YOUR GUIDE TO SUCCESFUL GOAL SETTING IN BUSINESS +

Goals are absolutely essential to accomplish anything worthwhile, not only in business, but also in cultivating personal habits that positively impacts your business.

What is goal setting?

In it’s simplest form, goal setting is knowing what you want to achieve or where you want to get to, and setting a time frame to accomplish it.

Most people don’t give it the right consideration it deserves in business planning, because it takes time and effort to set goals.

Failure to do this comes with dire consequences, such as frustration and closure of business.

Here’s what you can expect

• Importance of goal setting in your business

• A study of those that set goals versus those that didn’t.

• Setting your business goal using the S.M.A. R.T model

• Practical example of goal setting in business

Goal setting is an important part of any business plan. If you really have your heart set to achieve success in your business, goal setting should be given the maximum effort in your business planning.

However, if you are just getting your feet wet business, goal setting might seem difficult to achieve.

Because you need to dive deep into your business to explore what makes it tick, and where you want it to be in the future.

Moreover, it requires a fair amount of time.

And devoting the proper time to doing that can be difficult, especially in a system where we are encouraged and pressured to make fast decisions.

But it’s not impossible to accomplish…

In reality, the time spent in coming up with goal setting for your business is almost always worth it.

As a matter of fact, there is no downsizing to your business by taking time out to think your goals through.

Rather, it helps you to get your desired result faster than you thought possible.

In the world today, businesses are conducted in a competitive environment.

And to be able to compete and not get edged out by the fierce competition, it’s important you fall into the habits of handling your business in a professional and result oriented manner by setting goals.

“If you make goal setting a habit and develop a concrete execution plans for your goals, success is guaranteed in your business”

Other reasons Why goal setting is important in your business.

1. It helps to  maximise your time.

One thing you cannot recoup in life is lost time, and lost time in business leads to loss of productivity and money.

For one thing, goal Setting in business helps you to spend your time in high priority task.

 2. The time you spend setting the goals is a time of introspection into your business, and coming up with what you wants for your business.

Some people may never get such good opportunity in the life of their business to do this again, except those that may want to reevaluate their goals in the process of time.

It’s important to realise that reevaluation of your business goals and objectives is a good business practice.

I recommend adopting this practice in your business.

3-4 months review of your progress is an effective way to work towards accomplishing your goal.

3. Goals give you the framework (structure)within which to work. This helps to focus your effort by eliminating actions that will not contribute to achieving your set goals.

Some important part of the framework are your business timetable, your financial budget for your business, and the number of required employee.

4. Another reason why goal setting is important in your business, is that it’s pivotal to giving direction to your business and it also helps you  to measure your business results.

5. Goal setting and planning prevents you from going off the track in business.

6. Finally, goal setting makes you committed to a course.

This is further spelt out by The 1953 Yale study on goal setting emphasis that writing down set goals and plans  helps us to be committed to achieving the course.

In this way you’re accountable for you action.

Here is an analysis of the study:

“The 1979 Harvard MBA study on goal setting analyzed the graduating class to determine how many had set goals and had a plan for their attainment. Interestingly enough, the results of the 1979 Harvard MBA study are exactly identical to the supposed 1953 Yale study.

In the Harvard Business School MBA study on goal setting, the graduating class was asked a single question about their goals in life. The question was this:

Have you set written goals and created a plan for their attainment?

Prior to graduation, it was determined that:

• 84% of the entire class had set no goals at all.

• 13% of the class had set written goals but had no concrete plans.

• 3% of the class had both written goals and concrete plans.

The results?

Well, you’ve likely somewhat guessed it. 10 years later, the 13% of the class that had set written goals but had not created plans, were making twice as much money as the 84% of the class that had set no goals at all.

However, the apparent kicker is that the 3% of the class that had both written goals and a plan, were making ten times as much as the rest of the 97% of the class.

