SEVEN BIG STRATEGIES TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS GREAT
by Pamela Millard
If you built business around these seven key strategies, even an economic downturn won’t mean the end of business as you know it – and the ups and downs of insurance pricing will be just an inconvenience. You’ll always be in a position to say, “Business Is Great!”
These basic strategies aren’t always easy - when each day brings a new set of urgent priorities. However, these are huge strategies. When you get them right, everything else will right, too.
Strategy 1: Design Your Own Future
Envision your business as you want it to be tomorrow – and then design your own future today. This involves far more than marketing and sales plans. It’s being able to respond to a changing environment by deciding how you want to impact your world!
Companies with written business plans have 100% higher profits than those who lack them.. Because less than 30% of all companies plan, if you think strategically about your business, you’ll be ahead of the pack
Strategy 2: Share Your Vision
Your employees can’t help you accomplish your goals if they don’t know what these goals are -- and. what’s in it for them. (Radio Station: WII-FM).Documenting your plan isn’t enough.
Engage your employees in your vision.
Strategy 3: Become an Employer of Choice
Caring about your employees means providing a connected work environment, tools to do the job, together with training and development. Happy employees are more productive - exponentially so.
When you care about your employees, they’ll care about your clients and keep them coming back. Become a business where the best people want to work.
Strategy 4: Listen to the Voice of Your Client
Good client service is important. However, how do your clients define “good?” Only by understanding what they value will you be able to deliver products and services that exceed their expectations.
Listening to the voice of your client will define excellence.
Strategy 5: Create a Competitive Advantage
Everyone needs insurance. However, why should prospects buy from you, rather than the agency down the street - or the Internet?
Set your agency above the crowd and you won’t have to search for customers – they’ll flock to your door.
Strategy 6: Seek Continuous Improvement
Achieving perfection is impossible. Excellence, on the other hand, marks the path to infinite success. To get there and stay there, you’ll need to keep looking for improvements - in your sales, in your processes, in your organization, in your technology, in your profits.
Encourage positive change in your business and reap the benefits.
Strategy 7: Focus on Value vs. Profit
The value of your business involves far more than just a matter of income and expenses. The financial strength that results in a profitable income stream depends in part upon the intangibles that create the intrinsic value of your agency - your culture, the professionalism of your organization, and the management of the business.
Manage the intangibles and you’ll put more dollars in your pocket.
Conclusion
That’s all there is to it: Seven “basic steps” and Seven BIG Strategies, carried out in the right order, with each built on the other. Success is process, not an event.
You probably have some of these strategies in place and working well in your business. If you’re missing one, or more, get started on adding them today!
Pamela Millard is president of Transformation Advisors (Diamond Springs, CA), a client-focused management consulting firm. You can contact her at (530) 295-108, e-mail [email protected]; or www.transformationadvisors.com.