Creating a Personal Action Plan: Making Progress Your Focus

Want to achieve big goals in your business? Then you need to follow a comprehensive plan, built from a strong model.

Top performers understand that success is only possible when their plan is grounded in a solid blueprint, and they make the implementation process their primary focus.

Even when distractions arise, concentrating on the process brings clarity.

By staying on course and working through a structured plan, significant achievements become not just possible but far more likely.

Too many firms make the mistake of simply setting a target for new business or the size of their total book of business. Top producers, however, focus their efforts on determining the strategies they will use to achieve those goals.

Three key Areas

Your model will guide you when your plan needs adjustment, and your plan should always be about taking action.

You must always focus on three key areas:

New Business

Retention

Organisation

New Business
There are three critical areas to focus on in your new business model. First, understand the key activity metrics required to increase and broaden your client base. Second, aim to generate 70-80% of new business opportunities through referrals from existing clients and introductions from referral sources. Finally, specialize in developing one or more niche markets.

Retention
Your retention model and new business model go hand in hand. The critical areas here include retaining 100% of your top 20% of clients who generate 80% of your revenue—these are clients you cannot afford to lose. Additionally, convert part-time clients into full-time clients by expanding the business you do with them. Maximizing automation to improve service delivery and free up your time is also crucial.

Organisation
The final key area is organisation. Three aspects of your organisational model can make a significant difference in achieving success in your business and career. First, spend 70% of your time on money-making activities, such as sales, relationship management, and pipeline building. Second, proactively manage relationships with suppliers, referral sources, and prospects. Lastly, delegate non-sales work to your service team.

Staying focused on these three areas will help you elevate your business to the highest level possible.

Coordinating the sales plans for all your producers ensures they are not “stepping on each other” and that opportunities are not being missed.

Finally, the best sales plans include both activity goals and result goals. After all, it is difficult to hold a producer accountable or know how best to support and equip them without effective goal setting.

Businesses that excel at goal setting grow roughly twice as fast as those that do not.