Just as having a business plan will help you to get from where you are now to where you want to be, setting yourself goals will allow you to get through each stage of your plan with a clarity of purpose that is essential in good business practice.
The goals and targets you set yourself can be for any aspect of your business and can be as small or as grand as you need them to be. When setting your goals you must make sure that they are within your reach, make sure that you set yourself SMART goals:
S.M.A.R.T Goals are always Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound.
SPECIFIC
Keep your goals simple, if there is more thing that you want to achieve, that’s great (and there should be), but do it one step at a time. Simple doesn’t have to mean easy but it does need to clear in you mind what the single specific outcome will be.
MEASURABLE
If your goal can not be measured then you will never know when you have reached it. By the outcome of your goal you should know whether you have achieved it either by the amount of money you have made, the progress to next step of your plan, a hit or miss on a sales quantity etc. In other words there must be a tangible outcome that you can say you have achieved.
ACHIEVABLE
It’s great to have a dream and to want nothing but the best for you and your family, but to get the best is a step-by-step process and you cannot start missing out the steps and still expect to get the same results. That is why your goals must be achievable from where you are now. Keep your goals realistic, if you are just starting out then expecting a 5 figure a month turnover as your next step will only lead to greater set backs in the long run as you don’t make allowances for what happens in between.
RELEVANT
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Keep your goals relevant to what stage of your business you are currently at. Enthusiasm can be a dangerous thing if it’s not kept in check. Achieving your goal should directly further your business and smoothly segue you to the next logical step. It might feel slow but it will take longer if you have to back track at a later date.
TIME BOUND
So you know what specifically you want to do, you know how to measure whether or not you have achieved it and you know that it’s the next relevant step in your business plan, so all you need to know now is when you are going to do it. If you don’t set a time frame for your goals then you will find yourself drifting along in a constant state of procrastination, making little progress.
“Work expands to fill the time available”
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