Well, you made it. You’re likely through the worst of one of the craziest peak seasons ever for horticulture businesses.
However, you’re not entirely out of the woods. No matter where you are in your selling cycle there are a few things you should be doing to get yourself in a position to make 2021 an even better year for your business.
Some of the following won’t apply to you — but if they do, we’re here and ready to help you with them so you can move your business forward, boldly into 2021.
Taking a breath.
Feels good, doesn’t it? This may be the first breath you’ve taken since April. That’s a long time to go without oxygen, for sure.
It’s important now to find a moment to breathe, even though you may have “Breathe” down on your calendar for October.
It may be too crazy now, but at some point you’re going to need to stop for a moment and envision what you want 2021 to look like.
If you’re struggling for breath because orders are overwhelming your processes, you may want to re-examine your processes. You may want to review your short-term and long-term growth plans. You may want to look at employee and resource allocation moving forward.
Yes, you may want to do all those things, but now’s not the time. Now’s the time to inhale, exhale and just relax for a spell before diving back into the melee.
Reviewing your business and marketing plans.
What’s that? You don’t have a business plan or a marketing plan? Well, you’re going to need them at some point, but now may not be the best time for you to create or totally revamp them.
It is, however, a great time to revisit them (if you have them), read them over once or twice, and see how things have progressed compared to how you thought they’d progress.
Obviously, 2020 is the anomaly of all anomalies, so what you thought would happen probably bears zero resemblance to what actually happened – good or bad.
However, if you review your marketing and business plans now, after six months or more of frenzied activity, you might be surprised at what you said you were going to do. There may be some initiatives you had planned on starting that you’ve totally forgotten about.
Circumstances change, and things that may have made sense six months ago may not make sense now, but reviewing your to-do list from back then may give you ideas about what you want to do moving forward.
Considering where the growth is coming from.
You may still be selling and shipping like crazy, but it’s time to start making plans for how your business is going to grow in 2021.
Is it time to finally make the leap into e-commerce? Has a merry-go-round of increased demand and diminishing employee resources convinced you that you need technological solutions that helps your business run more efficiently?
Again, now may not be the time to start creating your 2021 business and marketing plans, but now is the time to start thinking about business and marketing in 2021.
If you want to do something substantive now to help jump-start your planning process, get a small notebook and jot down marketing and business ideas as they come to you. Then, when you have time to work on your business and marketing plans, review your notes and see what still makes sense.
Vowing not to do it yourself.
If you are shipping like mad, and worried about your business and marketing plans for the coming year, the most important thing you can do is get some help to keep all the balls in the air.
Arbré Technologies has products and services that can help your business grow, improve the efficiency of its operation, and drive ROI to new heights.
Arbré Technologies’ tools can help you quickly and efficiently count and manage your year-end inventory, and integrate that data with sales, shipping, and accounting.
More importantly, we’ve been there. We understand what you’re going through and how you have to deal with where you are, at the same time you need to figure out where you’re going.
By implementing our proven solutions for inventory and shipping verification, we can free up some of your business’ most important resources — you, for instance — so they can focus on more important things than counting plants on a flat or trees on a truck.
Through our collaboration with Clarity Connect, we can also help your business implement an end-to-end e-commerce solution that is surprisingly easy to get up and running, and almost effortless to maintain.
Get through what you need to; take care of pressing matters. But take a few minutes and contact us to learn how businesses just like yours are driving growth, generating efficiencies and blowing up their ROI.
It might be the most important thing you do for the future of your business.