[trees]

Well, this year we bit the bullet and hired a new landscape designer. This young lady is bright, puts together nice designs (in fact, she's a great compement to me... her designs tend toward the traditional, while mine... well... not so much), has a pleasing personalilty (though not entirely dynamic) and is fairly attractive.

She is a real go-getter. Puts in the time, establishes rapport easily... has some work to do on the presentation side of things. I've been listening in and coaching her on that, admittedly crucial part of the process. It's not that she's a bumbling mess, just needs to polish that side of her act, that's all. Who didn't need polish when they were just starting out?

The problem is that she's not sold a thing in the last 3 weeks. At this time of year, you should be able to sell concrete pilings as foundation elements. I can't put my finger on exactly why this is. A couple possibilities come to mind. One is her age... she's only 2 years out of college (L.A. degree), the other is the fact that she's a female. This obviously didn't matter to me, but my wife thinks that an attractive, 20-something female may have a harder time with the middle aged women that make up the core of our customer group than I do. Couple that with mediocre to average presentation skills and I think there's possibly a problem with her appearing credible in the eyes of our clients.

I've been thinking a lot about the things I had to do to overcome the credibility gap when I first broke onto the scene in my early 20s. I've asked that she make the rounds on the plant geek circuit (hort society meetings, garden clubs, master gardeners, etc.) and have held her hand through a few of those. I'd like for her to be an active member of the horticultural community, which she's working on. I've introduced her to some of our more influential / referral-heavy clients, talked about her on the radio show that I do once a month.

I've tried sitting in on presentations with her... but I'm a little uncomfortable doing that because it almost seems to undermine her credibility. I've been a fly on the wall for others. She's ridden with me on sales calls and I with her. Right now we're going to start doing mock presentations where she presents the plan to me before going to the client with it, so I can give her some selling concepts to key in on.

But what else??? I'm truly at a loss because it seems like she should be a lot more productive than she is. Her enthusiasm is starting to wane a little because of her inability to close a sale.

What's the best way to help a new designer become successful?