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Article Contributed by Mark Wardell
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Top Tips For Pension Transfers!
If you're considering a pension transfer, then these tips could
help you in the transfer process.
1.Find an Independent Pensions Transfer Advisor
Pensions law and regulation is so complex and changes so
rapidly, that you really do need good advice when it comes to
transferring your pension. An independent advisor isn't tied to
any particular product, and has access to all the...
Measuring Your Future
Measuring your Future
Strategic (or performance) indicators are your company's score
card. They let you know how well you are doing at any given
time. Most business owners know there is value hidden in their
numbers, but few actually take the time to do anything with
them. Why?
In considering the most useful metrics for Wardell Professional
Development, we began, as most people do, with the financials.
It seemed like a logical place to begin because the numbers were
already being tracked. We just needed to formalize the process.
Then, as time went on, we added numbers from other departments
to give us a more rounded picture of our business.
The process worked, but no one was particularly excited about
it. The numbers were meaningful, just not meaningful enough. So
over time, we found ourselves paying less and less attention to
them.
I knew something was wrong. After some discussion, it occurred
to us that most of our metrics looked backwards. Our income
statements, for example, represented a financial slice in time
that is dead and gone. Even our customer satisfaction surveys
told us how our customers used to feel. The information was old
the moment we received it. What we needed, were forward looking
numbers. You can't predict the future, but we felt this type of
information could greatly benefit our decision making process.
Reasoning that predicting the future is really more about
understanding the odds, we came up with a simple definition.
Forward looking metrics are those that vary in relation to
future metrics. Prospecting activities, for example, are
measurable today, but they have a direct impact on future sales.
All things being equal, more prospects equal more sales. So at
Wardell, we now know how many new prospects we speak to, the
estimated dollar value of potential sales to those prospects,
the average length of time it takes for a prospect to become a
client, and most importantly, the odds of turning those
prospects into clients.
As we continued to sort through our list of performance
indicators, we often found that small shifts in our thinking,
rather than reinvention, was the order of the day. The question
we kept asking ourselves was, "how does this number vary in
relation to a future number?" For example, customer satisfaction
surveys became forward looking tools once we measured and
understood their relationship to our client retention numbers.
Once our metrics were in place, the greatest lesson we learned
was that they needed to be shared. By keeping them locked away
in the ivory towers of management we were missing out on a huge
benefit. We realized that if we wanted to empower our people to
make independent decisions, we needed to give them the tools for
measuring the results of those decisions. The numbers suddenly
came alive for us once we made them public and began
incorporating them into our regular staff meetings.
Mark Wardell President, Wardell Professional Development Inc.
e-mail info@wardell.biz web www.wardell.biz phone (604) 733-4489
About the author:
About the author:
Mark Wardell is President and Founder of Wardell Professional
Development, a business consulting firm, focused on the unique
needs of private growth companies. mailto:info@wardell.biz
http://www.wardell.biz
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Stock trading and Market Profile
The concept of Market Profile has been promoted most effectively by J. Peter Steidlmayer. In his excellent work 'Mind Over Markets', Steidlmayer explains why he thinks Market Profiling is so unique. I have found it useful myself, of course, and offer here a quick overview in case you find the topic stimulating. Central to Market Profile theory is the concept of the 'Value Area'. This is a...
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