The start of a new year has always traditionally been a great time for a personal overhaul, join a gym, eat healthy, save money – but is often overlooked as a time to set new work goals.
Why is setting goals for your business important? Goals serve a lot of purposes within a business, they give you purpose + direction, providing you with a clear set of achievements to aim for. They’re great to help motivate you and your team, and will provide gratification + further motivation once they’ve been achieved. They also help you measure your progress as a business, and give you a clear indication of how your business is doing.
Setting achievable goals for your business is often harder than proclaiming a desire to go to yoga twice a week, so we’ve laid out our top tips to help you create achievable + actionable goals for your business in 2017.
Be clear about what you want your business to be. It’s impossible to set realistic goals if you’re not entirely sure what you want to achieve with your business. Take some time to go back to your business plan and reassess – what is your Why for your business? Are you trying to help your customers, educate them, entertain? How do you want them to feel in relation to your business, happy, inspired, encouraged? You can’t plan your route unless you know the destination, and so it is with goals.
Be SMART. You’ve heard it time and time again but make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T. They need to be specific, not ‘make more sales’ but ‘make 50 sales’. Measurable, not ‘feel healthier’ but ‘take no sick days’. Attainable – be realistic. If you only sold 10 spaces on an ecourse last year, don’t aim to sell 200 this year. Make them relevant, goals that will really help to serve your business, and timed, give them a time in which to achieve them.
Don’t be over-generous with time. Giving yourself one big goal for the year isn’t as effective as giving yourself a new goal every three months. Decide on your focus for the year, and create smaller goals to help you get there. Every Monday, look at your goals, and create smaller goals for the week that help serve your purpose.
Reassess regularly. Check in periodically to see how you’re making progress to achieve your goals. Schedule checkpoints ahead of time to sit down and evaluate what progress is being made, and how you can better serve your goals moving forward.
Tell us about your business goals for 2017 in the comments, and how you plan to achieve them!