Now is the time to set some new goals for your business

​When was the last time you actually set some goals for your business? Do you do it once a year, once a quarter, or not really at all?
 
It’s easy for people to get so caught up in running their small business that they don’t actually take time to sit back, evaluate and make a plan for the future.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail"

​With the end of financial year approaching it’s a good time to evaluate how far you’ve come since last July, and make a plan to take you through to June 2018.
 
If you have a plan from last year, get it out, dust it off, and take a look at what you set out to achieve. If you didn’t have a plan, then go back over your customers, jobs and invoices or monthly P&L etcetera to review what’s been happening in the business.
 
By evaluating your successes and failures you can see what worked well and what didn’t work as well. Then you can start to consider what you can do to improve your success next financial year.

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If you have a whiteboard clean it off and write up the word ‘Goals.’ Ensure your goals are SMARTER – Strategic, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. By making them SMART Goals you won’t be setting yourself up for failure. Instead there will be some sort of strategy behind each goal. By setting yourself a realistic target and a timeframe in which to achieve each goal you will be able to measure and evaluate its success.
For example, your goal could be: 

“To increase monthly online sales by 10% by the end of 2017.” 

You may only need to set yourself five to ten goals for the year, maybe less, it’s entirely up to you. As long as they’re measurable and achievable, you’re on the right track. Once you have decided on your goals you now need to set yourself some actions which will help to achieve each goal.
 
For the above goal, you may need to set aside a budget for online advertising to help drive traffic to your website and increase sales. Ideally any promotion you do will provide you with enough return on your investment to cover the cost of the advertising whilst also your business profit.

The next step is to create a simple implementation plan or timeline so you know when things need to be done, by whom and by when. This can be created in a spreadsheet and will allow you to tick off each action as they have been achieved. You should evaluate each goal regularly and see if you’re meeting the target you set yourself. If not, you may need to adjust the goal to be more realistic.

​Now you have the steps to create a plan for your business, it’s up to you to make it happen.
Good luck! If you need any help feel free to get in touch with us. We offer in-house training or Skype or FaceTime consultations. For more information email [email protected].

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Author

Nicola is the owner and director of Out of the Box Consulting and has a keen interest in helping small businesses with their marketing and promotion. She is also the mother of two boys and loves to spend time with her family.