13 Selling Secrets Every Plant Grower Should Know

I posted this in The Backyard Grower’s Business Center a few days ago.  Discussions like this take place here on a daily basis so if you haven’t taken the $7 test drive…  you really should.  It’ll be the best $7 you’ve ever spent!

Here’s the screenshot of my post taken right from the Business Center (I also copied and pasted the text below the image since it’s kinda hard to read in the picture):

This has really been eating at me lately and I want to put it out there and I have some points to make about this.

1.  A one gallon or really nice 2 quart plant can be sold right now, retail or wholesale.  If you have them, you should be offering them to sale to somebody.

2.  At the moment, I am not in the position of buying any more plants.  I have thousands to get potted up and soon!

3.  But the minute we are ready to start selling, or after our first sale, I will more than likely be in the market to buy by the truck load.  As will Heather and any number of other members.  A few weeks ago Heather mentioned that she love to have more people to buy from.

4.  In another post a few weeks ago, or days ago, I can’t remember, Neil suggested that you grow things that everybody and their brother does not have.  Absolutely, positively true.  Lilacs, interesting viburnums, Japanese Holly, English Hollies etc.  Yes, you can always sell weigela, spirea and things like that, but the farther away from common everyday, the more likely people like me are to buy.

5.  But that doesn’t mean that I won’t buy common.  If I sell out of something I need more of it.

6.  The more profit I can make on an item, the more likely I am to buy it.  Over the years I’ve bought truckload after truckload of things that I could make a great profit on.

7.  You never know, maybe you have one hundred really nice white or Chinese dogwoods in one gallons.  At the right price I’d buy them all, mine are all really, really small.

8.  Are your plants nice.  Are they nice and full, compact and well branched.  I don’t want straggly looking stuff.   That’s why I often ask to see photos.   If I knew that somebody had hundreds of a certain item and they were awesome little plants, I’d probably find a way to get them shipped to me.  Within reason of course.  One gallons can easily travel by pick up truck.

9.  With some effort a person should be able to fit at least 300 one gallons on a pick up truck.  How far would you be willing to drive to deliver a load of one gallons 300 plants at a time?

10.  If you have plants to sell locally, take the time to put together an accurate availability list.   If you simply post, I have plants if anybody wants to come and pick them up, I’m not interested.  However, if you post your list of available one gallons, I might start salivating over your list and pick up the phone.  I’m not likely to pick up the phone or send an email until I know what I can buy right now!

11.  Take some photos.  Not of your best plants, but of what your average plants look like.  Nobody wants to buy a pig in poke.  When I order from a large wholesale grower I order with confidence and I’m rarely disappointed.  But in this group, let’s be honest, many of us are beginners.  We need to see those plants before we are willing to commit to buying them.

12.  I say that because I’ve seen photos of plants in plant sales.  I sometimes look at my own plants and say, “man those are scrawny”.  But we often sell so fast they never have a chance to get really nice.  That’s why I love buying “really nice”.  I have scrawny, I need really nice.

13.  And my final word on this…

You all aren’t thinking big enough.  Many of us would love to buy your plants.  But you don’t’ have any to sell.  You need to fix that.  You need truck loads of one gallon size plants that are ready for retail right now.  Coral bells, hosta, all kinds of awesome perennials, flowering shrubs, evergreens, tree seedlings.  Then you need to think wholesale unless you can have your own retail plant sales.

If you had them, folks would buy them wholesale, buy the truck load.

My price point is $5.97.  I need to buy at a price that still allows me enough profit to make it worth doing the deal.

Give this a ton of thought.  Oh yeah, by the way…  I only buy plants from members of The Business Center.  You gotta get in there and check it out, I know you’ll love it!  It’s a second home for most members, and a community of like-minded folks who share the same passion for growing as you do!

Click here to read more about it…