Personal Business Plan clarifies what you want the future to be and how you are going to get there
Are you business owners tired of racing from one action item to another? Are you running to get a business license at city hall, and then rushing to create a new checking account and then calling potential clients on your cell phone while driving in crazy rush hour traffic?
Stop if you do not have a personal business plan. A personal business plan clarifies what you want the future to be and how you are going to get there.
This advice might feel overwhelming and just another item on your already full to-do list. A personal business plan creates a view of the future. It provides focus on critical activities needed for success. You can not start a business without a written picture of what success might look. When you launch a business you need to know your destination.
You might think that you don’t need money from bank or from a venture capital group so you don’t need a business plan. A personal business plan does not create a document that impresses the financial community and is never used again. A personal business plan is your vision of the future and a specific roadmap for how you want to step into your future. You use it to plan your day.
Spending time writing down your business dream on paper will make it “pop” for you as you recognize “Yes—that is what I want to do with my life.” Your pulse will quicken as you recognize the impact you can make. When you have a clear vision of the end results of your business, you’ll be inspired to press through to the finish line. When you’re at a family picnic, you’ll share in a way that relatives “get” what you’re doing vs. just act politely to another eccentric family member. When you’re falling asleep at night, you’ll notice that the panic in your thoughts won’t be there because you understand what you can do and can not do at this time.
Critical Elements of a Personal Business Plan.
Your will create your business vision. This is your desired future. You can create a business vision by writing down what you want the business to be. The vision must identify the customer, the geographic scope and your product or service.
You will clarify your business mission. This is the vision of the business that you share in your business communication on your website, and in your sales and marketing literature.
You will construct critical success factors. These are your business priorities that you need to focus on to create a powerful brand that customers love.
You will compose business results needed for profitability. These are your measurable outcomes. Business results are your goals and objectives.
You will complete project plans for critical activities. These are your plans to get the results you want.
Create a personal business plan to clarify for you and your customers what you want the future to be and how you are going to get there.
Delivering Value and Individualized Customer Service
By: Ray Whitehouse, Co-Owner & Agent at Johnson-Pohlmann Insurance
When it comes to delivering the best customer service and value for your customers, you always want to put your best foot forward. Every interaction you have with a customer gives them an impression of your company. Are your customers happy with their decision to give you their business? Are they having some regrets? Check in from time to time to see how clients are doing and gauge how satisfied they are with your agency.
At Johnson Pohlmann, we try to ensure that our customer service representatives know as much information as possible about the customers that are calling to ask about their policy. Many of our local Kentucky residents will call in with questions about their policy. We believe that our CSRs should be able to answer any questions our clients may have regarding their Kentucky auto insurance, home owners, boat, life or any other policy that a customer may have.
If you are not already, you should be using these tactics to improve the service you are offering your customers.
Take the Temperature of Your Customers:
Say Ahh! When you have established a relationship with your customers ask them to fill out a customer survey to give you direct feedback on how they perceive their individual level of customer service. Take the information and find out where you can improve. As an independent insurance agency, your customers do business with you because you can offer them a better customer service experience than large carriers. Make sure you are delivering what your customers are looking for on your end. A short survey with numerical values rating your performance is a simple way to get some informative feedback.
Use Metrics to Drive Your Service:
You are spending time gathering information from your customers so why not use it to improve your overall customer service strategies? Collecting data is an aimless task if you do not ultimately apply it to improving your business. Keep statistical data on everything from the average time spent with a customer on the phone, common questions and concerns, and the overall customer satisfaction numbers. How many customers gave you high service ratings?
Try Harder to Understand Your Customers:
Many times it can be easy to forget where a customer is coming from when they call you to ask a question regarding their policy. Typically when someone calls customer service they are looking for a brief to the point answer to their question. The last thing they want to do is sit on hold for 10 minutes to get a simple answer to their question. Ask yourself, how can you streamline this process? Do you notice any bottlenecks in the process? If several customers contact your CSRs with very similar questions, maybe you should add something to your Facebook page, or website answering the question on a Frequently Asked Questions page.
