The 5 P's of Progress

I’m a huge fan of Amy Porterfield and inside her Momentum Membership last week, she introduced the 5 P’s to us to contemplate and act upon during and after this crisis. Although, after listening and acting upon these 5 P’s all week, I realized that this is really something I should look at every quarter in my business. 

I want to share them with you and apply them to some ideas within the floral business realm. Just food for thought. I’d love your feedback if you find it helpful! I also made a worksheet for you to use if you want to use it. You can download it here.

First “P”, is PIVOT. Now if you’ve listened to me on my Instagram chats for the past few weeks, this is one word I’ve already been using. It’s key when we something happens in our business that may throw us off track. Pivoting is something that I’ve enacted many times over the years. By pivoting, I mean to take an honest look at your business and see if there is a way to change up your messaging or decide to figure out another way to do something. For instance, maybe your retail business isn’t going the way you thought it would. Is there something there that you could look at in a different way. Are there overall decisions that you could make that would change the trajectory of how it’s going? Do you need to up your email marketing game, or perhaps, look for some new clients in a new profession? These can be small decisions or major ones. But if you are looking to make major decisions, make sure you have someone that you can use as a sounding board that isn’t closely related to the situation so you can get some unbiased feedback.

The second “P” stands for PAUSE. Is there something you can pause right now? It can be a new marketing campaign that just doesn’t align with what’s going on in the world? (This is also something that you can Pivot too. Change up your messaging.) It could be a simple as pausing your trash service or going into your studio and cutting off the HVAC until you’ll be back in there. Go through your monthly bills and see if there is something that you can put the brakes on for a few months so that you can ease up on your outlay.

Now, for the third “P”—PURGE. Okay, we’ve all been there. Is there some decision that you’ve been putting off for months that you know needed to be done? Now is the time to take care of it! Or, maybe there are things in your business that aren’t making you money, but costing—now is the time to make that hard decision and Let. It. Go. Now the light will shine brighter on whatever is not working for you. In fact, this may be an even harder decision—is there someone that you’ve been keeping on staff that just isn’t the right fit, but it never seems like the right time to do something about it? Again, now’s the time to make the hard choice to say “goodbye”. How about that gift line that you love, but it’s been sitting on the sales floor for ages and no one is buying it? Time to sell it! How about putting it in some gift baskets and letting is go out the door for less than it’s worth? Because if it’s been sitting there for over six months and you haven’t moved it, it’s costing you money since it’s taking up valuable real estate in your store! Or, how about purging a client list of people that cost you money no matter how hard you try to please them? Food for thought, right?

Our fourth “P” is PROVIDE. What can you provide your clients for free or paid that would add value to what you do? Let’s take some time here and think out-of-the-box for some new ideas on what you can do in the coming months to give your clients? How about those wedding and special event clients? Would something as simple as a hand-written note be appreciated when they have had to postpone their special day or their big event? Or do you have some simple items that you can turn into gifts to send to them as soon as you are open again? Is there something in your inventory that you could turn into a gift that would be a great giveaway for an upcoming marketing campaign? I would sit down for 10 minutes and write down every way you could bring more value to your customers in paid or FREE ways!

Last, but certainly not least—5th is PLAN. Once you’ve gone through some of the other P’s and worked out ways to make changes, put them into action by planning them out for the rest of this quarter. And then, take some time and move onto planning the other quarters too. Write them down. You’ll find that once you write it down, you will be much more apt to follow-through. Find the goals that you want to achieve for the next quarter and start to implement them now. Figure out your next Action Steps—write them down. You won’t regret putting this P into action!

That’s it! I hope this has given you some valuable insights into how you can implement. You may not need to do all of these, but it certainly won’t hurt to take a moment and think about them. 34 years haven’t gone by without me having to do each of these things at some point or another. What if I had been better at planning for them? Now that’s priceless and would have saved me lots of lost time and money. Who says COVID-19 is ruinous? There are countless ways to utilize change, why not make it your best year yet!

Now, don't forget, if you want to use the worksheet to help you with figuring out some ways to make progress, get my free worksheet here.