Have you ever set up personal goals? “I want to lose 20lbs by my wedding day.” or “I will learn to play Hey Jude by Beatles on the ukulele by the 3rd week of this month.’ or “I will build my abs before its summertime again.”
At one point in time, if not often, we have all set up goals for ourselves.
Sometimes we are able to achieve those goals. Sometimes we go astray and miss our goals.
But we still continue setting up goals because we understand the importance of those in our lives.
Goal setting is a great way to keep an eye on your destination and making sure that your every action is bringing you closer to that. If not, you can always steer back in the right direction until you have your eyes on your goals. Click To Tweet
In addition, goals give you an easy way to measure your success.
Just like personal goals, goals are equally important for your business.
They will guide you and your business team in the right direction and will help you make decisions faster whenever any confusion arises.
Not to forget, they play a very important role in your business growth goals.
You must have noticed people talking about goals, objectives, mission, vision, plan, etc… Many times they use these words interchangeably. Even though they seem similar, all these words have very different meanings and serve very different business purposes.
That’s why learning the difference between them should be the first step in your journey to your business growth goals.
5-point Checklist to Setting up SMART Business Growth Goals
Step 1) Set up Mission & Vision
Before you are able to set up your business goals, you have to work on your business mission and vision statement.
These are blueprints that will help you in establishing the kind of business you want.
The mission statement and vision statement even act as a source of guidance for your team members.
These help in uniting everyone by providing them the same purpose to work for.
Many times goals can change as per your teams like the marketing team can have different goals than the sales team.
But in the end, they both will be guided by the same mission and vision.
What Is Mission & Vision Statement?
The mission statement defines the purpose of your business and the vision statement identifies how you want to see yourself in the future.
For example,
Mission Statement of IKEA: Offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
Vision Statement of IKEA: To create a better everyday life for many people.
Read more about the importance of the mission and vision statement here.
Step 2) Set Up Business Goals
Now, as you have prepared a map for your business in the form of a mission and vision statement, you are ready for the next step: setting up business goals.
It is a very critical step as these business goals are going to define all your future business plans and actions.
The first thing that you have to remember while working on this step is that business goals should always align with your business’s mission and vision.
Setting up business goals is like defining your business ambitions.
Goals can be categorized as short-term business goals and long-term business goals.
You can further categorize them according to the department: financial goals, marketing goals, sales goals, technology goals, and others.
For example, To become the biggest seller of hair accessories.
How To Set Up Business Goals? The S.M.A.R.T goal setting method.
As business goals are very broad in nature, many businesses have started using the SMART goal setting method.
S – Specific
Your business goals should be specific and not general. If you want your goals to be effective, make sure that you make simple and sensible goals.
For example, we are going to increase customer satisfaction by providing them with 30-days easy return services.
M – Measurable
Your goals should be easily measurable. If you can’t measure the progress of your goal, then your goal is not right and you should redefine it.
For example, we are going to make a team of 5 who will analyze why customers are returning the products and will come up with two monthly insights about what our customer wants.
A – Attainable
This part focus on whether those goals you are trying to set up are achievable or not. Any goal that can not be achieved is not helpful for your business growth goals.
It’s only going to interfere with business growth goals.
For example, our business will become a market leader in the next 3 years might not be a very attainable goal if you are just starting out a business in a very competitive market.
R – Relevant
This part will focus on how relevant your goals are. By relevant, I mean if your goals are realistic in nature or not. Unrealistic goals don’t bring any results.
They just bring the motivation of your team down.
Another important thing to remember here is that relevant goals are those goals for which you have enough resources to achieve those.
For example, ‘we will provide 30-day hassle-free returns’ becomes a bad goal if you lack the resources to execute that.
T – Timely
Your business goals should be bound by time.
This is very crucial to do as you have limited resources which makes the majority of your goals very time-sensitive.
For example, having a goal of becoming the biggest hair accessories retailer by 2030 is a good goal as it has a time limit.
Step 3) Set Up Business Objectives
You are now ready for setting up strategic objectives for your business.
Where business goals are very broad in nature, business objectives are narrow and very action-oriented.
They are precise which makes it easier in deciding how to achieve those.
The importance of defining business objectives depends on-
-
- Whether your business goals are achievable or not?
- How are you going to achieve your business goals?
For example: To increase our market share and customer equity by 3% every year.
Don’t know what is customer equity, learn more here.
Step 4) Set Up Business Action Plan
When you are done setting up business goals and objectives, the time comes for breaking down those goals even further into specific action plans.
Action plans will be guided by various strategies and most importantly, they will tell you how to execute those strategies.
What Is An Action Plan?
It’s a list of various tasks that you should do to achieve your business goals.
Having an action plan helps you in defining a path to your business success.
It prepares you for any kind of obstacle, and unexpected and unaccounted for situations.
Let’s say one of your business objectives is to increase your market share by 3% every year.
Your action plan might include –
-
- Market research action plan (to find out how fruitful the market is right now for your business goals)
- Customer needs analysis action plan ( to find out if there is an unmet need of your customers that is causing them to switch to other competitive products)
- Improving your product (to use your findings from the above two steps to improve your product)
- Creating brand awareness about the new product (to figure out what all kind of advertising needs to be done to communicate your message about the improved product to the masses)
- And many other action plans like this.
How To Create An Action Plan?
-
- Set up your business goals (Follow SMART method)
- Divide those goals into various tasks
- Set up various milestones to measure your success
- Prepare an action plan B or corrective action plan (If nothing goes as you have planned, this will help you in bringing your business back on track)
- Implement your action plan
- If action plan A doesn’t work, implement your action plan B
- Analyze and reevaluate your action plan
Step 5) Set Up Tasks
A business action plan consists of various tasks. These tasks are small, precise, and easily measurable.
Let’s say if your action plan is to start Instagram marketing for your retail business, your tasks might be as small as –
- Setting up a bio to reflect the company’s branding
- Taking pictures of products for Instagram posts
- Working with the advertising team to come up with some cool Instagram taglines
- Posting those pictures along with taglines thrice a week
- Sending data to the data analytics team
- And so on
Setting up tasks is generally accompanied by the name of the assignee who will be responsible for the task.
This makes sure that it is completed on the time and that the work is always progressing.
Key Takeaway: Business Goals
The importance of setting up goals can not be ignored in personal as well as in business life.
Right business growth goals motivate us and unite us with our team.
The path of setting goals is not that tough if you follow all the above-mentioned steps religiously.
If your goal-setting is handicapped by not having enough information about your target audience, contact us for market research services.
Powerful business goals are made on a strong market and customer research and we have over 15 years of expert experience in that field.
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