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Well, you have to understand that the when you are in a diamond mine, you have to pass on the gold nuggets.
In other words, they have so many leads that they can afford to price higher and lose a few sales. The customers that feel like they are getting value for their money will still sign on. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact there is everything right with that.
If the goose still lays the golden eggs, then there is no problem.
Your role is to make sure that the process is completed which is what neither the designer or nursery can do without somebody like you. I'm glad that you are able to mark up the plants. I assumed that the nursery was recovering retail price on these as their benefit for supplying the leads.
Ideally, I think it would be best if the designer was getting a fee for design that she gets to pocket, the nursery was getting retail for the plants, and the designer was seeing that you got significant hardscape and other ammenities worked into the plan to increase your bottom line. Then everybody has an incentive to watch out for the others.
It is not easy for someone to hang a shingle saying that they are a landscape designer and having people line up at the door. There are hundreds of people out there that garden and dream about making a living at it. Most of the ones that do are only designing what they can build. This is a great opportunity for that designer. If she is young, she probably does not realize how important that nursery's reputation is to her having any work at all and that without an established relationship with a contractor almost no one will sign on to an independent designer. That is something that people coming into the design field just don't understand.
Every guy wants to quit his corporate job to have his own sports bar or pizza shop and every woman wants a bed and breakfast or to be a landscape designer. Most of any of these folks go broke really quickly when they act on it.
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