The less intimidating nursery

Susan at Garden Rant says “Nurseries are INTIMIDATING places for beginners.” She is right! The post on ‘Garden coaches” is a perfect example. She asks “why aren't nurseries offering these services, or at least publicizing the availability of independent coaches to help turn home owners into regular customers?”

We have been offering these services for some time. We call them “consultations”. So garden coaching is really nothing new for us. What is new is calling consultations “Garden coaching”. I like it since it seems less clinical than “consultation”. Consultation sounds like something lawyers and doctors do.

We need to look at our business and see if there are any other areas where we use intimidating language that we might not be aware of. That’s why checking out gardeners and their blogs is such a great way to learn about these things. Why hadn’t the nursery consultants told us about this?

Those of us that have been in this business a long time need this the most. We sit in our offices reading trade magazines and going to industry meetings where our only contact is with other nursery people and those paid to advise us. We need the advice of the gardeners whom we hope to turn into customers. They will tell us what we need to do to make the nursery visit less intimidating. Sometimes just changing a word or words used to describe a service can make all the difference. What other ways do we intimidate the consumer?