8 Ways to Maximize Your Business Goals This Year

As a small business owner, it’s always top priority to find ways to maximize your business goals each year. When it comes to establishing business goals, it’s also top priority to set a plan to maximize and prioritize strategy.

Goal-setting is an important strategy for all small businesses. The right goals are an important part of your strategic planning and also a tool for achieving small business success. All of the data indicates about half of small businesses fail within the first 5 years, which is why not having set goals, or setting a plan to maximize them, can be a serious issue.

From modest, short-term small business goals, to extraordinary goals, the right goals can move the entire business forward. In fact, to lead your small business to success, business owners need to set goals and a plan to maximize them. This plan requires careful planning, monitoring, and adjustment as you maintain and grow your small business.

When it comes to maximizing small business goals, there are many options and directions to take. The right goals should include all of the important aspects of your businesses operations, from service processes to finances.

Business goals also help to provide direction for your small business, including everything from day-to-day activities and how to build a positive company culture to resource allocation, and tracking accomplishments against your organization’s business plan, along with establishing a vision or mission statement.

Some short-term small business goals are meant to be achieved right away, such as within the few months of establishing them, while long-term goals may not be realized for several years. Overall, a good goal setting strategy to ensure outcomes are maximized, includes multiple checkpoints (or mini goals with unique timelines), along with a long-term plan with checkpoints set up along with way. Not reviewing each specific goal, including whether each goal has been accomplished, essentially defeats the purpose. Keeping track of the goal, the milestones reached, and what goals are yet to be accomplished, keeps the entire process moving forward and on the road to success.

Due to the importance of setting goals and setting a plan to maximize them, we have outlined a few key steps to help you get started, along with helpful tips to accomplish them. Good luck on your progress!

Effective small business goal setting is both an art and a science. There are aspects of setting goals that involve vision, yet the process to attain them must be rooted in proven methods that can be measured with the outcomes attainable.

Setting business goals that are realistic is essential. The right goals are achievable and encourage business growth, can be used to measure progress, and also keep motivation high during growth seasons. Alternatively, if the goals are too eager, it is more likely that both you and your team become frustrated (or even worse, become tempted to give up).

Overall, goals should encourage progress, motivation, and focus to grow the business and possibly personally as well.

For goals to be helpful, they must be measurable and attainable. A proven method to track and measure goals is by using key performance indicators (KPIs). Key performance indicators (KPIs) are commonly used as they are proven.

In addition to using KPIs, good small business goals are SMART goals. By setting SMART goals, measurements can be applied to test and verify if the goals working toward accomplishing strategy throughout the year. When setting the initial goals, it’s also important to establish timelines and milestones to periodically review, including what goals have been accomplished, what goals are not on target, and what steps need to be taken to adjust the plan and hit the strategies.

The SMART in SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Each of the characteristics outlined align to setting objectives and making them clearer and easier to track. Overall, when goal setting for your business, the best goals are those that follow the SMART format.

Additionally, if the business goals are too broad, or too eager, it will be challenging to accomplish them.

Keep in mind, that each goal should directly correlate with your key strategies and business outcomes; therefore, you want to set the right goals and establish measurements throughout the year so that you accomplish what you targeted.

Each of the points of SMART goals align to a specific characteristic. 

• "S" for Specific: According to the SMART format, the "S" represents the need for business goals to be clear, concise and well-defined, not too broad or ambiguous.
  

• "M" for Measurable: According to the SMART format, the "M" represents measurable; creating criteria to establish measuring the progress of each goal and parameters to determine when the goal  accomplished.
  

• "A" for Achievable: According to the SMART format, the "A" represents the need for business goals to be attainable and realistic. Each goal should stretch your business and personal, or team abilities, but also achievable.
  

• "R" for Relevant: According to the SMART format, the "R" represents the need for business goals to be relevant and align to all other business goals, while also set to overall business strategy.
  

• "T" for Time-bound: According to the SMART format, the "T" represents the need for business goals to have individual deadlines, or time frames, to create a greater sense of urgency and align to overall business strategy.
  

When goal setting, it is important to apply the SMART acronym to keep in mind the overall strategies of the goals, maintain consistency and establish timelines to determine methods of checking on progress. By creating SMART goals, you will have a better method for measuring your progress and staying on track to maintain maximum results.

As you invest time in creating short-term and long-term SMART goals, as well as setting up your overall business goal objective, remember that the business world is always changing. Due to this continual change, business goals may also need to adapt or change according to market conditions and other factors. Having started out by establishing clear and defined goals with measurable targets allows easier adjustment to respond with updated goals when needed.

As a business owner, it's essential to maintain continual awareness of what goals have been set, what goals have yet to be accomplished, and areas that may need attention. Ultimately, as a business owner, not paying attention to goals results in unaccomplished vision, unmet strategies, and potentially unhappy customers. Losing sight of goals can also result in failure to grow the business or possibly even failure of the business. For these reasons, it is important to implement methods of accountability to check key results on a regular basis to ensure goals are on course, on schedule, and what goals may need adjustment.

Goals require vision along with establishing a clear understanding of how the business is performing based upon past months, the overall track record, and current outcomes. Here are a few questions to assist with reviewing performance:

• Are customers satisfied? Is there a need to obtain feedback from customers?
  

• Are employees satisfied? Is there a need to obtain feedback from employees?
  

• Are new markets being targeted or developed?
  

• What are existing profit margins?
  

• Are sales on track to accomplish revenue goals?
  

• What is the cost ratios?
  

• What are the profit margins?
  

• What are the profit margins?
  

• Are improvements needed? If so, what areas?
  

Once you analyze the answers, you have much more concise information is help guide establishing fresh goals.