What language do you speak to your customers?

Josh SchneiderWhile working on my winter travel schedule, I was thinking about my first experience being in a country where the native tongue is different from my own. Over the past 15 years I’ve had the opportunity to travel all around the world to some pretty interesting places. However, no matter how far and wide I fly, my usual late-January schedule always includes the IPM Show in Essen, Germany.

I remember that first trip well. I was worried that not speaking the language would really handicap me. How would I communicate and get the information I needed? I worried about this a fair bit, but was told that because many Europeans speak English, it’s easier to find out what you need to know than I might have suspected.

What I found out was that it was both more difficult and easier than I had imagined it would be. Some people just seem to shout in their native language at you, not interested in any feedback on whether you are processing. Some people spoke quite excellent English and wanted to engage, while others may have been fluent, but could hardly muster more than a grunt to acknowledge your presence. Speaking the language indeed mattered. Yes, I could get by on “please” and “thank you,” but the nuance was often lost.

Thinking of language and communication made me wonder just how we are speaking to our customers. I think a beginning gardener walking into the garden center might feel a bit like I did at my first German trade show.

As I entered the first hall at the show, I remember being wowed and overwhelmed all at once. The place was huge. There was a whole hall dedicated just to growers from Denmark growing all these incredible little pots of everything from kalanchoe to roses. The Italian hall with its gigantic topiary and amazingly beautiful terra cotta pottery captured my attention for quite a while. Then there was the Dutch hall, with all the thousands of bare-root perennials in varieties that never seemed to make it to the U.S.

The more I walked, the wider my eyes got at the vastness of it all. I didn’t really know where to start. I wandered without a lot of purpose, just taking it all in but really unable to gather my thoughts to get a plan of action.
So many new gardeners from last season will be coming in this spring and might be ready to try a little more than their pot of basil or basket of geraniums. These new experimenters – probably younger– will look to discover a talent for growing tomatoes or find a new love of old roses.

With all these new people, as well as the old, we need to be especially sensitive to the language we are “speaking” to them. The enthusiastic breeder speaking to me in German, at whom I nod and smile, moving uncomfortably along no wiser for my interaction, was pleasant enough. I just didn’t want to seem like an idiot for not speaking the language, so it was easier to just hustle along to the next booth and listen for a little English to be spoken – just a little something familiar.

Will the new gardeners be put off because we aren’t speaking a language that they can understand or, worse, because we are talking over their heads? If I need something for a shady spot in my garden, will I be regaled with detailed stories of the differences between Hosta Patriot and Hosta Minuteman? Or be lectured in Latin about the nuance of fern species whose names alone might just scare me off?

If a 20-something-year-old couple has decided that they are going to grow some organic vegetables because they believe in helping the Earth and reducing their carbon footprint, are we going to lecture them on how organic is no better than conventional? Are we going to scoff at the source of their enthusiasm and “educate” or “re-educate” them?

We have the opportunity to speak to people in a way that nurtures their enthusiasm and builds their confidence. They aren’t gardeners yet, but if we can match their enthusiasm with the right information and a little enthusiasm of our own, then we’re more likely to help them be successful. After all, isn’t it their sense of adventure that has gotten them in your store?

Let’s meet them where they are, not where we think they should be. Sometimes we can give the impression of the garden as a country club – “Members Only!” Let’s be a little less exclusive this spring. Try to look at the store with new eyes. Do our signs make sense to the first-time customer? Are staff members encouraged to be encouraging? Have you thought up display ideas for the new gardener that will help solve her basic problems? Are you working to make sure you and your staff are speaking the language of the customers at their level? If they came in for a tomato plant and they leave with containers, soil, fertilizer, tomatoes, peppers and a combo pot of herbs, then you’ve likely been talking to them in their language.

I know I like to do business with people who can talk with me.