Like, just didn't get back to me. And so I was like, that's it. We're not doing daycare. Like just that alone.
Them not responding to me or not responding to me quickly told me a story about their business. It told me that they didn't care enough about me and my family to just get back to me. And so, because of that, we just made a decision that we weren't even gonna do daycare at all. And now that I'm saying that out loud, I myself am a little shocked at how that has influenced my opinion on the daycares in our area or whatever. Pretty crazy.
So I'm curious if there's any of these situations that have come up for you. And I know some of you might be thinking here, like, I don't want to bother people. But remember, they contacted you first. They contacted you. They said, Hey, I'm looking for flowers. I'm looking for help. Okay, you're not just like cold calling someone during dinner, randomly asking if they need dahlias or something, right?
They literally just said like, I'm interested in buying flowers from you. And so they're expecting you to respond.
And even if somebody is not a phone person, like they don't want to talk to you on the phone, I guarantee they're still going to respect the fact that you cared enough to reach out to them. And you know, you're sending them a follow up email anyway. So if they want to communicate that way, that's fine. But you are literally telling them, I care, I'm calling you, right? So step number one, get notified immediately. Step number two, just call them.
But use a script for the reasons I just went over. And then the final step in this process, step number three, is follow up. So again, you might feel like you're bothering people. I get that. Just don't be annoying. But again, these people contacted you first. They're looking for help. If someone doesn't respond, that does not necessarily mean no. Like life happens. They forgot. People are busy.
Maybe they meant to respond. They need to talk to their fiance. Your email got buried. They got distracted. Like so many of these things can happen all the time. Just ask me how quickly I respond to text messages from friends. Like it's not very fast because my life gets busy. And I'm sure that happens to all of your potential customers as well. What you want to do is establish a very simple follow up process. So, for example, the first day they inquire, you send them an immediate
like immediate contact, you call them, send them an email right away. Then day one or two after that, you send a follow-up. I would do a phone call. You could do an email too.
Edit. Then maybe days five to seven afterwards, I would do another follow-up. And then after about a week or maybe a week and a half, I would do a final close the loop message. And there's a difference between, hey, just calling to check in, see if you got my email and my message, versus giving them a reason to respond to you. So in your follow-ups, you want to say something like,
Hey, Saria, just wanted to follow up about your September 19th wedding. I still have your date available. Would love to hear all of your flower ideas. Are you still looking for a flower farmer? And then tell them what you want them to do next. Book a call, call me back, whatever it is. So you want to give them a reason to respond, not just hey, checking in.
And then for that final message that you're gonna send them, like a week or week and a half out or whatever, you want to not try to like force them to do business with you. Like we're not trying to be annoying right now. We're not trying to chase people. We're just trying to help them make a decision. That's all we're trying to do.
I would explicitly give them permission to say no in this. So I would say something like
And if you've decided to go in another direction, no worries at all. Just let me know and I'll close out your inquiry form on my end. Are you still looking for flowers for your wedding?
So when you say, I'll close out your inquiry on my end, you're telling them, like, you haven't gotten back to me, so we're gonna move on as well. A lot of times that feels like a deadline. They have a little bit of urgency to get back to you. And so if somebody has been busy, they've been meaning to respond, This will give them that little push to actually respond to you. And if they don't respond to you, if you do get ghosted,
You never know. You may hear from them a month or two from now,
And if they don't respond to you at all, just don't take it personally. So again, we're just following up two or three times here. We're not chasing them forever. We're not being annoying. They contacted you wanting you to respond to them. And you're simply fulfilling that promise. And after two or three reach outs, if they have not responded to you, that's the end of your relationship, unless they decide to open it back up again.
So this is a very, very simple process. I don't spent a lot of time talking about it, but super simple. Number one, get notified as soon as they submit an inquiry. Number two, call them. Number three, follow up. And a lot of times people get ghosted because they simply don't follow up. And that potential customer just got busy and you just didn't remind them like, hey, you contacted us.
So very, very simple process, but most people don't do this, and that's why they're not getting sales. So simple, but most people don't do it.
Now, before we move on to a couple other quick points, I think it's important to understand the difference between marketing and sales here. Marketing is what gets attention and creates interest. The sales process is what turns that interest into an actual purchase. So someone filling out your inquiry form means that your marketing worked. Once they have filled out that inquiry form, they're now in a sales process with you.
