 The location of your
florist shop can make or break your flower sales
How well is your flower shop
located?
Are you offering your floral
creations where there are thousands of affluent people passing
by every day...
...or have you had to settle
for a more reasonably priced flower shop in a less busy location?
When it comes to location,
the florist is forced to face many problems and paradoxes.
If you're offering your floral
arrangements at a location of reasonable cost, the passing flow
of potential customers is usually but a trickle.
Cheaper spaces are in less
affluent parts of the city so chances are that opting for a less
risky rental property will brings along a marketplace where few
of the passers-by would buy a bouquet more than once or twice
during their lifetime...
Yet the best locations are
seldom available.
Those who've made it at such
crossroads of passers-by aren't likely to give up their top location.
That's aside from the fact
that usually these commercial properties rent for astronomical
cost and come with an extended lease period, often weighted with
additional commitments and obligations for the maintenance of
the premises.
Thus, there appears to be a
bit of a Catch 22 with location for the florist.
To acquire a good walk-in clientele
you need to risk enormous fortunes and take on huge commitments
which bring a lot of risk and uncertainty...
...but if you go for the sensible,
low-cost and low-risk option then you may never reach the level
of income (and profit) required to take on a great location.
It can feel a bit hopeless
sometimes... as if one is "damned if you do and damned if
you don't..."
Of course the reality for most
florists lies somewhere in-between these two extreme ends of
the location scale.
Most have a good spot with
some passing traffic, some of whom are of the affluent kind (or
the type appreciating flowers).
And nothing's wrong with that,
absolutely nothing.
But have you ever
thought if it was possible to OVERCOME the limitations of location
in selling flowers?
With the nature of florist
industry, one cannot but be subject to the limitations of the
location of one's flower shop.
It's as if there's an unspoken
cartel of kinds, allocating the available customers more or less
evenly to all the florists in a given area.
Is there really someone who
deals out these allocations — "You get this many customers
and that much revenue... and your competitor's share of the cake
is..." — or not?
More to the point, can you
CHANGE your "natural share" of the flower sales and
simply sell more to more people, regardless of WHERE they're
located or where they walk?
Yes you can.
Expanding the
reach of your flower sales
If we examine the structure
of buying anything from a shop, we can arrive at a few conclusions.
One of the reasons why we buy
from where we do is its location, of course.
But a lot of people go out
of their way to buy something.
Why would they travel twice
the distance when they could buy the same (or similar) thing
right next door?
Some of it has to do with pricing,
of course.
But you'd be amazed how little.
Most people will buy certain
household items or goods or products cheaper if they can... but
not everything.
Things of luxury,
items of quality and uniqueness of SERVICE are all values for
which we will travel far further afield without fail.
Thus, if you give great service
and create an impression of unique quality in the eyes of the
first-timers then they will become repeat customers.
Well, nothing new there for
you, of course.
But the important question
is this one:
How could we get a lot
MORE good customers to come in THE FIRST TIME?
After that the next issue is
to create a service model that serves the needs of these
customers to such high degree that it's basically UNIQUE in the
area.
These two factors together
will guarantee a continuous enlargement of your market share
within your area totally beyond any limitations set by the location
of your florist's outlet.
If we could somehow expand
the obtaining if first-time buyers AND be certain to offer them
a service which they LOVED (and could not find anywhere else)
then we would be set to increase our clientele continuously.
Mind you. It would not shake
the world during the first few months. It would be a TRICKLE...
but one of which nothing escapes so every single new customer
is RETAINED.
But let's go wild here and
play with another idea.
What if we could
target the most affluent and most influential people in your
area to become our first-time buyers?
You know, acquire clients who
are on TOP of the economy in the area.
What if the average first-buy
customer would be a business person, someone who has a HUGE network
of contacts in form of business associates, friends, family,
trade contacts... all of whom look up to him and follow his lead?
What would happen if you could
list a large number of such opinion leaders into your clientele
from the area?
Well, for one, these people
are leaders and those who trust their opinions would FOLLOW
them and also want to use the same florist service. What's
good for the geese is good for the gander, in other words.
For the other, people would
come from ANYWHERE in your area to your flower shop, regardless
of how many competing florists they had to pass to get to your
establishment.
That's the power of leadership.
That's why big companies pay
millions for celebrity endorsements... and that's why many small
businesses will gladly serve famous people for free... just because
they bring so many FOLLOWERS to the shop once their patronage
becomes known.
Having a way to tempt the leaders
of your area onto services FIRST will definitely expand your
reach all over the area... and who knows what other positive
effects it could have?
It's not an imaginary opportunity,
you know... unless you've fallen prey to the "killer of
all opportunities..."
Have you accepted
the "accepted realities of florists?"
The number one killer of all
hope and possibilities is known to be the act of "finally
accepting the realities of life."
Let me explain.
When we're young or when we
start a new project, we are full on enthusiasm and trust for
the future.
But we're also at the worst
end of things because we haven't acquired the priceless experience
of things in the subject in which we endeavour to get ahead.
And life has a way of dealing
blows. Gaining experience can be a costly exercise, not only
financially but also in terms of loss of enthusiasm.
Most mistakes are made in the
beginning. Each mistake makes us more careful and diminishes
our belief that we can make it.
Every blow has a way of waning
our enthusiasm. Cynicism takes hold and we give up our dreams,
one after another, "accepting that it cannot be achieved."
It's a dwindling spiral...
but only if you let it be so.
The fact that a mistake was
made was due to lack of experience or other mistakes, NOT caused
by fate or unavoidable "realities of life."
And yet our trust in our abilities
to make it go right dwindles as a result.
We hear how the more experienced
florists talk about what can be done and what isn't possible...
and it all seems to EXPLAIN why we failed... so we buy into the
same idea... and start spreading it.
We're all in that boat in one
way or another.
But it's the wrong
lesson to learn.
And so it is with expanding
the reach of your flower shop far beyond your location.
The only way it can fail
is if you give up before you've even tried.
The only way to do that is
to claim that it's silly to try because "everyone knows
it cannot be done."
"You need to accept
the realities of life..."
Yeah right. Sure you do...
if you want to fail by way of becoming totally blind to ways
of gaining an edge over the competition!
Trust me on this one.
I've worked with more than
one hundred industries... and in every single one there's the
chorus of "old boys" who've given up trying to compete
for their share of the market and become "accepted authorities"
who now spread the message of hopelessness.
It's easy enough to see WHY
they want that no-one even TRIES.
"Don't let's rock the
boat, let's just all keep our share of the market, let's all
save by not marketing at all..."
You get the idea. If nobody
does anything to break the status quo then those who do nothing
will win, of course.
So the first prerequisite for
overcoming the limitations of your location is that you're willing
to believe it could be POSSIBLE.
That's the hard part.
As for the second requirement,
it involves a carefully created system of finding the most influential
people in your area, offering them a very special luxury service
and the tools to sell the concept to these V.I.P. -leaders successfully.
And that's actually the easy
bit!
There's NO NEED to settle for
whatever customers you can get from the passing traffic but you
can simply expand throughout your area with this system.
The exact way to achieve that
and all the ready-to-use tools have been documented in form of
a manual we call the Florist's Flower Power Business Expansion
Guide (Flower Power Guide for short)
CLICK HERE
to read the presentation of the Florist's Flower Power Guide
to see how you can easily overcome the limitations of the location
of your flower shop!
I guarantee that it will change
your view on the limitations of location completely and open
up a whole array of new possibilities for expanding your florist's
business...
Best wishes,
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