Your Action Plan To Hit Your Year-End Goals

Your Year End Number Is a Result. Your Activity Goal Is a Plan. 

How many working days does your agency have left in the year?

Take out the holidays and the days that disappear to conferences, vacations, and year-end admin, and it is likely fewer than 50 days.

Most advisors know their production target for December 31. But what does your Agency need to do to hit your goal? A production goal tells you where you want to land. It does not tell you what to do this morning.

Production is a lagging indicator

You cannot control premium numbers directly. You can control the activities that lead to production. Calls, appointments, review meetings, and referral asks are the part you control.

The result follow from your agency’s activity.

If you are behind, a bigger number on the whiteboard will not fix it. A clear daily and weekly activity target is a better indicator.

Work backward from the finish line

Start with the gap, then break it down:

1. Set the gap. What production do you still need between now and December 31?
2. Use your own ratios. How many appointments does it take to produce one sale? How many conversations does it take to book one appointment? Use your real numbers, not what you hope they are.
3. Do the math. Divide the gap by your average sale. That is the number of sales. Multiply back through your ratios and you have the appointments and conversations required.
4. Turn it into a weekly target. Divide by the weeks left. Now you have a number your team can hit or miss by Friday.
5. Repeat this weekly. Once you miss a weekly goal, your activity goals change. Ensure that even if you don’t meet this week’s target you are working toward the real activity goal by completing this activity weekly.

Here is an example: Say you need 12 more sales, and you close one in three appointments. That is 36 appointments. If it takes about four conversations to book one, that is roughly 144 conversations over 10 weeks. About 14 a week. That is a very different problem than “we need to write 12 more cases.”

Set goals people can see and score

A good activity goal passes three tests:

• It is specific. “Make more calls” fails. “15 client conversations per week” is controllable.
• It sits inside your control. You cannot control whether a prospect says yes. You can control whether you ask. Using your real ratios ensures you’re making room for prospects to say no.
• It gets reviewed weekly. A goal nobody checks is a wish. Put it on the agenda of your Monday team meeting and review the previous week’s numbers in under ten minutes.

Give every number an owner

In a systems-driven agency, the goal belongs to a role, not just a person. Your service team has client touch targets. Your producers have appointment targets. You own the review meetings that hold both accountable. When each role knows its activity number, you stop being the only person who cares about the year-end result.

Look at your pipeline of existing clients

Year-end is the best time to reach out to the clients you already serve. Annual reviews, open enrollment conversations, and tax planning questions give you a natural reason to call. Pull a list of clients who are due for a review and make those calls part of the weekly target, not something you get to if time allows.

The challenge

Before the end of this week, do three things:

1. Calculate your remaining gap and the activity it requires.
2. Break it into weekly targets by role.
3. Put the first scoreboard review on the calendar for Monday.

Fifty working days is enough time to finish strong. It is not enough time to wait and see.