Last week I met with a potential new client. The client has a fantastic business model - they work with insurance companies all over the midwest and do exterior home improvements after a storm, primarily wind and hail storms and not total devastation storms. Since they work with insurance companies it is fairly recession proof. They’ve been extremely successful and are growing rapidly. What they have noticed lately though is that they need to add in systems. As they’ve grown there are many more channels of communication and each location isn’t necessarily working like the other locations, learning from each other, sharing resources, and representing the company the way it was intended to be represented.
They had just identified a location where a storm had taken place and set up camp - sent staff to the area, started connecting with local insurance companies, and set up bulletin boards and other advertising. While I was in their offices discussing my services, someone came in and stated that the storm was actually not appropriate for their business as it was more of a total devastation storm instead of a smaller wind/hail type storm. Needless to say, there were gasps and the disappointment could be felt in the air. In total, the company spent about $10,000 in preparation for new business and had to pack up shop and come home.
If they had systems in place prior to deploying people and spending money on advertising, could this situation have been avoided? Most likely. Having a simple system such as a checklist which identified exactly what elements needed to be present to determine whether or not they should work in that area could have helped avoid this costly error. A system which stated that once a storm was identified, one person from the company was to be sent to evaluate the area with the checklist. A simple system…setting it up takes a bit of time and time is money. But isn’t it worth it?
Good work! Thank you very much! I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog? Of course, I will add backlink?
Sure!