You sell insurance. However, your agency is much more than that. You have a vision of who you are, and you have a corporate culture, even if you don't always articulate it. Why should you focus on your mission and bringing this forward to your clients? When you want to cut through the noise and show who you are as a business, focusing on your mission can help you achieve this.
Why Are You Here?
As an insurance agency, your job is to sell insurance, but you're not only here to excel in sales. Your mission might be to serve a local market and bring high-quality insurance to that market. You might specialize in a specific sort of product and wish to create new possibilities for clients who need auto insurance, for example. Your focus could be on providing a depth of experience to your clients or on providing the best service in the industry. Considering why you are here can help refocus you when you're looking at new directions, and it can also help you improve what you do by reminding you of your priorities.
Focus Is the Key to Success
According to the Huffington Post, "we hear a lot about motivation, stress, emotions, leadership, and team culture, but not much attention is paid to the role that focus plays in your ability to be productive." Focus is the ability to consider what is important to you and to avoid everything else that distracts you from that purpose.
While focus is essential during a work day so that you don't forget to accomplish specific tasks, focus on your mission is also a reminder of why you are there as an agency. When you're feeling busy and distracted, focusing on your mission can:
Improve your customer service by allowing you to remember what really matters to you as an agency.
Deepen your employee training by telling you where you need to concentrate on building employees' skills.
Help you reflect on new opportunities, telling you about whether or not it's important for your agency to pursue those opportunities or to let them go.
Make you a more adaptive company, helping you see opportunities for change and growth that do synchronize with your corporate mission.
Why Focusing on Mission Can Be More Important Than Vision
Vision is your idea of what the future could be, and it can be inspiring. However, sometimes listening to your mission can be just as, if not even more, important. Forbes cites the example of Patagonia, which started out as an attempt to create a better anvil and turned into a strong, international outdoor gear company.
If the founder had stuck to his original vision, we'd have some local anvils and no Patagonia. However, through the fact that many different possibilities opened up, the company has been able to seize opportunities to fulfill its mission, which is to become an outdoor retailer that also protects the environment.
Focusing on your values rather than what you think that the future will hold can help you build a strong, responsive company.
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