We all want our businesses to succeed… that’s generally the point of running one. However, this will require you to set the right goals and do so correctly.

Let’s walk through the process you should follow to accomplish this.

The Best Goals are SMART Goals

First, let’s establish what makes a SMART goal and what it is that makes a goal smart.

The SMART acronym stands for the following:

• Specific - Your goal needs to be clearly outlined, with detailed descriptions of your objectives and the processes to achieve them.
• Measurable - Your goal needs to be divided into trackable benchmarks so that you can accurately track your progress.
• Achievable - Your goal needs to be realistic regarding how practical and possible it is for you to accomplish.
• Relevant - Your goal needs to contribute to your business’ overall success in its objectives.
• Time-Bound - Your goal must be dictated by a set schedule to avoid scope creep and keep you motivated.

So, while your goal may be to “sell more widgets,” a SMART goal would be to “sell 7% more widgets by Q4 of 2024, focusing on social media and event-based marketing to build awareness and sales opportunities amongst our audience.”

How to Create SMART Goals

With the acronym defined, we can now break down each element in more detail:

Making Your Goal Specific Enough

If your goal is too nebulous or lacks a clear objective, motivation to accomplish it will wane faster than otherwise, and its scope will surely creep beyond sustainability. You need to laser in on the exact outcome you want—what you want to do, why you want to do it, who needs to be looped in, where all of this will be accomplished, and what limitations are in play—to give yourself the most straightforward path forward.

As you do so, you should do so in quantifiable terms. While “increase revenue” may accurately describe your goal, “increase revenue by 10% by Q1 of 2025” does so as well while making your full intentions crystal clear.

Determining How You’ll Measure Your Progress

Speaking of quantifiability, you must also determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to evaluate your progress toward your goal. Otherwise, you’ll have no way of knowing how your plans are working—or even whether or not they’re working at all.

In essence, you need to determine which data is most important to track as you progress toward your objective, collect it, and put it to use to inform your ongoing efforts.

Ensuring Your Goal is Achievable

“Shoot for the moon… even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” While this is cute enough advice, it’s not appropriate for businesses. Instead, you need to plan your goals with the intention of their success.

Determine if your plans are compatible with your current capabilities. If not, they need to be adjusted to be more manageable, given your operational capacity.

Keeping Your Goal Relevant

Furthermore, you need to make sure that your goals are worthwhile to your business at the time. Will accomplishing this objective further your other business goals or needs?

It is vital that what you are trying to accomplish will actually help your operations, so take a few moments to identify the benefits that your intended plans are likely to produce. Reassess this periodically, as this will help you maintain relevance over time.

Setting a Schedule to Follow

Finally, we must address how to keep your goals from sprawling out and ultimately eating up resources unnecessarily. For any goal to remain cost-effective, you must assign a firm deadline to it—and, just as importantly, hold yourself and your team accountable to this deadline.

Developing and pursuing SMART goals will help you establish and successfully meet more of your business objectives. We can help by giving you the tools you’ll need.

Contact us at (410) 531-6727 to learn more about the managed IT services we offer and how our support will put you in a better position to succeed.