Today’s question is very interesting in that most of us have a problem in delegating.

The questions are:

1. How to delegate to increase my available time?
2. How to eliminate much of my accessibility so I can get more management duties done?
3. How to get away from the phone and teach my clients to call my CSR’s and not me for issues they can better handle?

Since CSR means you are in the insurance industry, I’m going to be very specific about the answers, but most of you can relate and massage the information to fit your specific industry.

I’ll answer number 3 first.  Whenever I, or any of my salespeople, delivered a policy, there was a very detailed form that was delivered to the insured at the same time.  The salesperson went over it in great detail, explaining whom to call for each issue.

In this way, the insured always called the CSR when they needed information about any issue they had.

By preparing the client in the very beginning, i.e. at the delivery of the product stage, you won’t have the problem.  Of course, with your existing clients, you should visit with them and go over the same form.

Now for number 1 and 2…Successful business owners have effective systems in place for their companies.  They know that a system allows them to consistently deliver a minimum standard or level of performance.

With this in mind, you must create systems to delegate and eliminate accessibility to you when someone else can handle the problem. I listed 2 great resources for managing your tasks and priorities on June 5th in my blog article titled, “How To Manage Your Time To Grow Your Profits”. Scroll down to the bottom of that article and you’ll find the 2 resources listed there.  Download them to your computer and read them.

Regarding the systems that I haven’t written about, you can check with your association to find out whether they carry any books or manuals that could show you how to set them up or how to improve your current ones.

To delegate functions, all you have to do is DO IT.  That’s right.  There’s no secret about how to delegate.  Just find the right person to do the job, and tell them that it’s theirs. There is no Secret way to delegate.  But you have to make sure that the person you delegated that function to is capable of accomplishing the work.

Walter Wriston, former CEO of Citibank, said, “The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of the people in their organization is going to blow the competition away.”

Here is what I did when everyone wanted to see me.   I rearranged my desk, so that my back was to the door.  When they saw that I was busy, most of the time they just walked away.

Or, when someone wanted to see me, they had to make an appointment with my secretary.  Sometimes, unless it was critical, when she asked them what they wanted to talk to me about, if it wasn’t critical, she told them that the only available date was two weeks later, and she tried to help them solve the problem, or suggested someone else to solve their problem.

Using either of these methods, I reduced my accessibility on trivial things, to a bare minimum.

Technorati Tags: Delegating, delegating for profits, Managing Priorities, time management, time management for insurance agents, time management for insurance reps

Question 1: How can I develop a detailed direct mail marketing plan for prospects, clients, and referral sources?

Question 2: How can I establish a daily/weekly/monthly regimen for administrative/office work, networking events, preparing income/productions goals, and review these on a regular basis?

In Developing a detailed plan for the above you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What method am I going to use for prospecting. An example: Who do I want as a client and where can I get a list of companies or individuals I have defined? 
2. For clients, what methods can I use to communicate with my clients on a consistent basis? The answer could be sending reports, articles you’ve come across, anything that you feel will be of use to your client.  The objective is to communicate with them consistently so that you are always in their minds.
3. For referrals, you must approach them initially without attempting to sell something.  You want to get together with them to share information.

For establishing a regimen for question two, you should decide what time of the day is better spent to doing administrative work, attending networking events, etc.  In other words, what hours of the day are better for producing income, and what hours of the day are better for administrative activities.

Most business owners reach only a fraction of their income potential because they spend most of their day doing low pay-off activities.

Recently I spoke at an Insurance Company Convention and when I asked some agents what their highest-payoff activities are, many of them replied: “Seeing prospects and clients.”

In fact, some of them told me they could make up to $1,000.00 an hour or more when they are in front of prospect and clients.  But when I asked, “How many hours do you spend seeing prospects and clients in your average work day they said, ‘Less than two hours.”

They explained the reason they could spend only about two hours a day seeing prospects and clients is that they have to use most of their day trying to get appointments, doing administrative duties and paperwork, putting out fires, and taking care of other low payoff activities.

To turn this situation around, you will need to set up your business in such a way that it will allow you to do your highest payoff activities during most of your day, and here it comes…“Delegating the rest of your low payoff functions to your staff, professionals, independent contractors, or freelancers.

So, my suggestion for increasing your productivity is to figure out ways to delegate your low payoff tasks to somebody else.  Maybe you can find a virtual assistant to help you with administrative tasks. For instance, you could go to Elance.com and put in the keyword “virtual assistant” and find assistants to do work for you for as low as $5 per hour.  You can find almost any type of help you want there.  You main task is to define clearly what type of help you need and how to qualify the freelancers before you start outsourcing your work.

It’s best to start freelancers out with small jobs to test them first.  For the ones that work out at first, you then give them bigger jobs, and so on.  If you are in a hurry, you can give the same job to two or three freelancers to see who does the best job, then go with the best the next time.

Don’t try to outsource all your work at once.  This is a good way to create chaos in your business.  Take a planned approach and find the right outsourcers for one aspect of your business at a time.

I always get bored with administrative chores. 

So my suggestion to you is to delegate those chores you listed to other individuals, freelancers, or professionals that can do the tasks, and generate income by concentrating on prospecting, nurturing clients, and working on referrals.

In terms of getting organized, I’ve found that there is no one way to use “time management” that works for everyone.  And even if you find a system that works for you, you still have to modify it to fit your work and life style. 

I think that one of the things that hamper most people with “time management/priority management” is the search for the ideal system.  Once you give up the search for the ideal system, you’ll move faster to finding what works for you.

However, the system you come up with will change as you and your business changes.  It is never a final solution.

I think that if you follow the fundamentals of “time management/priority management”, you can come up with the best system for you.
Here are two FREE resources that can be a great help for you in managing and allotting your time:

• “The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips”, by Francis Wade. Click here to download: www.kenvarga.com/downloads_FREE/newtimemanagement.pdf
• “The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload and Triple Productivity in 24 hours”, by Tim Ferris. Click here to download: www.kenvarga.com/downloads_FREE/lowinfodiet.pdf

Technorati Tags: freelancers, getting organized, manage time, outsourcing, time management