The 6 Main Activities We Focus on in Business

There are six main activities every business has and this includes floral businesses!

1. Business development
2. Sales
3. Marketing
4. Product fulfilment
5. Your operations and administration
6. Your team management

It's important that when we are looking at where we want to go in business we first need to be aware of where we are at currently in each of these areas and then look ahead to where we want to be. Our next version of ideal (because let's face it, ideal is always a moving target in the business world and life!)

By using these 6 activities as a way to map our vision it then becomes easier to see where the gaps are and when we know the gaps that we have we can then work backwards and break them down into projects and then into steps to take within that project because small steps are much easier to tackle then dealing with the big vision dream of having a team of 5 when you are starting at 0!

I truly believe that when we take big ideas, big concepts, and break them down into smaller actionable steps, we can accomplish more. And I know you've experienced that in your own business in life, too.

The topics above can seem like huge overarching categories that have endless to do lists within themselves so let's go through each one and break it down. 

1/ Business development

What is business development anyway? Well, it's the foundational structures of your floral business. And when you're just starting out, you spend a lot of time in this area. But as you start to grow, the business development side doesn't have to be revisited as often.

It's just part of the normal way of doing business on a regular basis. After you put this foundation in place, you might spend maybe 20 or 25% of your time on it. However, when you're getting started, you're going to be spending probably 60 or 70% of your time in this area.

So what is business development and why is it a big deal? It's the foundation of your business and when it comes to revenue and building profit. It's the key for your success.

There are four basics to business development:

1. Market dominating position

2. Strategies

3. Trust, Expertise and Education (TEE)

4. Policies and procedures.

Let's look at market dominating position. It's "what is my unique selling proposition"?
Think to yourself, what am I selling or providing that makes me unique?
And how does what I offer answer the customer's pain point (or what do they wish for that they don't have) better than my competition?
And how do I talk about it, so the potential customer knows it?

This is big picture stuff and I can guarantee you, if you don't have this dialled in, you could be in real trouble. You will either become distracted by too many different things hoping that they all come together with no real plan or you could be experiencing difficulty getting customers and new clients because all they have to compare you to is price. And no one wants to be in business for that! 

The next area to work on within business development are strategies. There are strategies around every area of your business.

What's your strategy around how you're going to gain leads?
How are you going to close the sales?
How are you going to advertise and market yourself?
How are you planning to create and deliver what you sell?
How are you going to handle the back end of your business?
What is my strategy for growth?
Is there a way I will know when a good time is to start hiring help?

All of these require strategies and more kind of big-picture thinking.

The next part of business development is the acronym T.E.E and it stands for Trust, Expertise, and Education. 

How do I build trust?
How can I show my expertise?
What ways am I going to educate my customer?

You get to deliver all three of these things in order to have a successful business.

If someone doesn't know like or trust you, they most likely aren't going to buy from you. And if people aren't buying from you, then you don't have a business. So how can you build trust and show that you're an expert in what you're doing even if you're just starting out?

This is what comes as you start to figure out your why and what makes you different from everyone else that's doing what you're doing. And then how do you educate that potential client for them to want to buy from you. Once you start building trust, showing your expertise and educating your business starts to really come alive for you. Those are the things that you use to build your social media strategy. This helps buildout how you're going to be marketing.

And then the last element of business development is your policies and procedures. It's part of your foundation.

How do I want my business to work?
What are my expectations?

Some of this comes as you build. But certainly as you start out, there are going to be things that come up that you are expecting to do, and that you want to see happen, and there's a way that you want it to be done. So getting those setup is building your foundation. And that's what makes up business development.

2/ Sales

Now often entrepreneurs think that sales and marketing are one and the same. It's not the case.

How are they different?

Well, an easy way to look at it would be to say that sales is all about your right now income, what you're bringing in right now. And marketing is all about future income. How are you handling bringing in sales for the future?

