In college, my roommate Jack announced his big New Year's Resolution — to finally stop smoking. He was a long-distance runner and was seeing the toll his habit was taking on his performance.
By mid-January, however, it was clear that his resolution was was not to stop smoking cigarettes, it was to stop buying them. Every time he felt the urge to smoke, he asked to "borrow" a cigarette from one of my other roommates. By February, his resolution was forgotten.
Resolutions don't work. Think about the thousands of people who sign up every year with a local health club, resolving to go a minimum of three times a week for the year to finally get in shape. The owners and managers of those clubs love this time of year because they know that by February, most of those people will have stopped coming on a regular basis, but they'll have to continue to pay on their contracts until year's end.
As you're reading this, financial and insurance professionals everywhere are making 2017 New Year's resolutions to make more calls, or to make and keep more appointments — to make more sales. But by the end of January, those resolutions will most likely have been forgotten as well, and these professionals will be back to the habits of 2016.
This year, create a real, detailed, working business plan. The difference is in the details. Resolutions fail because they are the expression of a wish — something you want to try to accomplish. They don't include details, planning, an analysis of where you are and what needs to change, smaller process goals and periodic milestones. These are things that go into a business plan.
If you want to move from the incremental growth of 2016 (if you had any growth) to exponential growth in 2017, a resolution won't cut it — but a written, detailed, working business plan will give you a fighting chance. I'm not talking here about the kind of business plan that someone prepares for investors. I'm talking about something that will make 2017 your best year ever.
Here's what you need to do to create a Business Plan:
1. Determine what your mission for the year will be. What's your ultimate goal? How many new applications do you want to open? How much more do you want to add to assets under management? How much more money do you want to earn? How many people do you want to help so that they can retire comfortably when they're ready? What's your "burning desire" — as Napoleon Hill called it — for 2017?
Sandy Schussel has been a coach and practice development consultant for insurance and financial professionals for the past 20 years. He is an approved MDRT coach and has served as the national sales training director for First Investors and Foresters. He is the author of two books, 
