Do you have business goals in place? Do you create new goals every year or adjust the ones that you have? Maybe you don’t have any business goals… but should you? The simple answer to that question is “Yes!” No matter how big or small, goals can help you achieve greatness.

Business goals help you to stay focused on the progress of your business. They challenge and motivate you to keep moving forward and continue to grow. If your team is working on the same goals it can provide accountability and healthy competition with everyone contributing to the end result.

Goals can be set at any time, but the most common time is when we are coming up on a new year. You should start to plan your goals for this upcoming year a few months in advance. This gives you the opportunity to put what you need in place to accomplish your goals.

Here are a few tips to think about when planning your goals:

1. Goals should be attainable, yet challenging.

Perhaps you have a goal of increasing your business’ revenue by 10% in the first quarter, but over the past few years, your revenue typically trends around a 5% increase in the first quarter. A 10% increase may not be attainable and would be very discouraging if revenue doesn’t hit that target. However, the goal of a 7% increase may be more realistic. Right after you set these goals, decide how they will be measured. It’s tough to work toward your goals without keeping track of progress. You want to be sure that your output is productive and consistently moving toward the goal.

2. Goals should have a deadline.

If there isn’t a deadline on your goals, then what will push you to meet them? Deadlines are a great way to keep healthy pressure and accountability on you and your team to reach those goals and stay committed. A key to setting a deadline is making sure that it is not too aggressive, so stay flexible and be willing to make adjustments along the way. You want to allow enough time to meet the goal successfully without the burnout of getting there.

3. Brainstorm with your team.

Most of the time it’s pretty easy to come up with a goal for your business, but planning strategies and creating “subgoals” to reach those goals often calls for more creativity. Brainstorming with your team is a great way to hear insight, gather ideas on ways to reach your goals, collaborate, and get a different perspective.

• Make a list of the areas of your business you’d like to improve.
• List them in order from the highest importance to least.
• Choose the top 2 or 3 goals to focus on and make sure they’re achieved before moving on to the other goals on the list.

4. Goals should be specific.

Ask yourself what challenges or “subgoals” you can create within your goals to meet them and add those to the plan. A good way to do this is to break down the goals into manageable steps. Set a plan for each of those steps. For instance, maybe it’s time to invest a little more money into your social media marketing by using paid ads to boost your sales. Or, using SEO/SEM to drive more traffic to your website. Whatever your goal is, create “subgoals” to help reach and even exceed your goals.

5. Celebrate when a goal is accomplished.

Reaching a goal is nothing to sleep on. You should always celebrate when a goal is reached even if the goal seems small. Celebrating goals is a fantastic way to keep morale high among your team and will most likely motivate your team to keep pushing towards reaching those goals. Reward yourself or your team each step of the way, not just when the final goal is reached. Celebrating small successes is also a good way to get closure on each stage of the process and helps to keep everyone focused on the end goal.

Conclusion

If you’d like to learn more about how to create effective business goals for your business or how to adjust your business strategy, contact Fuzzy Duck. We offer FREE consultations and would love to help your business plan and refine goals for the upcoming year.

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