Things to do to help you get the best from your Leaflets and Pamphlets
Here is a Top ten checklist of ‘do’s’ to help you get the best from your leaflets and pamphlets.
– Objective & Audience
– Know what your leaflet is for. List your goals and check them throughout the design to make sure you’re on track. Understand your audience to make sure you’re speaking clearly to them – in both copy and pictures. If it’s useful, write a short paragraph explaining who they are. Headline
– Your brochure is competing with other brochures so make sure your headline draws attention to what you’re selling. Keep in mind that in some distribution racks, only the top third can be seen. Keep your headline short and to the point. Reinforcing Pictures
– Understand that copy carries your sales message but pictures reinforce it. Make sure they’re right for your target audience and remember that when your customer scans a rack of leaflets, there’s a lot of information competing for their eye so keep your images simple and uncluttered as this will help them understand your leaflet. Also, make sure you include a map if you’re wanting your customers to visit you. Concise Copy
– A leaflet can’t contain everything you probably want to say – so be selective. Make sure your copy is easy to read and is ‘skimmable’. Keep sentences short and break up blocks of copy by using small paragraphs. Use headings to help they eye find what it’s looking for more easily. Use a serif typeface as it’s easier to read. Full Colour
– There’s a reason most leaflets are full colour – research shows a 50-70% increase in retention of full colour leaflets over black and white. Perceived value is higher in your customer’s minds so they tend to keep hold of them longer. Get the Correct Size
– It depends on what you’re using your leaflet for and where it’s going to be displayed, but conventionally, most leaflets tend to be A5 (folded down from A4 or A3 size) or DL size (1/3 A4 folded). Producing leaflets this size should make them fit in nicely with most distribution racks and are a convenient size for most readers. Paper
– Floppy leaflets hide your message, slip from racks and might even get removed if they interfere with other leaflets. Make sure you print your leaflet on the right paper weight and cutting is done down, not across the grain. Don’t make your leaflets too tall and fold them down the left hand side. Vouchers
– Incentivise customers to pick up your leaflet by adding in offers or vouchers. Make sure you advertise them prominently on the front cover and it might be an idea to use the whole leaflet as the voucher as that keeps it lying around at home, reminding customers you’re there! Track response rates of your leaflet (to calculate a basic ROI) by adding in voucher codes and leaflet codes. Clear Call-To-Action
– Check over your leaflet, make sure you’re clearly asking readers to take an action – then run through everything that they’ll want to see to take that action. Phone numbers, addresses, maps, opening times, email addresses, website addresses – can all be easily missed off. Checking before Printing
Check your copy again and again – and get someone else to have a look too. Spelling mistakes and bad sentence structure can put off readers and reduce comprehension of your sales message. If you’re self-checking, leave a good night’s sleep before you re-check; It’s amazing what a fresh pair of eyes will spot that you missed before. Similarly, before you print, make sure you see at least a pdf proof before you push the button – mistakes are cheap to rectify before they’re printed, but costly afterward.
The Importance of Keywords for Your Website
Article marketing can be one of the easiest things you can do to promote your website. However, of course you have to write relevant articles that people want to read because writing something that no one cares about is just wasting your time. Writing about a topic or theme that you have a passion for or have a great interest will help you write relevant articles because you’ll be writing based on what you know and not something that you are just imagining and have no real world knowledge. One important aspect of article marketing is the use of keywords. Keywords are the lifeblood of your articles and without proper positioning of keywords, you article will not rank high in search engines. Keywords are what people enter in the search engine box when they want to find information about a topic they need to know. So if you are writing about fishing for example, you have to know the keywords that those searching for topics about fishing are using to find relevant articles.
