Comments for Strategies Blog from Horticultural Advantage

Comment on All you believe…may be ALL WRONG – Belief #4 by sidraisch

sidraisch — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:20:07 +0000

Thanks for commenting Sue. There are many other people also thinking I was talking directly to them. (And sometimes I am . The old adage that it takes money to make money IS true. Whether through initial investment, reinvestment, or a gift capital is always required and any business will languish if it tries to outgrow its capitalization. One person invests the same amount of money and effort in one place as another does in another place and each gets very different results if nothing is different but the passing traffic. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be overcome, but the investment required is much different. The other adage is also true, “location, location, location”.

Comment on All you believe…may be ALL WRONG – Belief #4 by Sue Kiley

Sue Kiley — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:29:11 +0000

Sid sounds like you’re talking to me. After your day with Kim she shared your plans I’m excited to see them progress to this. As always we come back to location. We’re trying to think of changes to attract more passing traffic. The other country shop moved to Maysville so it can help or hurt us. People not coming across the river.

Comment on All you believe…may be ALL WRONG – Belief #3 by Ben Morris

Ben Morris — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:15:12 +0000

Ok as a college trained horticulturist with a full time job (thankfully) i defiantly have to agree with Steve in that i wish more of the school training would include sales and other practical work stuff. i had a few options but they were all either science based(lab) or production/grower focused. While we all do some production and grower tasks there is a lot in the industry that you aren’t even introduced to in a 4 year degree.

Comment on All you believe…may be ALL WRONG – Belief #3 by sidraisch

sidraisch — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:06:30 +0000

Well Steve, I'm probably independent to a fault too in many ways and I can say it and I will. Thanks for the challenge! Before dealing with selling skills we have to deal with selling attitude. The underlying attitude throughout our industry is that "we don't want to be high-pressure salespeople" which is true but can also be a lazy cop out for not putting ourselves out there emotionally to the customer. It is much easier to hide behind the plants moving them, watering them, planting them and every other sort of thing while our livelihood shrivels from the fear of selling. Having recognized this as the #1 issue critical to the success of our industry we launched Client Advantage, a program that deals with this opportunity by teaching the correct mindset for professional selling and the skills to go with it. The principle here is that if we don't sell enough stuff we'll never have enough people to take care of the stuff we have and afford to stay in business. My recommendation to anyone approaching a career in horticulture is to "intern" in a sales position in a company that provides professional level sales training.

Comment on All you believe…may be ALL WRONG – Belief #3 by Steve Boehme

Steve Boehme — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:34:28 +0000

Sid can’t say this but I can:
There’s a need for technical knowledge in any business, but an often-overlooked fact is that half of all jobs involve some form of sales. This fact is most overlooked by institutions of higher learning, perhaps because they aren’t overwhelmed with applicants in search of selling skills or with career aspirations in sales. But sales is commerce and commerce is sales. It is a rare college or university that prepares its graduates for this simple fact.
College-educated experts can and very often do overwhelm the customer with unwanted and indecipherable technical jargon, the enemy of making the sale in many cases.
They also have a tendency to overvalue themselves. By this I mean that they don’t necessarlly measure their worth as employees by how many dollars of profit they add to an enterprise, and this is a fundamental measure of worth in any for-profit business.