Strategic Planning
PLAN TO SUCCEED OR PLAN TO FAIL — YOUR CHOICE!
A
ny agency that chooses to conduct their
business on a day-by-day basis without a
road map or plan of attack has resigned
itself to floating on the ocean of economic tides
subject to whatever storms arise and whatever
course the wind drives you.
Any boater knows that it is suicide to simply point
your ship “that-a-way” and sail until you run out
of wind. Yet most agency owners will unlock their
doors every day and sit in their offices doing the
thousand things that must be done and waiting
for the phone to ring, hoping that the call is for
new business instead of for the cancellation of
an account. So many agents have no plan for
their business besides being open and answering
client calls that it is astounding that more agents
don’t shrink their revenue base every year until
retirement becomes a necessity instead of a choice.
These agents do not lack knowledge. They do not
lack carriers or the human assets that could profit
their clients. They lack a Strategic and Tactical Plan
that would drive their businesses forward!
Strategic Planning is rather esoteric. You actually
need to know where you want to be in the long
term (five years minimum) to plan strategically. But
whether that goal is to be of a certain size, at certain
24
profitability, or even to be retired with a specific
value to the agency, those long term goals give more
meaning to the Tactical (annual) Planning process.
But even if you are not yet organized sufficiently to
plan for the long term, at least you can identify a
set of Objectives that would satisfy your personal as
well as professional needs in the short term - for the
next calendar or fiscal year.
Strategic Planning “Begins with the End in Mind”
(from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- “thank you” to Stephen Covey) of creating
a Mission and Vision Statement. The Vision
Statement is your personal goal for the future
- your reason for existence as an organization.
Your Mission Statement incorporates a set of long
term business goals which, if achieved, would put
you into the position of your Mission Statement.
Strategies are defined for every action item in both
the Mission and Vision Statements that define what
must be done differently within your organization
that would allow you to achieve and become the
organization defined by the two statements.
Each Strategy should have a set of long term
goals established that will be the foundation and
staircase for that strategy to achieve the positions
of the Mission and Vision of the organization
KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER | January - February 2019 |