Keywords rule in article marketing so you must carefully choose what keywords you will include in the body of your article. First of all, they should be relevant – your keyword must be specific and present the main idea of the topic and not just broad terms that could mean a lot of other things. Most SEO practitioners will tell you to use high traffic volume keyword, which means those keywords that most searchers use. However, you can still use those that have fewer than a thousand searchers and still come out ahead. You can do a search of broad meaning keyword you want to use and observe the first 10 results. Don’t be surprised to find some high traffic or authority sites there. What this means is that you don’t have a chance of ranking high using that keyword. Your best option then for your article marketing is to find another relevant keyword to get a better chance. You can do this by imagining yourself as someone who would search for your topic and thinking of what keywords you will use. A good way to find out which keywords people are using is to read forums related to your market. They will have discussions there pertaining to your topic and you can pick up the keywords they are using.
Affiliate Programs
An affiliate program (also known as partner program, affiliate system, or affiliate marketing) is a business model based on the Internet that allows a seller to promote their products through a network of affiliates, which are responsible to get referrals to visit the vendor’s website (which is where it sells its products) in return receive a commission every time one of your referrals makes a purchase.
For this, the seller is who has the affiliate program gives each participant a link (link) that leads to your website, and has a code that lets you identify who is the affiliate link holder whenever a person enters your site through one of the links that has been delivered.
From the standpoint of the seller
Having an affiliate program allows a seller to maximize the potential of the Internet, and reach many more potential customers than it could go if only to devote himself to promote their products, and may even forget the promotion of engage them and only their design and management.
Another advantage for a person having an affiliate program is that, unlike advertising which must be paid even if consumers come to buy, with an affiliate program only pays a commission if a referral comes to make a purchase.
Having an affiliate program has enabled them to amass small fortunes to many people in the English speaking market, and gradually is allowing them to make lots of money to people in the Hispanic market.
To create an affiliate program is necessary to design software that allows us to identify which affiliate we provide a specific referral, although a simpler way to create our affiliate system is registered with ClickBank, who is responsible to track and pay our affiliates, in exchange for a small fee.
Once we have our affiliate program, one of our main goals should be to achieve the greatest possible number of members, the main ways of achieving this are:
* Calling members on our website, but also by other means, for example, in forums or social networks.
* Creating a good quality product that has been well received by the public and, thus, the potential member knows you have a product that will sell easily.
* Creating a sales page quality that emphasizes product quality and benefits for the member, and includes tips and tools for this such as models of text ads and banners you can use.
From the standpoint of the insured
Joining an affiliate program is probably the easiest and fastest way to start earning money online, because it allows a person enrolled quickly assemble your Internet business without requiring technical expertise, without having to invest a lot of money, without having to create a product and without having a website.
As in the case of persons possessing an affiliate program, join one of these programs has allowed them to amass small fortunes to many people in the English speaking market, and gradually they are allowing people to earn big money in the Hispanic market.
One of the main requirements to make money with this business model is to choose the affiliate program mentioned, so when deciding on one, we take our time and thoroughly evaluate alternatives that exist.
Today, there are several affiliate programs in the Hispanic market (the most popular programs from Amazon and ClickBank MercadoLibre), several of which offer good quality products and offer good sales commission.
Just a matter of navigating a little network and find the best alternative, taking into account the quality of its products, the commission offered the tools they provide, the reputation they have, among other factors.
Once we have entered into an affiliate program, the next step is to start promoting the products or the vendor’s website, the main ways of doing this are:
* In our own website or blog, by placing in it the text ads or banners, in this case, a requirement for success is to ensure a good visitor traffic.
* By submitting articles to web sites that allow us to do so; items at the end of these include the link to the website you are promoting.
* By sending mass emails, for which we have prior to a mailing list or a newsletter, although in this case we must try not to abuse this practice as it can be considered as spam.
* To participate in forums, for example, by mentioning the source from which we learned what we discussed.
* To participate in social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
