Author: David Carpenter / Source: Lifehack
We often times think of goal setting as something done when we first start a business or a new job. But the reality is, we need to be regularly setting new goals as well as monitoring the progress of past goals.
I personally like to assess and establish business goals during the first quarter of the new year.
This allows for both you and your employees to have a clear understanding of what the expectations are over the coming year.View the Forest, Not the Trees
When deciding on what goals you will have for the year, don’t get bogged down in the minutia of figuring out every last detail of how you plan to get there. This is big picture stuff, your vision for what the organization should look like in a year.
This long term goal setting will serve as an overall framework for your short term planning. That short term planning is where you will lay out the individual steps necessary for achieving the goals.
That’s a long winded way of saying that you first need to figure out where you want to go before you plan the trip.
10 Powerful Business Goals to Set for This Year
While no one list could apply to all businesses or all situations, these 10 goals have been a part of every successful business that I’ve been involved in.
1. Maintain a Healthy Budget
This trips up a lot of entrepreneurs. I’ve seen so many people start businesses without a financial plan.
Academics have coined a new technical term for this type of financial plan, they are calling it a “budget”. And if you don’t have one, then that’s your number one goal for the year.
Having a budget not only helps with tracking where your money is being spent, but it also allows your to analyze things like what type of advertising is working best for you.
How do your payroll expenses compare to the industry average? Are you spending too much or too little in commissions and bonuses? And God help you if you decide you need to get funding.
Going anywhere for funding (Bank, Investors, VC firms) without a professional budget will get you booted out of the office without a second look.
2. Hire a Certain Number of Employees
If you don’t have any employees, maybe now is the time to consider hiring some. Trying to do everything yourself is the curse of the entrepreneur. We all try being the “Jack of all trades”, but we forget the rest of that saying, “but master of none”.
You can start by hiring someone to do all of the little tasks that have to get done but don’t contribute to the bottom line. These tasks take your attention away from growing the business.
One caveat here, don’t put anyone else in charge of marketing! You should always do the marketing and be the face of your business. Turning that part over to someone else is just asking for trouble.
3. Reduce Expenses
Running a lean business should be the goal of every entrepreneur. After all, every dollar saved in business expense is an extra dollar in your pocket. The problems arise when you begin to cut into areas that affect the bottom line.
For example, it’s always tempting to look at payroll first because it’s such a big expense in most businesses. But will cutting sales staff hurt sales? What about the shipping department or customer care? You might not feel the effects of those cuts right away, but if your not giving the customer the experience they expect, you will feel it down the road.
Try looking for other ways to reduce expenses. Try new software, change the implementation of your processes, and most of all, reduce debt!
4. Refocus on Your Customer
You should always be re-evaluating your relationship with your customer. You need to know what areas are working right and what areas need improvement.
Look at the entire customer experience. Are your customers happy with the product or service? Is your refund / exchange process easy to understand and use? If they have questions or need help is it easily accessible? Are you delivering your products in a timely manner?
No matter how good you currently are, vow to make the customer experience even better.
5. Get More Traffic to Your Website
There is never a reason you shouldn’t want more traffic going to your website. Even if you’re not generating sales from a website, increasing traffic is great for brand awareness.
If you haven’t updated your website in a while, now’s the time. Make sure it’s pleasing to the eye with all the latest information and helpful hints.
6. Evaluate and Refine Your Social Media Marketing
This dove-tails nicely with the previous suggestion. Social media marketing, when done right,…
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