Create a Florist Invoice Template for Customer Service Effortlessly

Florist invoice template for Customer Service

let's talk sales tips and strategies and i'm going to talk you through my exact approach to taking a phone order [Music] welcome back flower fam this week we're going to talk all about sales strategies and taking orders over the phone and i thought it would be super duper helpful to talk you through my exact approach to taking a phone order because it's an area that i did not even think about before but if you're brand new here and you're like who's this crazy person giving me all this information about how to build a successful flower business well hello my friends welcome to the greatest little corner of the internet you're in exactly the right place if you're a floral designer or a farmer florist who is on a mission to build a profitable and successful flower business in this little corner of the interwebs we talk all about how to make money and i teach you my favorite marketing shortcuts and give you as many how to's step by steps lessons learned in terms of how to get results in your business faster when it comes to taking phone orders i never really had put much thought into the fact that there is a strategy to making this magic happen i just would be so paralyzed and like confused and really trying to like make sure i said the right thing totally hesitant to talk about budget and like it was just a total hodgepodge mess in terms of the structure or lack thereof of how i would take a phone order when the phone actually rang let alone my complete like heart-wrenching paralysis just total fear of like just hearing the phone ring there must be like phone anxiety that has to be a thing but this idea of actually thinking through the correct strategy when it comes to taking an order over the phone and i want to give you full permission in terms of taking this script you can literally copy paste it just change the name of the business and make it your own and i had never really thought about the fact that learning how to be good at sales is an integral skill that floral designers need to conquer and once i started to understand that then i started to kind of look at each of our customer touch points and figuring out how to create a template so that i had something to refer to which was super helpful for me but even more importantly somebody else could take an order over the phone and i'm so excited so excited to pass along these six tips to help you feel more confident make more money in your next phone order so let's get into it tip number one and this might seem obvious now but it wasn't obvious to me is use a template literally like we used to pick up the phone and every single one of us had a different approach to answering the phone we'd ask questions in a different order and then we do this and then we do that but once we sat down and actually decided okay this is the scripts that we're gonna start with and then we would come back and make it even better so literally tip number one is super simple use a template create a script for yourself so that when the phone rings when you pick up the phone you can literally pull out your script and go oh okay my only job is to read the words out that are on the paper and then you can think more clearly when a customer asks a question if they have an inquiry about something if there's something you're not quite sure about it like frees up so much of your mental space because all you need to do is to show up and read the words it's like oh right and i know it sounds so obvious when i say it now but it's such an amazing system it's such an amazing shortcut to implement in your business and this is really about practicing the skill of understanding that you as the flower boss have a ceo persona but there are times in your business where you're also going to have to embrace the fact that you're an employee and i love when i think about these two different roles that we have in our own business all of a sudden it's like yeah like if i was going to go work in somebody else's business i would be like oh so do you have a script if something i could follow when you answer the phone do you care how i answer the phone do you have any like preferences what i say to the customers and i'm like oh right when we put ourselves in the employee's shoes and we think about huh what would a really great ceo do oh they would create a template they would create a script so that is literally how this thought process came about was that mindset hack of going the ceo would create a script for the staff member and then the staff member could just show up and read the script it's so amazing my friends so amazing in its simplicity so tip number one just create a script now this is a very intentional strategy but when you're thinking about how to craft your script start with very very simple questions one of the best lessons i learned about our customers is that they have no idea how this whole thing works they're telling themselves that they're supposed to know how this whole thing works but you can ease into building a relationship ease into building a little bit of trust if you can ask them some very very simple questions to begin with so i always laugh i think about picking up the phone because it reminded me of the days when i used to work with the domino's advertising agency because it always made me feel like i was working at like domino's pizza or like a pizza delivery place because the very first question i will ask they will say oh i need to order some flowers and i'll say is that for pickup or delivery i literally like oh yeah no we all work at a pizza joint that's what it feels like but it's a very simple question right so it gets your customer into a more relaxed state so i like to ask the questions and i will ask them in this order is it for pickup or delivery is it for today or a different day and then the third question i ask is what's the occasion those are the three easiest questions for your customers to answer they will already know the answers to those questions so they're not going to be fumbling for oh no i need to say the right thing or i don't know how much to spend or any of that stuff this is really about just laying the foundation for a great relationship so have those really really simple questions at the beginning of your script once you cover off the very basics then you can open up to more open-ended questions questions where they're going to have to put a little more thought and consideration into their answers so the next question i like to ask is okay did you have anything in mind and in some cases they're going to have a very specific request or they might just default to telling you that they're looking for roses and lilies or they might know already that they want to have something in a vase or in a container so it gives them a chance to kind of spurt out whatever information they do know but also know that if there's that kind of awkward pause and they haven't yet filled in with any sort of information fill in that awkward pause with another closed question right were you thinking about something a bit brighter or something more neutral any time your customers feel completely overwhelmed you'll be able to guide them through this conversation by giving them two options it will then help them make more decisions and then in that open-ended section of the conversation and this is the part where you're gonna get the most sweaty you're gonna start talking about money you know they're gonna agree with you in terms of something brighter or something more neutral or they're going to have their idea in terms of what it is that they're looking for the next question i want you to ask them is did you have a budget in mind and in many cases you're going to feel the awkwardness of the silence because how we all have money stories and how much should i spend and what's right and how am i going to look good and how much should i spend and how much do flowers even cost those are all the questions going through your clients head but i love to nip this one in the bud early on in the conversation because there are many a time where i had spent so long on the