Setting Goals

This week I wanted to talk to you about setting goals in our business. Never has this been more important than it is now when to succeed we need to be focused on what it is that we define as success. The best way to move forward is to set ourselves goals, and this is something my business mentor has encouraged me to do on a regular basis.

So when you start out in business you have lots of thoughts about what you would like to do and achieve, and as time goes on these things change or evolve into different goals. Setting goals is a great way to keep motivated when the going is tough, encouraging you to keep developing your business. Setting goals also helps you to get a clearer idea of what direction you want to take your business and what steps are needed to get you there. If you have staff then having clear business goals can help them too, as they will clearly be able to understand the reasons for the work you are asking them to do.

So how do you go about setting goals? Well I suggest taking a blank piece of paper and writing down all the things you would like your business to achieve in the future. Some of these goals may be small, for example "complete company website" and some may be huge such as "Get ten new hotel clients on board" It doesn't matter at this stage, just write down all your dreams for your business. If you have employees it can be useful to get them to help you brainstorm because they may have a great idea of a direction you could take the business.

Think about issues such as:

Do you aim to expand your business or move to a different premises?

Is there a way you could improve your existing business methods?

Do you aim to increase your staff?

Are there any elements of your original business plan that you still need to bring into action?

What is your marketing strategy and how could it be improved?

Are there any new technologies you could use to improve or streamline your business?

How many new customers would you like to have on board over the coming months?

What new advertising ideas could you explore?

Are there any companies/individuals that you would particularly like to work with?

These are just to get you started, usually once you do start this type of activity the ideas come forward quite easily.

Once you have a list of goals, you need to connect them to some sort of time line. You cant expect all these things to be achieved straight away or even in a year. I tend to divide a clean page into 4 boxes and give them titles of "In the next 4 weeks" "in the next 6 months" " in the next 18 months" and "in the future"

You can then put your new goals into the right boxes so that you have a time frame for achieving them. Don't worry about putting some goals into the "sometime in the future box" This does not mean you are opting out completely , but that you have prioritised and chosen to complete other goals first. These future goals need to be looked at next time you set new goals for your self, and then it may be time to move them into another box.

So once you have your immediate short term and medium term goals decided in your mind, you need to plan how to achieve them and what you need to do to get there! Commit this to paper and work at them often and you will be sure to progress your business forwards.