Matthew Blankenship: Focusing on Agility for Business Success Post-Pandemic 

Agility is the act of being able to move quickly and think on your feet. This has been a trend in businesses that has been extremely important over the last year. Since the pandemic started, the world’s changing daily, and it’s hard to keep on top of each change. As a business, your marketing strategy needs to evolve constantly to ensure you’re interacting with your customers in the most effective way. 

Matthew Blankenship was kind enough to provide his views on achieving maximum success for your business this year and post-pandemic. His focus was strongly on agility and needing to have alternate options for your company’s marketing strategy as the business world adapts. 

This week in our Rediscover Marketing post, we focus strongly on how your company can become more agile. Using Matthew’s insights, we’re able to advise you on how you can maximize your companies success in the coming year. 

Who Is Matthew Blankenship?

Matthew Blankenship is the Regional VP of Sales at Jack Schroeder & Associates, a company that operates in the top level of the insurance agents hierarchy. Their primary focus is on helping independent agents and agencies grow their businesses. The company is highly medicare focused but also works with the under 65 age range. 

Being in sales marketing for his whole career, Matthew still strongly focuses on sales now. He managed to fall into management very quickly and has stayed in that sector for the remainder of his career. Matthew has been with Jack Schroeder & Associates for a year and a half now. He mainly focuses on a directorial role and leaves the marketing creation up to his fantastic team. 

Switching From Traditional to Digital Marketing 

Matthew believes that his company’s approach to the market is unique, mainly because they still focus on many traditional marketing tools even though the world is turning digital. Working face-to-face with clients was a strong selling point that Matthew and his team imposed, but this was no longer possible due to the pandemic. 

From focusing on in-person interaction, Matthew’s team had to go completely digital. This was a considerable adaptation that needed to be made. When you’ve been successful with one platform for such a long time, making such a significant adjustment can be challenging. However, Matthew is very proud of how his team made the transition so seamless. 

Matthew and his company had to go through every form of training and absorbed an incredible amount of knowledge. This is the key to success when making such a big change. Learning so much new information can be challenging, but it needs to be done in difficult times like the pandemic. 

Even though they had to change their entire approach, Matthew believes they gained many advantages from learning to use a new platform. He stated that the most advantageous change was that they now know how to make presentations more enjoyable and engaging. When the pandemic shifts and things can go back to normal, they’ll have these new skills on board that they can integrate into their plan. 

The Importance of Agility

When you have to change from one platform to an entirely new one, your business needs to be agile. Not everything will come easy, and being open to quick changes and thinking on your feet is necessary. Matthew experienced this first hand and stressed the importance of agility when transforming a business for success. 

A highly insightful piece of advice that Matthew gifted us with was that the best thing to do to anticipate market changes is to focus on micro-trends. Micro-trends are smaller and more specific trends that will last for a few years but are very common amongst business management. Matthew believes that they give you the benefit of hindsight and are invaluable as a planning tool. 

Another way Matthew and his team stayed agile in the past year was through their data review. He explained that his own team’s review process is constantly developing, especially since they’ve only recently turned 100% digital. He doesn’t focus so much on the hard data but instead takes impressions from the sales teams. From this, he uses the information to develop a predictive pattern and establishing how agents will function in the field. 

Planning ahead to stay on top of changes has been a key factor in Matthew and his team’s success. They have four different business plans to use each month and choose the best one that fits better with the current climate. This is a good idea for any business that wants to introduce more agility in its strategy. It allows you to be prepared for any changes and act quickly. 

At the end of the interview, Matthew emphasized again the importance of agility and a constant focus on data review in management. He also believes that companies need to keep in mind morale and mentality to make teams run smoothly.