These two main activities of business are my jam when it comes to supporting my coaching clients. Why? Because they are what bring in revenue and increase profit. And I love concentrating on these areas of business. I can tell you from experience that for many many years I concentrated purely on revenue and I built a seven figure business that way but I didn't concentrate on my profit, and ultimately despite all the revenue I made I wasn't left with much to show for what I had done for 30 years.

So I'm on a mission to not only show entrepreneurs how they can build revenue, and get to that elusive seven figure mark, and beyond but I'm also on a mission for you as an entrepreneur, and small business owner, to get the most profit that you can out of your business so that you can walk away and enjoy your life.

You can walk away on a regular basis, and spend time with your family realising that you have money on the bottom line, so that when tough times come and guaranteed, you will experience that, you have enough profit coming in, that you are able to still keep going, and you're then going to be resilient through tougher times and have the tenacity to stick with it because you have that profit.

So when we are talking about sales we want to ask questions like...

How can I convert more of my leads into a sale?
How can I create more transactions this year, this month or even this week?
How can I book more appointments?
How can I increase my average sale?
How can I get my current clients to increase the frequency of purchasing from me?
How can I follow up on my sales?
How can I reactivate former customers?

All these areas are concentrating on the right now money sales.

3/ Marketing

Now when you talk about marketing, that's about...

How do we get more leads?
Where do I find leads to come to my business?
What vehicles do I want to use to spread my message? And what I mean by vehicles is, you know, are you going to use social media, you're going to use advertising? Are you going to use print? Are you going to concentrate on building an email list? Those are the vehicles of how we get out our marketing message.
So how do I want to use digital marketing to my advantage that will work for me specifically?
Where are my ideal clients hanging out?
How do I build referral systems?
How do you go about making alliances and joint ventures with other businesses?
How do I go about getting publicity and PR opportunities?

These are all around the marketing activities of our business. And each one of these areas drive revenue and boost profits.

4/ Product Fulfilment

This is all about how to create and deliver your product to the customer better, smarter, faster, simpler, easier, so that you can deliver value and quality to them while bringing in better profits to your bottom line.

How do you figure out what you're offering?
How do you create it?
How do you deliver it?
What does it look like?
How are you managing your time doing all of this?

5/ Operations and administration

Now I know as a creative entrepreneur, this is not the area that you're really want to be working on. But it's important. And this is the area where you can start to realise that the more organized I am, the more profitable I can become. 

How do you want to operate your business?
How can you look at your business and start to see, are there things that I could cut some costs on?
Are there areas that I can build better set up better systems?
Is there a better or simpler way to do the things that I am doing?
Will this bring me more money to my bottom line?
Can I create an administrative strategy around this and acquire that customer?

6/ Team Management

Right now I bet that you're the person that's doing everything and wearing all of the hats, right? So how are you managing you?

This is a great opportunity to write down notes about what you do and how you do it? Because when you start to grow and bring on team this list will then help you decide, okay, is this something I can give to someone else? If yes, how can I explain how and why I do this? How can I describe what I'm doing? How do I describe what's important to me about the way I do it? This then links in to writing up your policies and procedures.

As you can see all of these pieces tie in to the foundation of your business and how you do things and how successfully you can grow this floral business into something bigger than just you!

My challenge to you is to take out your notepad and ask yourself what would it look like to take your business and concentrate in one area? If you just concentrated on the things around your sales process? What would it look like if you just concentrated on then the next three months on the product fulfilment processes?

I know that there are so many things that come up on a daily basis with running your business and often we think we don't have time to work on our business but (and I'm proof of this) if you ignore these things, they will become bigger issues to handle. And sometimes business comes to a halt until you take care of it.

So wouldn't it be easier to start looking at some of these areas now before they become an issue that smacks us right in the face? I'd love for you to see the possibilities for yourself this year. You can grow and be even better than you are right now. Are you ready to make a pact to let this happen for you this year?