Loving and Serving Each Other – Digging a Bit Deeper

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One of the values that we hold dear at Astonish is “loving and serving our client and each other”. I wanted to dig a bit deeper into that value. People use the word “love” all the time. I LOVE this pizza. I LOVE my Ipad. I LOVE going to the movies. The true meaning of the word “love” can get diluted and lose its meaning if we’re not careful. So what does it mean to “love and serve each other” when it comes to business? I think that this is an extremely important and powerful value if it is lived out in our lives. I “love” the Wikipedia definition of the word: "The unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another" It’s interesting that Wikipedia uses Read more [...]

Using Checklists to Improve Results

by Posted under Processes, results | No Comments
I read another interesting book recently, “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande. The author shows how a simple tool, a checklist, can help organizations avoid errors and improve results. Gawande is a surgeon and he was asked by the WHO (World Health Organization) to come up with a low-cost way to improve surgeries across the globe. After a great deal of research Gawande came up with a simple checklist. The results were pretty staggering. This simple step caused an incredible decrease in infections and many other post-operative problems that plague surgeons. I immediately thought of several areas where a simple DO-CONFIRM checklist could help improve customer service and results for Read more [...]

Facing Your Business’ Problems Head On

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Every business has problems. There are no perfect businesses no matter how elaborate the PR spin. Even the great Apple, known for its stunning revenue growth and fanatical customer base has problems. So how do the best businesses deal with problems? Let’s dive a bit deeper into the way we as individuals deal with problems for some insight. If you think about your own life for a second, you could probably indentify a few areas where you are stumbling. If you look even deeper and are honest with yourself, you might even say you are ignoring problems. If you've ever watched the TV show Intervention you can see this pattern first hand. The show chronicles the life of a drug addict who Read more [...]

Analytics and the Independent Insurance Agency

by Posted under Analytics, Metrics, Small Business | 2 Comments
I just read a great piece in Forbes magazine about Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. SAS is the leader in high-powered analysis software. SAS helps large to midsized business analyze their data so they can make better decisions. The author asked Jim the following question: “What do businesses want to analyze today?” Jim’s response was, “Businesses are looking at customer data to gain insights into cross-selling and up-selling.” This sounds very familiar. It’s the old adage, “it’s cheaper to KEEP the customer you have than to acquire a new one”. Businesses are starting to realize that they need to objectively understand their customers better. Every customer leaves clues Read more [...]

The Law of Comparative Advantage Applied to Business

by Posted under Small Business | No Comments
I just read a great blog post on the Law of Comparative Advantage. According to Wikipedia, the law states the following: “Two countries (or other kinds of parties, such as individuals or firms) can both gain from trade if, in the absence of trade, they have different relative costs for producing the same goods. Even if one country is more efficient in the production of all goods (absolute advantage), it can still gain by trading with a less-efficient country, as long as they have different relative efficiencies.” In Bussgang’s blog, he applied this law to start-ups. I’d like to expand the law to all small businesses. To quote Bussgang: “As such, they [owners] get sucked into spending Read more [...]

Embrace Change

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It’s seems like just when I have things under control, a new challenge presents itself. When I first started Astonish Results, I had a picture of what our business would look like. I was always looking to the future. I thought that if we could only get “X” customers or “$X” in revenue, then we’d really have arrived! I also found myself thinking this way in my personal life. I would look to the future, and say to myself, “If I could only get to this point, things would really be great.” If I could only make $100K in income, have that huge house with a pool or you fill in the blank. Do you ever catch yourself thinking this way? Then one day it hit me. When I actually get to the Read more [...]

The Only Thing That Matters is Renewals

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Once a month our entire company gets together for lunch. We use this opportunity to acknowledge one of our employees and let them know how much we appreciate their hard work. We also use this time to speak to the group about one of our shared values or to reiterate our vision. Since, we’re adding new employees all the time, it’s important to revisit the same themes and make sure everyone is on the same page. Last month we talked about renewals. Astonish Results is a SaaS (software as a service) business. Clients pay us monthly for a fixed period of time. At the end of their contract, they can choose to stop the service. Obviously, we want them to continue with us since it’s much cheaper Read more [...]

Insurance Agencies Need to Play Defense and Offense

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I went to the RI Air show and subsequently got a really bad sunburn. While walking around the event with my two sons looking at all the cool airplanes, helicopters, humvess and the Blue Angels (btw - check out their website it's pretty cool) I come across this sight.   Geico. These guys are literally everywhere. I cannot go a day without hearing a radio commercial, seeing them on a billboard, seeing a TV spot, or being confronted by one of their SEM ads on Google. I’m out for a nice day with the family and I see them at the air show. These guys are aggressive. They are going for market share. They are committed to being anywhere and everywhere consumers show up. It’s almost to Read more [...]

My Experiment – Reading Faster

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One of my goals in the past few months has been to read faster. There is so much information out there to be absorbed, so much to learn. I set a goal for myself to read three business books per month. I failed. My solution is to increase my reading speed. I found this neat little application http://www.spreeder.com which allows you to past text into the interface and set the speed at which it flashes single words or groups of words before you. I started at 240 wpm and a 91% comprehension rate. I’m now reading at 325 wpm! I can still comprehend what I’m reading extremely well. I use my Google Reader to track all the blogs I’m interested in. I just copy and paste the text into the speed Read more [...]

Measuring Your Insurance Agency’s Internet Marketing Results

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As I began working on this post on measuring Internet marketing results, I realized I needed to speak to several deeper issues I’ve seen in the over 500 independent insurance agencies I work with. There is a clear marketing divide that is emerging which distinguishes those agencies that are leaders in internet marketing and those agencies that are trailing. So before I dive into measuring an agency’s Internet marketing results, I want to make sure I set the right foundation. Jump in with Both Feet  The best agencies in the country are not internet marketing “top-dippers”. These agencies understand and embrace the fact that both their current and potential customers are using various Read more [...]