From Hope to Design: Creating a Sales System That Works

Photo by María Del Mar García on Unsplash

Last season, I stood surrounded by buckets of flowers.

Beautiful blooms. More than I'd anticipated because the warm spell brought everything on at once. And for the first time in years, I wasn't panicking about whether I could sell them all.

Not because I'd suddenly become brilliant at marketing. Not because I'd found some magic formula for creating demand. But because I'd stopped selling by hope and started selling by design.

The cost of hope-based selling

Here's what hope-based selling looks like:

You grow flowers and harvest then in the hope someone buys them at the market. You post on social media and hope it generates orders. You tell your florist customer what you have available and hope they need it this week.

Hope. Hope. Hope.

And when hope doesn't work out? You’re left with wasted flowers, mounting anxiety, and that sinking feeling that maybe this whole dream of a thriving flower farm isn’t working. 

You know that your flowers won’t sell themselves, that hope isn’t a sales strategy.

It’s time to stop selling by hope—and design a system that actually works.

Sales by design

Designing your sales structure means knowing where your flowers are going before you grow or harvest them.

It’s not about having one perfect sales channel—it’s about stacking intentional pathways that work together. Each channel catches what the last can’t.

Think of it as a cascading sales stack:

1️⃣ Primary Channel: your main outlet

This is your core revenue stream—the one your growing plan is built around. Examples:

Examples:

• A weekly wholesale market or grower collective

• Standing florist orders

• Flower subscriptions

• A regular farmers market stall

• Café bouquet stand

Your primary channel should be predictable, reliable, and consistent.

2️⃣ Secondary Channel: your next best opportunity 

This isn’t a backup plan—it’s a planned outlet for what your primary channel can’t absorb.

Secondary channels might include:

• Farm gate sales (for customers who know your harvest days)

• A second florist customer with more flexible ordering

• Direct sales to event planners or stylists

• A small retail outlet that takes whatever you bring.

The key word is designed. You've established this channel during quieter times, so when the season is under way you're not scrambling—you're activating a system that's already in place.

3️⃣ Tertiary Channel: your overflow

This ensures nothing goes to waste when channels one and two are full.

Examples

• Drying flowers for future sale

• Creating "grower's choice" bouquets at a discount

• Supplying community groups or nursing homes

• Strategic composting (yes, that's a valid channel when it's a conscious choice)

These might bring in less per stem—but they eliminate anxiety and increase overall efficiency.

What this looks like in practice

Here's my sales stack for this season:

Primary: Weekly flower shop at the Brewtown Market—this absorbs most of my production and generates consistent revenue. We’re now expanding into a new supermarket location there too.

Secondary: Local flower sales from Thursday to Saturday. Orders for pick-up or delivery—bouquets, buckets, and small weddings.

Tertiary: Drying flowers all season for winter sales. It’s not a last-ditch effort—it’s a strategic product stream.

Last season our sales exceeded our supply of flowers so I have partnered with other growers to make sure that I can fulfil all my orders as well as build a stock of dried flowers.  But it hasn’t always been this way.

No I don’t panic, no frantic posting and no wasted flowers. Being able to say, sorry we’re sold out is  the difference between sales by  hope and design.

Designing your sales system: the practical steps

Sales systems don’t magically appear during harvest. They’re built during the quieter months—when you have space to think, plan, and connect.

Start with clarity about your primary channel.

What's your main sales outlet? Be specific. "I sell at markets" isn't clear enough. "I have a regular Saturday slot at the local  Farmers Market where I typically sell 20-25 mixed bunches" gives you something to build around.

Once you're clear on your primary channel's capacity, you know what "overflow" actually means. That's when you can design secondary channels intentionally.

Develop secondary channels before you need them.

The time to establish farm gate sales is in winter when you're planning, not in February when you're drowning in dahlias. The time to connect with a second florist customer is during your slow season, not when your primary customer can't take this week's harvest.

Ask yourself:

• Who else values locally grown, seasonal flowers in my area?

• What sales channels require minimal additional effort? (Farm gate sales from your property vs. delivering to multiple locations)

• Where could I move flowers quickly if my primary channel is saturated?

Then make contact, have the conversations that establish the relationship so it exists before you need to activate it.

Design your tertiary channel as prevention, not desperation.

If your third channel only activates when you're panicking about waste, you haven't designed a system—you've just named your panic response.

Better approach: decide in advance what happens to flowers that don't sell through channels one and two. Maybe you dry everything. Maybe you have a "grower's choice discount" standing offer. Maybe you donate to a community organisation every Monday.

Whatever it is, make it a decision, not a scramble.

What this isn't

Designing a sales stack is not about:

❌ Maintaining 3 separate marketing systems
❌ Saying yes to every opportunity
❌ Overcomplicating your logistics
❌ Spreading yourself thin

It’s about creating a flow:

Flowers go to Channel 1 → unless → then Channel 2 → unless → then Channel 3.

Each channel builds on the last. Each one protects your time and energy.

The questions to ask

To design your own sales stack, start here:

What's my primary sales channel—and what's its realistic weekly capacity?
Be honest. If your florist customer typically orders 30 stems, don't build your growing plan around them taking 100.

Where do my flowers go when my primary channel can't absorb everything?
If the answer is "they sit in buckets while I panic," you need a secondary channel.

What would prevent waste entirely—even during my biggest flush weeks?
That's your tertiary channel. Design it now, before you need it.

What relationships or systems do I need to establish during quieter times?
Sales stacking works because the infrastructure exists before harvest pressure hits.

The real shift in sales

Moving from hope-based to design-based selling changes everything.

Instead of anxiety about whether flowers will sell, you have confidence about where they're going. Instead of frantic last-minute marketing, you have established channels ready to activate. Instead of wasted flowers and wasted effort, you have systems that ensure your growing work translates to revenue.

This isn't about being a natural salesperson or having some special gift for marketing. It's about designing a sales structure with the same intentionality you bring to crop planning.

You wouldn't plant seeds and hope they grow. You choose varieties, prepare beds, and create conditions for success.

Why would you treat sales any differently?

The flowers you're already growing, the effort you're already investing, the beautiful blooms you're already harvesting—they all deserve a system that ensures they actually sell.

Not someday. Not if you get lucky. Not if the market is good this week.

By design.

Written by: Julie Treanor - Owner of The Pickery and co-creator of The Floral Business Activator.  A seasonal flower grower who learned that selling by design beats selling by hope every single time.

Follow Julie on Instagram @thepickery