Ten times as much? If the study is actually true, which most people believe it not to be because there doesn’t exist a single shroud of verifiable evidence, then it would be saying a lot.”

excerpt from wanderlustworker.com

Although, this study has been debunked as myth, there is a great deal to learn from it, regardless of whether is true or not.

For one, it has taught us a good lesson on the importance of goal setting and creating concrete plans for the success of our business.

HOW TO SET GOALS

Goal setting is really quite simple.

Now, I’m going to begin very basically, so many of you can grasp and implement this strategy in your business without further ado.

And,  don’t forget to write down ideas that come to you while I take you through the process of goal setting.

Also, ensure to keep it where you can easily see it without a day passing.

Seeing it everyday helps you to take the necessary cause of action to execute it.

“Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.”

Jack London

Step 1:

Get the right idea or vision.

• change in my business?

• improve in my business?

• have in this business?

• to do?

By asking yourself the questions above, you are in the process of determining the fate of your business.

So, take your time to think this through until you have a crystal clear vision of what you want to accomplish.

By proffering answers to these question, you should be able to come up with some ideas.

Step 2:

Convert your ideas to goals

Set the goals you want to achieve from the ideas or vision you came up with.

Let’s make it simpler by assuming you’re in the  online business.

Your vision may be to:

• Increase brand awareness.

• Generate more revenue

• Write more authoritative contents in shorter time.

• Generate leads through email subscription.

Drive more traffic to your site.

Create more engagements on social media.

Spend quality time with your family while making money.

Implement your core values.

In as much as you might be tempted to set all on the  list as my goals, it may not be realistic.

As such numbers of goals become a burden to you.

So carefully choose what is priority to your business.

Step 3:

Make your goal SMART.

How do you do this?

A S.M.A.R.T. goal is defined as one that is specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and time bound.

A smart goal is goal that is:

1. Specific:

A specific goal is a goal that clearly and unambiguously defines:

• What you wants to achieve.

• Why you want to achieve it. In order words, what will you accomplish by doing it.

• Who’s involved?

• Where do you want to execute the goal?

• Which requirements and constraints are you envisioning.

• When do you want to accomplish your goal

Goals that are set with these questions in focus are specific and have a greater chance of being accomplished than general goals.

• Specific means reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal and it has a greater chance of being accomplished that general goal.

Let’s take this example,

By August  12th, 2018,  I want to increase my blog  revenue by 50%. To do this, I’ll create a course in the next two months, and sell it online.

 2. Measurable:   

For you goal to be smart, it has to be measurable.

Why?

First, to let you know if you’re making progress towards successfully completing that goal.

Second, measuring your goals also helps to ensure that milestones are met.

Third, it  helps you to identify areas that  needs changes in your business and intensify effort in such areas, you stay on track, and it also inspires you to keep going.

This is really quite simple. It basically boils down to asking and answering these question:

To what level do you want to attain your goal?

How will you know if the result has been achieved ?

Or, how much you’ve accomplished so far?

An assessment like this helps you to come up with a yardstick for measuring your progress.

To make it clearer, it’s vague for you to set a goal to “generate revenue” without making it measurable.

The reason is that it’ll be difficult for you to effectively measure your progress.

This is a  better way to do this, “I want to generate $30,000 in the next six months.

You can use $5000 monthly income to measure your progress.

Once you have this, you can effectively monitor how you’re making progress towards your goals.

3.  Attainable:

Your goal must be realistic, within reach, but not below standard performance. Setting unrealistically high goals demotivates you and may even cause you to it up.

For your goals to be successfully accomplished, you have to figure out if you have the necessary finances, capability, skills and appropriate time to devote to it.

For example,  it unrealistic for someone that has no previous knowledge of internet marketing, to set his sets his financial goal at $100,000 per month within the first two months of coming into the business.

As valiant as this may look, it’s absolutely unrealistic from a newbie with a legitimate effort to make money online.

