2019 is here again and you are yet to have a set of goals you want your company to achieve by December. It is important to develop and learn how to set goals for your business in order to have direction. If you don’t set goals, it would be much difficult to evaluate your business success or otherwise. More so, setting your business goals only is not enough to accomplish success. You also need to learn how to meet your company goals.
What are the business goals?
Just like personal and career goals, business goals can help you stay motivated and dedicated to what you want to achieve for your business. Business goals also let you measure the progress of your business and how far you are from your dream result. Business goals are set of specific, measurable, and accountable aims, objectives and targets you want to achieve within a particular period of time.
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How to set your goals?
Business goals can either be short-term or long-term. There are lots of tips on how to set business goals available on the internet. Discussed below is one of the few successful tips.
1. List your anticipated aims
Think of the things you want your company to accomplish for the year and write them down. Be flexible and don’t be afraid to write anything down even if it seems vague and unachievable. You can always review, revise, modify, and rework the goals later.
2. Be specific about the goals
After you have written the goals, the next is to be specific and precise about the types of goals you want to achieve. Of course, everyone wants a successful business but this is more of an extensive business goal. In this case, you have to specify what you need to do to make your company a success. For instance, what is the specific amount of monthly revenue you to earn? How many products or services do you want to offer monthly?
3. Quantify your goal
The next step is to make sure your company goals can be measured. Measurable goals are usually better and sensible in nature since that can be easily tracked for developments and activities. Having a measurable goal will enable you to track its progress towards reaching the goal.
4. Set budget
The next step is to ensure that your goals can be achieved within the context of your available resources. Make sure you can manufacture and deliver the required amount of goods (or services) needed to facilitate the actualization of your goal. The following factors should be considered when setting a realistic budget for your goals.
• Sales
• Production
• Materials
• Plant and equipment
• Manufacturing expense
• Labor
• Financial and capital requirements
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5. Classify your business goals
Classify your goals into either short-term or long-term goals. Short term goals are the set of targets you can achieve within a short time frame. Short-term goals are stepping stones for the long-term goals which usually take a considerably longer period of time.
6. Set the time limits
There is no point setting a goal without a time frame for actualizing it. Setting a timeframe for your company goals will help you to manage the goals effectively. When do you want to achieve a particular task? This will further assist you to establish the specific attributes which will allow you to meet the goal deadline.
7. Prioritize your company goals
The last stage is to prioritize our company goals in the order of their relative importance or benefit. What can be achieved sooner rather than later? What must be done first? What must be done before others can be done? These questions will let you arrange your goals efficiently.
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How to achieve your set goals
Once you have set your company goals, the next is to learn how to achieve these goals. It is easier to set goals than to achieve it. If you have once set business goals and failed in the past, it is probably because you haven’t heard/read about the following tips.
1. Be consistent
Consistency means to keep doing something with a view of a getting the desired outcome. The first and prominent approach to goals actualization is consistency. Sometimes along the line, it may seem as if the goal is unachievable. You should regularly motivate your team and find reasons to continue pushing until the goal is achieved. Do not quit until you achieve your business goal.
2. Claim the ownership of the tasks
Ultimately, someone has to bear the responsibilities of creating goals, tracking the progress, evaluating the performances, and modifying the goals for the future. Of course, your company/business has a team, but it is quite difficult to get all the team working at the same time. Thus, one person has to be the driving force.
3. Carry your workers along
Pursuing a company’s goals isn’t a one-man task. Of course, one person has to take the ownership of the goals and drive the team towards actualizing it. However, the process must be transparent and members of the team must know how far the company has gone in actualizing these goals and what other things that need to be done. Many companies extend their transparency to let the employees know how the company is performing, directly linking the regress to the individual efforts of the workers and team members. This can further drive the members towards putting more efforts.
4. Discuss and Collaborate with others
The transparency step above should lead to initiating discussions and collaborations with your workers and team members around the goals. Discuss the success so far, limitations, and other things that need to be done.
5. Track the progress
Measure the progress of your company in the pursuit of the goals. Decide the metrics to use for measuring the goals and monitor it. Keep all relevant data and information appropriately. Make you never miss out on any progress made towards actualizing the stated goals.
6. Celebrate your success
Celebrate it whenever you achieve one or more of the set goals before moving on to the next one. Business owners often overlook this stage and only investigate the performance if there is a failure. Meanwhile, it is likewise important to establish the reasons why you are successful this time and appraise everybody involved in the process.
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Track your business goals
Need a software that will help you plan and track your business goals? Runrun.it specializes in streamlined, integrated task management. It is a practical system that helps you control your costs, gather the most pertinent metrics for understanding your operations and manage your time, prioritizing workflows and dramatically increasing your productivity. You can try Runrun.it for free: http://runrun.it