And this is where I think so many flower farmers unintentionally drop the ball because they think they asked for information. I gave them in the information, like I sent them my pricing or whatever. Now it's up to them. Not necessarily. Your job in the sales process is to help them make a decision whether that's to work with you or not. Because a lot of times it may not be the best decision for them to work with you if they want like red roses and baby's breath, but you don't grow that and don't have that on your flower farm and you're unwilling to like buy those in.
For this person's event. May not be a good fit, but your job is to help them make a decision and to do it quickly because that's going to help them. They don't want to drag out a decision forever. Most people want to make a decision quickly, just getting the information that they need so they can move on with their lives. And nothing about this is sleazy or pushy. People are raising their hand and telling you that they have a problem, they have a need that they need solved, and you are just trying to help.
them solve it, okay.
The flower farmers who consistently book customers and weddings and events, they aren't always like the most talented growers or they're not the most experienced. They're often just the ones who literally respond the fastest. And response time is just a tiny part of the sales process.
Jenny (25:54)
There are dozens of little moments between someone becoming interested in your flowers and actually becoming a paying customer. Like how easy is it to inquire? What happens after they inquire? How quickly do you respond? What do you say? What's the next step? What happens if they don't respond? How do you handle questions about price? How easy is it to pay you? And every one of those little moments can affect whether or not you make the sale. And if they say no.
Don't assume you know why they say no. No response does not automatically mean that your prices were too high or your flowers aren't good enough or they found someone cheaper or they don't like me. Instead, the more useful thing would be to get curious. Look at where people are dropping off. Is it between when they
Leave an inquiry and you get a response. Is it between the response and the consultation? Is it between the consultation and the proposal? Is it between the proposal and the deposit? Like this is where sales starts becoming measurable. Like if you had 20 inquiries and you booked two of them, that's useful information. But people aren't buying my flowers, isn't enough information to know exactly what piece needs fixing.
And finally, I just want to wrap up this episode with a mention about sales in general. Because a lot of flower farmers dislike the idea of selling or sales because people associate it with convincing someone to buy something they don't want, or like a sleazy salesman or something like that. But good sales is nothing more than just helping somebody make a decision and trying to help them solve a problem they have.
Good sales is about responding quickly, asking good questions, understanding what they need, making a recommendation, answering concerns, making the next step clear and following through. You're not trying to convince everybody. You're just trying to help the right customer make a decision. And sometimes that decision is no, and that is okay. So here is my challenge for you guys this week. The next time someone sends you an inquiry, just call them as soon as you possibly can.
Do it while they're still thinking about you. And if they don't answer, leave a voicemail, send them a text and an email, make the next step incredibly incredibly, incredibly clear. And just see what happens. Because getting more profitable isn't always about growing more flowers or finding thousands of new customers. Sometimes there are opportunities sitting inside the business you already have. Like, for example, if you
Do weddings or events or on-farm workshops or you sell experiences like tickets or something, and you get a hundred people that fill out your inquiry form or send you an email about it, and you only book 10 of those people. If the only thing that you did in your business, like literally the only thing, was to increase your response time and put a system into place for that, you could increase your 10% booking rate to a 40% booking rate. You could sell four.
Times as much. And learning how to identify those opportunities is exactly what we focus on inside of my business program called Six Figure Flower Farming.
So just make some phone calls, see what happens. And if you don't do weddings or events or workshops or something like that, a lot of these same principles apply to farmers market sales or to farm stands sales and things like that, or even wholesale direct-to-florists. If you can be the first one there with flowers.
You could get their attention first. A lot of times you can beat out the competition. So we won't go too deep into that. But I really hope that this conversation was helpful for you today in some quick little tips to help boost your flower sales. Thanks again for being here for another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Don't forget we publish new episodes every Monday.
Now, if this episode was helpful in any way, shape, or form, if you got any value out of it, if you could please go and leave the podcast a review on either Apple or Spotify, it would be so greatly appreciated. There are thousands and thousands of you that listen to this podcast every single week or a lot of weeks out of the year. And just a fraction of you have actually left a review, which if you have already left one, thank you, thank you from the
Bottom of my heart. But if you haven't yet, because you've just been thinking, I need to do that sometime soon, please just take 30 seconds to go and do it now. It would mean so much to me and to all the other flower farmers that need to hear the information in this podcast. So go leave that review. And thanks again for being here for another episode. Don't forget, we publish new episodes every single Monday. So we'll see you again next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
