Many of us spend too much time focusing on the outcomes of our businesses and not enough time reviewing what caused the outcomes, say Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy in their book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. In order to change the outcomes – that is, to achieve the outcomes we want – the authors tell us we must focus on three core processes: people, strategy and operations.
Poring over the financial statements to see what’s going on in your business is a great way to see the results, but a poor way to change them. I have always been a big fan of financial statement review and have used the knowledge I found there to make changes going forward. Now I understand that waiting to see the results is too late; the quickest way to achieve your goals and the results you really want is through improved execution.
As retailers, you are very familiar with the old customer service adage, “under-promise, over-deliver,” but probably have not thought about applying it to your business strategy. Too often, business managers come up with great strategies about how they will develop their business and the goals they will achieve, but there is a big gap between the strategy and the execution, or “promises and expectation.” Execution is a discipline and a process of rigorously discussing the hows and whats, and assuring accountability in achieving your goals.
Managers who execute will want to know if their goals are realistic – where will the revenue come from, which products, who will sell them, what will the benchmarks or milestones be, what will we change if we aren’t meeting them? Are the right people in charge, is their accountability clear, whom will they collaborate with and will the reward motivate them?
This issue of Canadian Florist features some great articles and designs for wedding work, and weddings can represent big revenue opportunities if you have a sound strategy and an execution plan. Don’t set an elusive goal of doing more weddings this year or next: develop a strategy and break it down into concrete steps. Read Patsy Deswaef’s article on page 22 and consider her suggestions of how to increase your share of the wedding business sector. Set a revenue target attached to this segment and have a team meeting to decide who is best suited to sell the service, who will create the designs, what profit margin you should make on each element of the service, how you will promote it and how you will measure the effectiveness of the promotions. One of your key decisions will be how to reward your staff. Will they receive a commission for each successful sale, or perhaps a bonus when the target is met? A bonus must be meaningful and motivating for it to be effective.
A natural extension of the wedding service you provide will be the housewarming gift service Michelle Brisebois talks about on page 16. Even if the happy couple already have a house when they marry, they will want to upgrade, move or remodel soon. Developing this stream of revenue is handled exactly the same way as the wedding business. Develop a strategy with your team, set a goal and then execute. Hopefully, you will do one wedding for a bride, but statistics tell us that she will move approximately five times in her life, and who knows how often she will remodel.
Charan and Bossidy remind us that we can’t fix a problem by focusing on the outcome, but we can fix an outcome by focusing on the execution.
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