Ten techniques that increase the average value of a sale.

It’s your choice: you can spend sweat and dollars attracting more customers to your store, or you can work with your staff to improve the value of each sale. My experience tells me upselling is more efficient. Start with measuring, training and culture, then apply my 10 practical tips to make your registers ring louder.

Measurement
The value of upselling can be measured by using a very common cornerstone, and that is your average transaction value by day, by week and by year. For an independent garden centre $30, to $40 is low, while $40 to $50 is average, $50 to $60 is very good and $60+ is excellent. The average independent garden centre in Ontario processes 20,000 transactions per year. It is easy to see how an increase of only $10 per transaction can make a remarkable difference to their bottom line.

Training
The challenge in our industry is to hire, and quickly train seasonal staff, and try to give them the skills that generate enough confidence in them to use upselling techniques. The most powerful skill set that you can give both your seasonal and fulltime staff is to train them to focus on the benefits of the products and services that they provide, rather than the facts themselves. In other words, sell the end result that the customer will enjoy. We have far too many factoid-driven staff in our industry.Train your staff to use good questioning skills to blueprint the customer and provide them with information that can be used for upselling techniques.

Culture
Make upselling a part of your organization’s culture. Involve your entire staff from your horticulture experts through to your cashiers and carryout staff to understand that upselling is part of the professionalism of retailing. Customers visit independent garden centres expecting a high level of professionalism. You can only deliver that when you provide everything to complete the project, including suggestions which add value to the project and to their home.

Try these tips to increase average sales
The following 10 techniques and strategies, when incorporated into your staff’s sales and service skills, are guaranteed to increase your average sale.

Related products
Many products are part of a project, and it is important to train your staff to include these related products in the sale. The inclusion of these related products will improve the result of the project, and will make the result better for the customer and create a sense of professionalism in your garden centre. The X and Y gen. consumer is generally in a hurry, and expects related products to be merchandised together to save them searching through the retail site. Create room service in your merchandising and you will increase your average sale.

Companion plants
Plants are generally purchased for their colour or usefulness in the landscape. Train your staff to merchandise companion plants either by size, foliage or usage to help build the sale for nursery stock. Merchandised together, these plants create instant impulse in the eye of the consumer.

Upsizing
Train your staff to super size plants the same way McDonald’s super sizes its combos. One of the simplest ways to build your average sale is to provide the next size up in that plant category. Again the X and Y gen. are often willing to pay more for instant results.As a side note, you should always have the larger size available even if only to demonstrate the value of the smaller size plant.For example having five gallon Hostas available in your garden centre at $39.99 illustrates what a bargain a two gallon is at $19.99. What you may find out to your pleasant surprise is how many five gallon Hostas you do sell.True fact: One of my clients sold a 10 gallon Hosta for $99.99.

Services
Garden centres provide a number of services. It is often taken for granted how important those services are to build the sale. Having a delivery service allows the customer to buy a larger plant. Even the basic service of loading their trunk is important to increasing the size of the order. Custom planting can become a very important category in some greenhouse-driven garden centres. Another service that most garden centres provide is custom ordering. I see more of these requests and I believe the information highway of the Internet is driving this new demographic client to search out new and different products. Finally, the aging 50+ hardcore gardener is doing less work in the garden and is requiring more of the installation and maintenance service that many garden centres provide. Experience is showing me that garden centre services, such as installation and maintenance, are often the fastest growing category of the business.

Seasonal programs and items
Experienced garden centres know that within the three basic seasons there are another half dozen mini-seasons, each of which provides opportunities for specialized plants and garden centre events. Take advantage of these mini seasons to promote seasonal items. I personally own five front door mats to change with the season. To get more bang from your buying, create these seasons as independent categories and aggressively display and merchandise all items related to that category.

Custom planters and custom orders
One way to turn a typical three visits a year customer into a six or eight visits a year is to offer a custom planting program for their containers. It is also a great way to create a customer for life because you don’t become the best source, you become the only source of their landscape dreams. The same container which has a spring planting theme can have fall mums and grasses and then be converted again for Christmas. Custom orders can be a bit of a drag, especially when they are for small quantities. I’ve never promoted letting the customer run the garden centre. However, there are opportunities, particularly for mass plantings, trees, and specialized higher priced plants, to help you upsell your customer. You may find one or two of your suppliers who can work with you on a quick turnover in some of these categories. If so, train your staff on the availability of this service.

Theme the project
True salesmanship occurs when your staff takes the project to another level. Train them to illustrate that there is an overriding theme to the client’s project or garden. When you create the theme you can expand the horizon of the project, and open new areas of product fulfillment. Mrs. Obama has directed her staff to create a kitchen garden for the White House, which means to us that millions of people will be attempting to create a kitchen garden this year. It is your task to decide the size and extent of what can go in that garden – vegetables, herbs, vines, small fruits and fruit trees just to name a few.

Multiple pricing
Multiple pricing is a technique which encourages people to purchase plants in groups i.e. three for $10, five for $15. Consumers will often go to the most convenient multiple. Typical question how much soil do I need? Answer triple mix is three for $11. Customer’s respond by taking three, six or nine. The strategy involved is to increase your unit price and then back it down to your multiple price that gives you an appropriate margin. With plants in the same category, use the phrase “mix and match” to achieve the multiple. It works at Sobey’s and it will work for you to increase your average sale.

Display merchandising
The best displays in garden centres illustrate the actual usage of plants and their combinations to create the landscape dream. The beauty of these displays is that the customer needs all of the plants to make the dream come true. The skill level of your staff to substitute and adjust your designs for your customer is still a door opener for customers to realize the potential in their landscape. Our industry will rise and fall on the visualization of the product. Create mini-displays throughout your garden centre and change them frequently in order to encourage the upselling of nursery stock.

Signage
Next to staff training, the single greatest tool to help you upsell in a garden centre is signage. This is often called the silent salesman, because it gives the customer price, picture and horticultural information. But, it does much more. These signs never quit, they never take a holiday, they are never late and they never take a lunch break. The smaller you are, the more invaluable the signage as you rely less on your staff and more on the signage. An important area of signage that is often overlooked in a garden centre is category or directional signs that lead the customer through your site. Garden centres are often very large and confusing places. You don’t want people to get frustrated, but you do want them to travel the entire garden centre. The more people travel, the more they will see and the more they will buy. Therefore the investment in all forms of signage is bound to pay off. I have found that training and signage are two of the weak points in independent garden centre budgets. and I encourage these businesses to rethink and invest in these areas.

The difference between winning and losing is often a razor’s edge. It is also true that to become a winner, you don’t have to make huge changes in your business. The winners are usually people who make a few small changes and do them over and over until they become part of the culture of their business. These changes have a powerful impact on the financial results of the garden centre. That is beauty of skilled upselling in the garden centre.

With 39 years of experience in garden centre management, Bob McCannell is an Ontario-based consultant to the garden centre industry.