It's official, trade is slow. The number of transactions we did at work in June was down year on year, as counted by the tills. It's not just us that's affected, the other local HTA (Horticultural Trades Association) members locally are seeing the same thing. The boss said that she could not blame us if people didn't come in through the door (actually, I suppose she could, if the reason they weren't coming was that we had been horrible to them) but that we must sell them more once they were there. The budget for July is to achieve sales 7% ahead of last year.
This reminds me rather of most of the budgets I have ever been involved in previously, none of which seemed to bear any very strong relationship to what was likely to happen rather than what the management would like to happen. One of my fund management employers took the same budget down, dusted it off and re-used it for years. It's a nice question, though, how you sell people more.
Helping them to find something in the plant centre that they know they want to buy normally works. They are already in the mindset that they want to part with money to get one of those, whatever it is. The only persuasion needed is to reassure them if the examples we have are larger, smaller, more expensive or punier than they were hoping for. This only works if we have the desired plant or object in stock. Today I tried and failed to find a particular rose, a white hibiscus with a pink blotch in the centre, a Colletia and Genista aetnensis. Actually I knew we didn't have the latter, as there is a waiting list of people looking for it, and we don't have it because we haven't been able to get any all season. On top of simple unavailability there is the temptation, when trade is slower, to ease back on stock. This makes the financial ratios look better in terms of stock turn, but of course the staff can't sell what they don't have. Suggesting substitutes sometimes works, but customers can have pretty clear ideas about what they want.
Making the plant centre look nice and putting the most attractive (at that moment) plants in the front line helps. We often hear the comment at the till, as a customer goes through with half a trolley full of plants, that they only came in for one thing. Getting people into a good frame of mind to shop is desirable. Someone who is relaxed but alert, feeling vaguely self-indulgent but still decisive, is in a good mood to shop. A stressed, hurried, frazzled customer isn't. We try to be friendly but polite and create the right ambience. Waxing lyrical about the good points and possible uses of a plant a customer shows interest in can sell it. People don't like to be bugged, though. I still remember a shopping expedition of my own many years ago, trying to buy a suit in Austin Reed to wear to work. An assistant who had presumably been told to sell more pursued me around the shop, pointing out features of every suit I looked at, all of which were self-evident or subjective. It was impossible to concentrate, and in the end I had to ask her firmly and more than once to leave me in peace. I had been buying clothes to wear to the office since she was in primary school and she wasn't helping.
I'm not so sure that selling more to each customer is so easy. I remember when Pizza Express was floating on the stockmarket, the management's presentation about their prospects included the thought that if they could increase each cover by two or three pounds, just the price of a coffee or some dough balls, there was potential for vast profits uplift, but of course not everyone wants coffee or doughballs. It's like when in an Indian restaurant after you've ordered rice the waiter always asks 'and would you like a naan bread'. No, I would not like a naan bread. I've already chosen one helping of carbohydrate, thanks. Likewise the Systems Administrator and I don't normally bother with the coffee, which is not exactly an integral part of an Indian meal. It's not as if we were trying to spin out a date. We're going home together, so if we want coffee we can have it on our own sofa and save the extra fiver. Tough job, selling more.
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