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How To Set And Achieve Your Business Goals This Year

How To Set and Achieve Your Business Goals This Year

The beginning of the year is a great time to look at what you’ve accomplished in your business and plan out some new goals for the new year. It doesn’t even have to be the start of a new year to think and set goals for you business. Anytime is a good time! But here we go with how to set and achieve our business goals this year.

I’m sure you’ve probably already heard about setting S.M.A.R.T goals but yes, these are the type of goals you should be setting for yourself because they work. In case you haven’t heard about smart goals. The basis is that you choose goals that fit the criteria of being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

Specific. Have you identified the who’s, what’s, how’s, why’s and when’s? Get as specific as you can for each goal. You don’t want it to be vague.

Measurable. Can you easily track the progress of this goal? If you have a goal to reach a certain number of sales, this is easy to measure.

Attainable. How realistic is this goal for your business? It’s great to dream big but don’t aim for something totally out of your reach. Of course, don’t make your goals super duper easy to attain either.

Relevant. Remember your ‘why’ of doing business. Think about if your goal is relevant to your ‘why’ and if it is inline with your vision for your business.

Time-based. Your goal should include a time limit. When do you want to achieve your goals? Within 30 days, six months, a year? Getting specific about your timeline will help you focus on your tasks and manage your time better.

I don’t advise you choose more than three to five goals. I prefer three.  When you come up with a goal make sure it follows the smart goals criteria. An example of a smart goal would be:  ‘Make x number of sales by December 31st, 2017’.

I’m going to break it down for you here to make it easier for you to plan out and follow through with achieving your goals.

Steps to Set and Achieve Your Business Goals

  1. Come up with 3-5  smart goals that you what to accomplish for this year.
  1. Break up each goal by quarter, then by month, then by week. So in using the example above ‘Make x number of sales by December 31st 2017’, let’s say the goal is to make 3000 sales by December 31st 2017. Breaking it down by quarter you would need to make 750 sales per quarter, 250 sales per month, and about 50-62 sales per week (since some months have 4 weeks while others have 5). You can even break it down even further and have a rough idea how many sales you need to make per day.
  1. Come up with three strategies for how to reach each of your weekly goals. This will be used as your ‘to-dos’ for the week. For example, using the weekly goal of generating 50-62 sales a week, one of your strategies might be updating 5 older and popular blog posts with a link to your sales page. I see many entrepreneurs getting this wrong and stating this example of updating blog posts as a weekly goal. This is not a goal, this is a ‘STRATEGY’ to reach your weekly goal that you have already broken down from your larger, big picture business goals.
  1. Think about what content you will have to create in order to reach your goals. You may be creating a product but now that you have your goals set, it’s a good time to plan out your editorial calendar for your blog content. What content do you have to create that will help you accomplish and support your goals?

Going through these steps will really help you become clear and focused to reach your goals so that you know exactly what to do each week and each day. If you haven’t already, get yourself a weekly planner so you can organize your days and to-do’s.

What are your business goals for the year? 

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