Setting goals for your business can be a daunting task. If a plan is not put in place, for how you are going to accomplish your goals, then unfortunately they are unlikely to be completed.
In this article I am going to help you to achieve your business goals, by showing you how you can ensure your business goals are on the road to success and what you need to do to make them clearer and more focused.
Write it down!
The first thing I suggest when planning your goals is to write them down.
You might also want to create a vision board or visualise your goal in your mind.
Write down that big goal and break it up into bite size, manageable chunks of what you need to do to achieve this goal.
Ask yourself; What do I need to do today/ this week/ this month to complete this goal?
There is a well-known acronym for setting goals, known as SMART, which I will share with you and explain.
A SMART goal stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels
Specific.
When setting goals, they must be specific. For example, you can’t just say, ‘my goal is to be rich.’
How much money is rich? That number is going to be different for different people. What are you going to do to earn this money? Once again this will be different for everyone.
Write down what you intend to achieve and how you plan to do it.
Outline any problems or opportunities you might experience along the way.
Think- Who, What, When, Where, Why and Which.
Measurable.
Goals need to be measurable. This is why we need to be specific. We need units. For example, how much do we want to earn in a month? How many products do we need to sell in a month to achieve this goal? To achieve this monthly goal, how many products do we need to sell in a week or in a day.
Next think how many people do we need to talk to each day to achieve our daily/ weekly/ monthly goals?
Therefore, we need to find ways to be able to evaluate and measure our goals. Other tools we might use include data, statistics and targets.
Achievable.
Is your goal reasonable enough, that it is possible to be accomplished?
For example, if you want to make £1000 in a month, this might mean selling 200 units of your product in that month. That equates to selling approximately 7 units every day.
How many people do you need to speak to every day to make 7 sales?
For some of us this might be very achievable, although, for others it won’t be.
However, goals should not be made too easy. They should challenge and improve a business’s performance. For instance, to reach your monthly £1000 target, you might decide that week 1 you would like to make £175, week 2 £225, week 3 £275 and week 4 £325. Hence increasing sales by £50 each week.
Of course, this is only an example.
Relevant.
Your goals must be worthwhile and meet the needs of your business. They must also improve your business in some way.
For example, your goal might be to post on your social media page at least five times a day, to increase your visibility and engagement. This will be very time consuming, so you need to decide if this activity is worthwhile. Maybe your time is better used in another area of your business and posting just two or three times a day would be sufficient and create the same effect.
Timely.
Be specific on what you want to get done by what time and date. Your goals and objectives should have an end date.
When we have a deadline to our goals, it makes it easier for us to break them up into more manageable chunks, set targets and follow our progress along the way.
For example, if we have a yearly goal, we can break it down into smaller months goals. If for one month we fail to achieve our goal, then we know that we will have to increase our work for the following months.
We may even decide that to achieve our final goal we need to change the way in which we operate our business.
In this article I have described five areas which need to be considered when setting goals for your business, in order for your goals to become more attainable. These include, your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.
By using this process, you will be able to monitor your goals and ensure that they are on track over a certain time frame.
If you would like more information, please send me a message, or join my Facebook group, Content Queen – Small Business Owners on a Mission, for more tips.
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