26 Apr Setting Business Goals for 2019
May is coming and how’s your business doing?
We’re pretty sure you’ve come up with a plan before the fist of January this year. A resolution is a promise a person makes for himself. Ideally, you commit to these promises in order to see improvement in your life for the coming year. This applies to business as well. It is important to sit down and take a look back at how the business survived in the past year. Think about the setbacks that you encountered so you can make the necessary changes in order to grow your business for the coming year.
Have you reached your goals from January to April?
Of course, it will still be a good idea to check back because there is always room for improvement.
You need to set goals. Make sure that your goals are realistic and achievable. And most importantly, stick with it because that will guide you into reaping more success for your business.
If you have to set goals for the company, there are things that you should consider as it points you into the direction that the company is moving towards.
It will be worth reviewing if your business is faring well or setting your business goals again if you haven’t started yet.
Reality check
As has been mentioned, you need to revisit the past year and see where your strategies worked and where you had problems. This way, you could make strategic decisions to strengthen on your good points and work on your problem areas.
Your performance will tell you if you have done well. Did you meet last year’s expectations? Did you fail?
Make an analysis of the past year’s performance.
Study your competitor more in the coming year.
This will help you gauge your performance against the competition.
This will also help you understand what your target clients need. What strategies worked for them and how you could do that to your advantage.
Now this will be easier to come up with your set of goals.
Once you have done so, it is time to set goals that are realistic.
Aim for the highest possible goal
They say aim high. And when making business goals, aim for the highest possible goal. This way you will have a benchmark by which you could measure your performance up against.
You may also want to break this down into smaller goals that are more achievable in a short amount of time.
It can be done on a weekly, monthly and quarterlies so you can evaluate on the progress of whether or not your company and the personnel have delivered. Set a target date for each goal and make sure that you follow up strictly on the said dates.
Each quarterly goal must be strictly met as it will lead to the ultimate goal that you have set for the end of the year.
Also, make sure that the goals can be tracked, measured and analyzed so that it will be easier to monitor. One form of measurable goal is sales. You can set a quota for your sales people and they need to achieve this on a given time.
Talk to your employees.
Be honest to them about the company’s financial standing. Although understandably, there will be information that needs to be kept by just a select few members of the higher-ups. But things that directly impacts the employees, it will be best to tell them.
Regularly discuss with them the updates.
As for the future plans of the company, make the employees part of it. Get inputs from your employees.
These are the people on the front lines and they are the ones who experience first-hand the going ins and outs of your business. They will most likely have ideas that will greatly help the company improve for the coming year.
Plan of action
It is not enough that you have a goal and that you have a vision of what you want to achieve at the end of the year.
Your goal will only be your guide. To get to that point, where goals are finally achieved, you need to clearly map out what exactly needs to be done.
The employees what they could suggest and how they themselves plan to achieve whatever goal is set for each of them.
Delegation
Dig into your employees’ performance in the past six months or the past year and decide which responsibilities will go to whom so there will be accountability.
Appoint one person who will make sure everyone’s on track.
Explain to each person thoroughly what the company’s expectations are from them and make them understand that each one’s performance will be detrimental to the company’s overall success.
Motivate your people more in the coming year.
Every time a goal is met –be it weekly or monthly, quarterly or especially yearly — always reward good work.
You may give the incentives in the form of cash.
You will never achieve your company’s goal if not for the hard work of your employees.
You need to value your employees because they are the heart and soul of a company.
If they see that you value their hard work, it will make them work harder. This creates a culture of excellence as everyone strives for it. This makes it easier for everyone to work towards the company’s main goal.
There will be a time in the year, when the goal set at the start of the year will be forgotten. People tend to put it into the back-burner especially if there are other issues that the company has to deal with along the way.
You will find the importance of creating these goals early in the year or before the end of the year so that if your people’s focus is derailed from these goals, you will have something to look go back to. Make sure that if they are derailed, you pull them back on track so you could all go towards achieving your company’s goals for the year, just go back to this list of goals that you came up with.
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