When most mortgage originators made their sales plan for 2011, they probably anticipated a year that was heavy on the purchase side, with rising interest rates keeping total volume down.
Now, is a good time to reflect on what actually happened during the year, and what changes can be made to help ensure a successful future.
The Society for the Advancement of Consulting asked its membership to recommend techniques and best practices for business to adopt before the end of this year. Here are some of the suggestions it received.
Ann Latham, the president of Uncommon Clarity Inc., recommends people ask themselves these three questions:
1. Are we adapting to changes around us, especially changes in our customers' wants and needs?
2. Are we becoming something new, smarter, and more capable than we were at the beginning of the year?
3. Are we continuing to eliminate the activities that contribute least to our profits and the value for which customers are willing to pay?
"If you answered any of these questions with no, not sure, or luckily," explains Latham, "now would be a good time to embark on a stronger, more intentional approach to better results in 2012!"
Alan Fortier, a leading strategy and pricing consultant to manufacturing businesses, suggested targeting these three often overlooked areas for action by year-end:
1. Celebrate your 2011 successes with employees;
2. Give needed feedback to help make your people more effective; and
3. As part of your emerging 2012 plan, make sure you've highlighted the things to stop doing.
Roberta Guise, founder of Guise Marketing & PR, said now is the time to do some cleaning out of your files.
She suggested doing these three things:
(1) Set aside the names of clients and colleagues with whom you've lost contact for a reach-out campaign;
(2) Hang on to a couple of samples from your retired brands or promotion campaigns—keep as a record, or you may even want to display them; and
(3) Be on the look out for "treasures. I just found photos of my mentor (who recently passed away) taken on the set of a big video shoot of mine more than 20 years ago; after copying them, I'll frame and send as a surprise gift to his family. So purging needn't be all about clean up and drudgery," Guise tells us. "Let it be a process of discovery, delight and forward thinking, too."
