https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2615/Telecommuting-to-Your-Virtual-Office/
... agreement. Determine with your off-site employee how to measure job achievements. This guarantees that your telecommuters are working, not playing, at home. Experiment with a virtual office for a limited time to ensure it is appropriate for your business and your employees. You may start with telecommuters working two or three days away from the central office and then increase the number of days as you see the positive results. Manage the change. Telecommuting is unfamiliar for you and most workers. Managing change within your organization will be your greatest challenge. Maintain regular communication with your on-site and off-site employees as you implement this new organization. TYPES OF POSITION TO CONSIDER Many positions in the insurance industry are ideally suited for telecommuting. For carriers, ideal jobs for a virtual office include actuary, field marketing representative, programmer, and systems analyst. For agencies, positions that work well in a virtual office include marketing representative, producer, and telemarketer. Automation vendors can use telecommuting with positions such as programmer, sales support representative, sales representative, systems analyst, technical support representative, and trainer. Your challenge is to think creatively and flexibly. Be willing to re-engineer your organization to meet the demands of today's changing business needs. Consider Peter Drucker's counsel: "Commuting to the office is obsolete. It is now infinitely easier, cheaper and faster to . . . move information . . . to where the people are." This article was adapted with permission from IN ACORD. © Copyright ACORD, 1996. LuNell Gilliland is a principal of L Squared Consulting Services, a marketing consulting firm. She ...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2165/The-10-Biggest-Mistakes-In-Hiring/
...hem later. It’s so hard to find programmers that anyone will do. Out of despe...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/442/An-Advanced-Lesson-In-Referrals/
...s, financial analysts, computer programmers, and engineers — where close atten...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2176/Now-That-IVe-Got-Them-How-Do-I-Keep-Them/
... have a high turnover. Computer programmers and network administrators come to...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/1058/ARE-YOU-LISTENING-TO-YOUR-CUSTOMERS/
... x No Thanks Loading.. Are You Listening To Your Customers?4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Emily Huling This content has not been rated yet. ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS? by Emily Huling On a recent business trip, I had dinner at one of the nicer family restaurants. A couple seated nearby had the same attentive server that I did. When the woman asked for a substitution, the server replied, I'm sorry, I can't do that. The computer will automatically charge you for the extra side order. Would the restaurant have lost money serving green beans instead of a salad? I doubt it. More likely, the computer programmer never considered the option of swapping side orders. A similar situation cropped up in my own business with a new audio album. I thought I had all the bases covered: My mailing describes the content and gives ordering instructions; My Web site is loaded with in-depth information about the album; my background; other products and services; and an order form. I even offer a 100% money-back guarantee. What else could a customer want? Well, a woman in Branson, MO, wants a sample of the audio portion. In all my planning, I hadn't anticipated such a reasonable request! I'll bet you've experienced a similar situation. Here are a few suggestions for determining what your customers need: Post a large piece of paper on the wall, with a left column headed customer need' and right column headed solution, ' and ask your employees to fill in the blanks. Your outside sales and ...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/606/Simple-Ways-To-Differentiate-Your-Agency/
...ensive and time consuming. When programmers established automated Life insuran...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/710/Get-Customers-To-Toot-Your-Horn-And-Build-Your-Bottom-Line/
... Because he sells insurance to programmers, he scours his database for high-...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2277/Producer-Success-Lesson-1/
... create a strategy that will work to reach your goal. Lesson 1 gives you an overview of goal setting. Lesson 2 will guide you through the specific process of setting goals. KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL-REACHING Develop a clear, concise plan. Determine what might stop you from reaching your goal. List the potential problems and the actions you'll need to take to overcome them. Consider whether you have mixed feelings about your goal. Use a goal-reaching method that works. Develop a Clear, Concise Plan A man without a plan is not a man, ' said a gangster in the movie Dick Tracy. Although this isn't literally true, most successful people have planned to succeed. Your mind has often been called a biocomputer. You've probably worked with computers enough to know a computer is only as good as its programmer - bad software, bad results. How can you expect your biocomputer to give you outstanding results if you haven't done an outstanding job of programming it? That's why you need a clear, concise plan. Anticipate Problems Now that you've programmed your biocomputer with clarity and precision, something will probably change. Being a sharp student of biocomputers, you can start asking yourself: What could prevent my plan from working? At this point, you start to solve problems before they arise. One of the best insurance agents I know has a great strategy for writing large accounts. He's constantly asking himself, What if .. ? ' What if the insurance company doesn't want to write this account? How can I persuade them to act differently? What if I need additional sensitive information and the ...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2272/Effective-Goal-Reaching/
... that it will somehow materialize. You wouldn't just buy wood and fixtures and hope they'd all fit together. The key to attaining complex or elusive goals is to come up with a concrete strategy. KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL REACHING Develop a clear, concise plan. Take time to anticipate any obstacles that might stop you from reaching your goal. List potential problems and the actions you'll need to take to overcome them. Check to see if you have "mixed feelings" about your goal. Use a goal-reaching method that works. DEVELOP A CLEAR, CONCISE PLAN "A man without a plan is not a man," says a gangster in the movie Dick Tracy. Your mind is like a computer. You have enough experience with automation to know that a computer is only as good as its programmer. Bad software, bad results. How can you expect your computer to give you outstanding results if you haven't done an outstanding job of programming it? A plan is your program. ANTICIPATE PROBLEMS Now that you've programmed your bio-computer with clarity and precision, something will probably change. Start asking yourself what could prevent your plan from working. Asking yourself questions at this point will help you solve problems before they happen. One of the best insurance agents I know has a great strategy for writing large accounts. He is constantly asking, "What if?" What if the insurance company doesn't want to write this account? How can I persuade them to act differently? If I need additional sensitive information, how can I ask for it in a way that will cause a resistant client ...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/2182/Let-Go-Of-Control-To-Release-Employee-Power/
... Release Employee Power 5/19/2015 by Don Phin This content has not been rated yet. Profit and control have been the driving themes of the manufacturing industry over the past 150 years. However, as we get deeper into the knowledge economy, we find both of these concepts evolving. The issue of profitability is turning into the issue of sustainability. The issue of control is turning into the issue of empowerment. In the early 1900s, the philosophy of scientific management was perfect for a domination-and-control theory of the workplace. Taking advantage of automation, we told employees exactly what to do and punished them when they failed to do it. In essence, we treated people like machines. Control simply doesn't work as a motivator today. For instance, try taking that approach with a software programmer! With the advent of total quality management and learning organizations, even rank-and-file workers are being converted into knowledge workers-and knowledge can't be controlled. It can only be enhanced, unleashed, and managed. As I explain in my workshops, much legal and management thinking has developed around yesterday's concepts of control. We define people as employees or independent contractors, depending largely on how much control we exert over them. We define employees as either exempt or non-exempt, depending largely on how much control we can place over them or they can place over others. We determine if someone is a common-law employee for benefits purposes, depending on the amount of control placed on them. But this control paradigm is rapidly becoming pass acute. Recently, a software company client of mine asked, How can we ...