Because, internet marketing requires some level of skills, which take time to acquire.

You also need time to build an audience that will give you such amount of revenue per month.

Perhaps, a target of a $1000 would be more realistic .

Be realistic in your goal setting, make sure it’s something you’re willing and capable of accomplishing.

The bottom line is to fit your goal within the available resources you have to deplore to attaining it. This gives you strength to drive it to success.

4. Relevant :

Whatever goal you set must be relevant to the your business. It must completely align with your business’ “mission statement”, visions and value.

Using an example of a blogger, a relevant goal would be to  “increasing the number of post on your blog.”

In contrast a goal to increase “tomatoes production, ” isn’t relevant to your blogging.

Not only should your goal be relevant, it must be specific, measurable and attainable.

The thought behind relevancy in goal setting, is to make sure you don’t derail from the primary focus of your business.

5. Time- bound:

Author Napoleon Hills wrote, “ a goal is a dream with a deadline.”

This stresses the importance of setting a timeline or a target date for accomplishing your goal.

With so many things vying for attention in life and in your business, setting a timeline makes you more committed to your objectives.

It also helps you to create a schedule and work progressively towards achieving your goal.

How do you set the time limit for achieving your goal?

Break down your project into smaller bits, and decide how long it will take you to complete each of the smaller bit. Then, use this to evaluate how long it’ll take you to complete the whole lot.

Here’s an example:

If you’re a blogger, and your goal is to write (without outsourcing) a hundred articles on your blog in a year.

The first step is to break down your hundred articles into monthly goals.

That’d be 100 ÷ 12 = 8 reminder 2.

From the above metrics, you’ve to write eight articles in a month.

From your experience and the resources available to you, can you write eight articles in month. It’s only by doing this that you can meet your target of a hundred articles in a month.

Unless of course, you choose to outsource it. But in our example, we’re not looking at that option.

So, how many post are you really capable of writing in a year?

Maybe four will be okay in a month, giving your  a total of forty eight articles in a year.

Going by our example above, setting a timeline of one year for forty eight articles on your blog looks feasible.

You’d have observed that in order to get our time to fit properly, we had to subject our goal through the whole SMART process again.

You may also have to do this (that is, rethink it several times) to make sure your goal is smart.

This goal setting strategy is not restrictive to a particular business, but  can be applied to any business, irrespective of whether is online or offline.

All you’ve to do, is adapt the strategy to suit your peculiar business.

If you’ve followed me this far, I congratulate you because you’ve made tremendous strides in your goal setting.

There are some qualities of goal setting that are equally important. These are Short term and Long term goals.

When setting a goal, first set your long term goals,next set your short term goals for accomplishing your long term goals.

Short term goals are achievable in a period of months, while long term goals take longer periods to attain.

Long term goals have a timeline of about  2 years – 5years. However, some can go for longer periods depending on what you can see.

How does this work?

Simply take your set goal and assign them to shorter periods of achievements.

For example, if you have a  two years set goal, what I recommend is break down the goal into 4 quarters.

Then, at the end of each quarter, you do a review to see how you’ve fared. A review allows you to know when to apply corrective measures.

To ensure milestones are met, you can also revisit your goals during the course of the year. This helps you to cull what is not working, and cultivate what leads to greater productivity.

Conclusion:

Goal setting motivates you and gives you direction in business. It also  helps you to focus your effort and time on high priority tasks.

Most people don’t give it the right consideration it deserves in business planning, because it takes time and effort to set goals.

Unfortunately, failure is the inevitable end of such a business.

 By following the guide I outlined here, you can set your business goals and get the results you so desperately need in your business.

But if you get stumped, download ‘my free worksheet’ above and use it along side this guide.

If you still have difficulties after this, feel free to ask your questions in the comment section below or on social media.

You’ll in most cases get help.

Question

Have you set written goals and concrete plans for your business?

If not, why?

Share with us in the comment below. As usual, your voice is important on this blog.