phone or our team it's been so long on the phone and then they're like 20 dollars so it's like oh let's get that information up front because then we can steer you in a better direction so that question can feel really nerve-wracking but i promise you because you have a script in front of you it's not going to feel so scary and i want you to decide right now what your go-to price point suggestion is so this was something we started experimenting with a lot because the default that we had was 50 makes a nice little bouquet but that was totally us projecting all of our scarcity money stories onto our customers now it's like oh 150 is a good size because you know what they're allowed to decide if they want to spend less but if you can pick a number and pick a number that's about 20 to 30 higher or more than your average order value right pick a number that's a little bit higher and even if they spend five dollars more ten dollars more than they originally thought that starts to add up over time so this price anchoring concept is one of the best sales shortcuts to use in your business but sit down and decide ahead of time what your ideal average order value is right if somebody wants something in a container maybe suggest 250 if somebody wants a lovely lush bouquet maybe your go-to price is 200 but if you can decide ahead of time what you want your go-to price point to be write it into your script and then when the phone rings you know that you just have to read the words and you can just feel hot and sweaty when you're on the phone in all the awkwardness but you sound so much more confident because you're just repeating the script and remember it is so much easier to get your customers to spend a little bit more money when you use a more premium price tag because it's very hard to get somebody who has a low price point in mind to then spend even more it's way easier the other way around and that is the whole concept of price anchoring but this idea of putting the budget conversation right in the halfway mark of your script is so helpful because then if somebody does say oh i only want to spend 20 dollars you can tell them what solution you want to offer to them and maybe that is our minimum delivery is 85 whatever it is but you're not going to waste their time and you're not going to waste your time if you decide ahead of time what that price point is in your script now the next question you're going to ask them is and what would you like the card message to say this is one where 80 of your customers that call you will have not even thought about it so give them space and give them time to really think about it because at the end of the day they feel like that card message is the most important piece of the delivery so don't feel like you have to rush them don't feel like you have to interrupt them but don't ever be surprised if they say oh i hadn't thought about it because most of them hadn't and that's totally fine but my strategy of asking this question after you talk about budget is that periodically people will then think about the card message think about their relationship to the person that they're sending flowers to and then come back and say oh actually can i increase the amount of money that i'm spending on my flowers yes you can so there's a lot of method to this madness but it's so incredibly helpful so in your script setup you are going to have those closed questions at the beginning then you're going to get into more open-ended questions right in terms of really giving them some guidance of format and color palette and getting some clarity from them about what they want and you're going to talk about budget but you're going to be armed ahead of time in terms of what your go-to price point is and then you're going to ask them about the card message and you're going to give them space to really think about what they want to say so then i like to really close the loop on this and this is when i asked for delivery details their phone number the recipient's name spelling things out etc etc etc and getting instructions from them in terms of what to do if somebody's not home if you give them the option which you might not you might just tell them this is what we do if somebody's not home but just really closing the loop in terms of getting the final details after you've sorted through some of those bigger questions ahead of time so that last section on the script is just about really the administration around this order confirming the details and just making sure you have phone numbers and you have the actual address etc etc etc and then tip number six and this is just a really good guideline to follow when it comes to being really good customer service you will notice when you walk into places or when you call places and you feel like you've really been catered to as a customer so much of it is because you have their undivided attention but they do this one little thing so when you're wrapping up the order when you're wrapping up the phone call with your customer i want you to go back and i want you to repeat the details and then the very last thing i want you to do is i want you to go in and i want you to say goodbye using their name this one little tip is one of the things i pride myself on the most because it makes your customers feel so loved because i'm like wow this person actually knows my name right they're not just a transaction they're not just somebody who is you know kind of passing by the night give me all of your money but they kind of are but really going off and say thank you so much for calling insert their name because you will have captured their name and their phone number when you're taking the order anyway so it's this like last little detail that i'm like oh it just gives me goosebumps because it makes me realize how good i am at my job but this idea of the very last thing you're going to do is you're going to repeat back the information to your customers and you're going to use their name in the final sign off so as i said before i am going to link my google docs the exact script that we follow in terms of taking a phone order feel free to take it make it your own tweaking the language that you want to tweak but it's really really helpful to just know that this is the format this is the structure that you get to follow and you can get your entire team to follow a very similar format and don't hesitate at all to play around with some of the details in here if you want to change the language so you feel more confident because of how you like to use some specific terminology go for it but making some of these decisions ahead of time in terms of what is your go-to price point that you want to suggest for your customers is so incredibly helpful and then you have this script that you can rely on so that if you are somebody like me who's a little bit anxious when you're on the phone you don't feel like your most confident self you have a script to rely on and i hope that this video has been helpful and remember if you're feeling totally overwhelmed totally confused by all things business including digital marketing and really understanding pricing and how to make money come join me inside of my flowerboss academy flowerboss academy includes all the coaching all the templates and all the tools that you need to build a successful and profitable flower business i give you access to every resource every template plus there's live classes there is weekly one-on-one coaching there is so much support and amazingness inside of this program i'd love to have you sign up and all you need to do is visit flowerbossacademy.com you get immediate access and because it's a monthly membership program you can literally just join for one month two clicks of a button and you can end your membership no questions asked so my friends i would love to see you inside of the flower boss academy as always if you found this video helpful please give it a like don't forget to hit subscribe if you're new here and as always if you have any questions any follow-up comments leave them in the notes below and as always my friends have the most amazing week and i'll talk to you again next week bye for now [Music] you