For the past 17 years, I have been regularly ordering flowers from the same florist. I send my wife Aviva flowers in September on our wedding anniversary, in October on her birthday, and in November on the anniversary of our first date.  It’s like clockwork.

At this point, the florist knows me when I call.  It’s a small, independent shop called B&G Sawin Florist, named for its owners Barbara and George. They keep my information on file. They used to ask what I wanted, but I would always just tell them that I trust them and they should just use their judgement. We’ve been doing it for so long now, they know what to expect.

I started ordering them when Aviva and I were newly married, and I wanted to send flowers to her at work for her birthday. I had never needed a florist before, so I didn’t know where to start. I figured it would make sense to order from a florist near her office, so I looked online (from yellowpages.com – Yelp didn’t exist yet) and found one down the block called B&G Sawin Florist.  And so I placed an order.

A month later, when I wanted to send her flowers again, I figured they had done a good job (at least according to my wife) and placed another order. And then again the following September for our anniversary, and on and on.  My wife always liked what they did, so I saw no reason to switch to anyone else.

Since my order would never change, the amount I spent never changed either. “What did you have in mind?” George would always ask.  “Something in the $50 range,” I would always reply.

Aviva and I have been both working flat out recently, and it occurred to me that it might be nice to send her flowers out of the blue. So, I called up B&G Sawin florist as usual, and placed an order with George.

This time George broke from the script ever so slightly.  “So, what did you have in mind? $75? $100?”

$75? $100? I was speechless for a moment. I always ordered $50. Had I been spending too little all these years?

Not sure what to do, I finally blurted out, “Um…$75.” He finished writing up the order, and we were done.

90 minutes later, I received a very surprised and excited text from Aviva, thanking me for the flowers.

The next day, I took an informal poll with the other men in the office to see how much they paid when sending their spouses flowers. While they both immediately responded that they hadn’t done it in a while, one said $50 and the other said $75. So, I don’t think that I was necessarily going to too low previously, but clearly there was room to go up.

I asked my wife if she noticed the difference between $50 and $75, and she definitely did. Not only was the arrangement larger, but the types of the flowers were more impressive. The $50 arrangements were beautiful and she loved them, but she could definitely tell the difference.

Well, I’m certainly not going back to $50 arrangements now. Clearly it is going to be $75 going forward. This is a 50% revenue increase from a recurring customer, all from just a well-timed upsell.

Clearly, George should have done that years ago.