owner require special business acumen for extraordinary growth? Is there a unique formula for success?
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When you dissect successful organizations and peer closely into their origins, leaders, operations and strategies, you find shared characteristics. While there is no single magic formula for success and no guarantees that adopting innovative ideas and practices will ensure greatness, there are critical cues insurance agency owners can take from businesses that have experienced tremendous and sustained growth.
1. Identify unmet needs. Successful companies are ones that tend to focus on unmet needs. They create new services/products and create or capture new markets by looking for segments that are under-served or poorly- served by existing organizations that may be well-known and well-established. Once they identify needs or opportunities, they identify and focus resources (human, financial, technical and others) solely to this segment.
2. Tighten up your finances. Although there are several shoestring tactics agency owners can employ to help grow their business, the reality is that most growth initiatives require capital. Successful companies make the investments to realize growth. Given that funds are needed, agencies should have adequate cash or access to cash. Because financing from a commercial lender is often needed to secure funding, agencies should work towards developing strong financials and good business credit. Without cash, opportunities are likely to slip through your hands.
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3. Extend your range. Creating and capturing new markets and opportunities is critical. Equally important to growth is riding the current of existing clients, products and services. Agencies must devote resources to leaving no stones unturned when it comes to providing insurance coverage for clients. Before the 2011 trail of natural disasters that resulted in record claims, many agencies hadn’t talked with some clients in several years – even as many as ten years. Agencies that grow have to be proactive and thorough in reaching clients as opposed to waiting for unpredictable circumstances to drive demand for products.
4. Reconnect with your market. Starbucks didn’t discover coffee and Apple didn’t invent the digital music player, but they are arguably among the best companies in their categories. They took an existing product or concept and improved upon it or presented it in a new way. Steve Jobs knew that look and feel of electronics were important to consumers. As a result, the iPod is the best selling digital music player in the world. Growth focused agencies must have an in-depth understanding of their target market and craft solutions to speak to their needs and desires, even if the target audience is unaware of a need.
5. Plan, review and adjust. The notion that “when you fail to plan, you plan to fail” has been quoted so often it’s become cliché. But its message rings true. Growth starts with a vision which is translated into a strategy. A strategy is a plan with required responsibilities, deadlines, tasks and resources outlined. The great agencies go through the effort of developing an annual plan and regularly monitor results to ensure progress towards growth.