Are you finding it difficult to forecast sales? Is the increased cost of goods squeezing your bottom line? Do you want to pay your employees a competitive wage, but can’t find the wiggle room in your profit margins?

Forecasting Your Future, the Society of American Florists’ complete series of interactive courses focused on profitability, can help with all of that and more — and it is on sale for a limited time.

The series, led by successful retailers Manny and Clara Gonzalez, includes three courses that set the framework to create an effective sales forecast and then use that forecast to control costs, as well as develop incentive plans to manage wages. The six-week courses also include a discussion board with weekly input from the Gonzaleses. Optional add-ons: a peer group component, where florists gather live virtually to discuss their progress, and one-to-one coaching with the Gonzaleses.

The three courses, found on SAF’s Floral Education Hub, are:

• Sales Forecasting: Learn how to predict sales for every day, week and month by creating a sales forecast unique to your business.
• Forecasting Your Future: Cost of Goods Sold: This course will help you use your forecast to show how you can spend wisely, deliver value and drive profit.
• Forecasting Your Future: Wage Control: This course shows how the forecast helps control wages and retain a team of top talent.

The courses, which are 40 percent off for a limited time — with an additional $200 off when all three are purchased (total price: $1,231, a savings of $1,154) — are an investment that, according to the Gonzaleses’ firsthand experience using these practices, is guaranteed to pay off. “Even if you see just a 1 percent bump in your profit margins by adapting these practices — and I guarantee you’ll see at least that —  for most shops, that’s a $5,000 to $10,000 addition to your bottom line,” Manny says, adding that it’s risk-free: “SAF is offering a full refund to anyone not satisfied with the courses.”

Visit Floral Education Hub to register. Want to learn directly from the Gonzaleses about the other strategies related to staffing and productivity that made their shop successful? Attend SAF Phoenix 2023, where they are presenting, “Sharing is Caring: How Open Book Management” Drives Sales and Profits.”

Stephanie Brady is the project manager for the Society of American Florists.