Trust Your Employees And Increase Revenue!

Are you still trying to find more time to sell? Every agency principal asks the same question: 'When am I going to have more time to sell? I spend all my time in the office handling personnel problems, customer questions, company concerns, visits from marketing representatives, phone calls, servicing accounts, and so on. I can't see time to sell becoming available anytime too soon!'

Wrong. If you trust your employees, it can happen now.

Agency principals can increase their selling time by trusting their employees enough to delegate responsibilities. I realize that most of your employees are already saying they have too much work to do. However, if you begin to trust your people now and delegate the responsibilities that have always caused you apprehension, your employees will feel more important and will work better in their positions - and you will have that extra time to go out and sell. It's as simple as it sounds.

If we don't feel comfortable about delegating, we'll resist the change. We might trust our employees, but do we trust them with our job? Here are brief steps for delegating some of your duties to your employees:

1. Make a list of those items you should delegate.
2. Delegate the jobs.
3. Meet regularly with your staff.
4. Train your employees to think like you.
5. Participate in documenting and reviewing procedures.

Once we start following these steps, we'll begin to trust our employees more with our jobs and be able to delegate more from there.

Make a list of all the obstacles that keep you from selling. You may be surprised to see how many appear on this list: customer phone calls, the extra customer service that you give, personnel problems, marketing, company calls and visits, accounting issues. That's just the beginning of the list, which should be as complete as possible. After all, you need this extra time to increase sales.

Review your list one obstacle at a time, and write names beside each item you should delegate to another employee. Delegate one or two areas first. Wait two to three weeks, and then delegate other areas. Your trust in your employees will increase day by day, and extra time will free you up to sell.

After delegating parts of your job, meet with staff members on an individually to review questions and concerns. Start by meeting with them once a day. When it's obvious that they're handling your old responsibilities well, space these meetings further apart.

Review your employees' concerns at your daily meetings. Instead of answering their questions directly, ask them how they would handle the situation. If their answers resemble your solutions, let them proceed. If their answers aren't similar to yours, explain how you would handle the situation, giving them your reasons as you go. After performing this process for a couple of weeks, employees will be thinking like you and handling the tasks as you would. As they improve, you'll be able to space your meetings further apart.

Documenting procedures is the final step toward increasing your peace of mind when you're away from the office. Involve all employees in writing and reviewing procedures to achieve consistency and increase efficiency. First, have each individual draft a part of the procedures. Once all the drafts are complete, begin reviewing them. Because each employee will have his or her own way of performing a task, be sure to review all procedures, including those involving errors and omissions risks, computers, and agency procedures. All procedures should be made consistent with each other. Once you have standardized and documented them, furnish copies to all employees. Your office will be more efficient because procedures are being handled properly, and you'll feel more comfortable about leaving the office.

If you want to find more time to sell and increase overall revenue start following this process. Building trust in your employees is an essential way to build your agency.