There are many agencies that find it daunting to hire a consultant to come in help them do a little cleaning in their agency. They’re afraid to relinquish control for one reason or another, but would it really be such a terrible idea to get some help to clean those hard to reach spots? Do you hire a babysitter when you take a night off or do you have a house cleaner? Maybe you have someone that comes to trim the hedges or clean the pool. Don’t think of a consultant as someone trying to take the leadership role away from you, and don’t think of it as being inadequate in the job you perform. Sometimes we all need a little help whether it’s for the small messes that we sometimes ignore or whether it’s for some of the big spills that we haven’t had the time to clean up.
You’re probably wondering what some of the benefits are to hiring a consultant. What do you get out of it? What does your team get out of it and how does it affect your agency in the long run? One of the biggest things that you can get out of hiring someone to help clean your agency is that you will be saving a lot of time. While you may not have the time to dedicate to certain tasks a consultant does, and in the meantime you can direct your newly saved time into other aspects of business or projects that you may have put off. You, as an owner, already have a full time job and that job is running your agency but it takes more time than you have in a day to be able to run your business and run it efficiently. A lot of owners think of their agencies as their babies, and while you do the majority of the work raising them, it doesn’t hurt to get some help.
Another reason you might consider hiring a consultant for is for their diverse areas of expertise. Would you try to fix your toilet without having the knowledge or tools to do so? The short is answer is no, you wouldn’t. You would hire someone that knows how to do the job and do it well. While we all love the idea of DIY, there are some things that you simply shouldn’t try to fix without the help of a professional. Not only will you be able to learn the things that you might lack the knowledge for, but your team will also be able to learn about new strategic processes or marketing strategies as well. That way your team will be able to implement any learned skills during situations even when the consultant is no longer at their disposal.
There are so many things that we could go into, but the last topic to touch on is how good it feels after you’ve had help cleaning up the messes in your agency. How good it will feel when when all the irritation and frustration of not being able to do something or run your agency efficiently is gone. Let’s face it, when things are running smoothly then your team will be more functional and people will be happier. We know that cleaning up those messes can seem like a big step, but once you start moving the television and cleaning the dust off those shelves then things will start to feel a lot better. You’ll not only know that you’re making an improvement, but you’ll be able to see the results once it’s all said and done. That’s what APP is here for, we want to help you take the steps needed to remove all the gook and debris out of your agency!
Let’s take a look at how it all works. Agency Performance Partners has an assessment available that you can take. This assessment will go through every corner of your agency, from the television that you don’t want to move out of the corner to the closet that you’ve been stuffing everything into. It all starts with an anonymous survey from your team to get their feedback, then we move on to secret shopper calls to test how well the sales process is working. Then there is agency data points, there will be six key performance indicators to see the metrics to give guidance on best practice, and last we will come on site to interview staff members and build a plan with the agency. From there on we will set up bi-weekly video calls for a 90 day interval to make sure that things are running smoothly in your agency.
This is all it takes to start running your agency smoothly and cleaning up those spills, cleaning up the messes and dusting those shelves. A little bit of time and trust in a consultant and the knowledge that you’re not giving up control, and you’re not giving up your job title. You’re simply getting help where help is needed. We hope that you’ll take some time out to take our assessment or to contact us with any questions that you might have. We hope to hear from you soon.
