I love the way garden industry retail sales consultant Ian Baldwin always makes important concepts so simple to grasp, and his column in the April 2011 issue of Garden Center magazine is no exception. Titled A Cry For Help: Show reluctant shoppers the benefits of gardening, the article provides a blueprint for winning more non-avid gardeners as customers. Baldwin offers suggestions for addressing the 7 main factors that, according to a National Gardening Association survey, “reluctant gardeners” say would encourage them to do more gardening:
If I had more time for gardening: 35%
If gardening cost less money: 29%
If I had more suitable space for it: 28%
If I knew more about how to succeed: 26%
If gardening was less work: 23%
If there were tools and techniques to make gardening easier: 17%
If I had an easy resource to guide me: 16%
One by one, Baldwin offers multiple specific suggestions for addressing each of these objections. They’re geared towards garden centers, but most are easy to adapt for catalogs and online marketing. It’s well worth the read to see what you might incorporate into your own business.
