Every business needs goals, whether getting more customers, adding more locations, or achieving a certain amount in sales. Setting effective business goals will encourage your company to achieve success and growth. It will give you something to work toward, motivating you and the rest of your team members.
What are business goals?
Business goals are crucial for providing direction, focus, and measurable targets for your organization. Think of business goals as what you want to achieve within a given time frame. These goals can be for specific departments or for the company as a whole. They can be for the management team, the staff, or even your clients.
In most cases, your goals will indicate your organization’s overall purpose. You’ll also have a larger, overarching goal that you continuously wok towards.
Your goals keep your employees on the same page and help them understand how their tasks contribute to the larger picture. They also get insights into the decisions your company has made to reach those goals. Goals will even help with internal decision-making as you will want to make choices that most closely align with your goals.
Business goals also help give your team a clear sense of direction. That sense of direction is crucial for ensuring that you reach your goals. In addition to providing clarity, having business goals also lets you measure progress, as you can track the progress toward those goals, especially if you use quantifiable metrics and SMART goals. This same factor means that goals help keep everyone accountable.
Most people divide goals for work into short and long-term ones. The long-term goal definition would be a goal that you have more than a year to accomplish. Short-term goals typically have a more limited time frame, typically three to six months.
Business Goals vs. Business Objectives
Some people use the terms business goals and business objectives interchangeably, but there are some important differences. Goals are broad and feature overarching outcomes. Meanwhile, objectives are more specific. They are the measurable steps you take to achieve those goals. objectives are much more specific. They are easier to keep track of and define.
The following are some key differences between these two concepts:
- Business goals provide a general direction to follow while business objectives give you actionable steps to reach the goal.
- Business goals are broad or all-encompassing, but business objectives are specific.
- Business goals answer “what” your business’s purpose is, while business objectives answer “how” you will reach them.
- Business goals aren’t usually measurable, but business objectives are.
- Business goals don’t necessarily have a set timeline, but business objectives do.
Look at examples of business goals and objectives for lead generation. A business goal would be to generate more leads each year while a business objective could be to increase leads by 10% in the next three months.
Types of Business Goals
Most business owners typically set two types of goals: short-term and long-term goals. Aside from their time frames, there are greater distinctions between these concepts.
1. Long-Term Business Goals
Remember that the long-term goal definition is typically goals that you want to achieve a year or more in the future. Long-term goals are particularly helpful for strategic planning and sustained growth.
The following are some examples of long-term business goals. You will notice that 5-year goals are common.
- Expand the market share by 15% within five years.
- Launch at least three innovative services or products within three years.
- Increase brand awareness and recognition by 20% in the next five years.
- Reduce production expenses in the next three years by 5%.
2. Short-Term Business Goals
Short-term development goals for work have more immediate deadlines of less than a year. They are useful for driving more immediate progress and for achieving milestones.
The following are examples of business goals in the short term:
- Increase web traffic by 20% in three months.
- Increase monthly sales by 10%.
- Improve customer satisfaction in the next quarter.
- Start an “Employee of the Month” program with awards.
- Create a new social media profile.
While most people divide business goals into long- or short-term ones, you can also define the types of goals based on the relevant aspect of your company. For example, you could have:
- Customer goals such as increasing conversions, improving loyalty, or boosting retention
- Employee goals such as having employees learn new skills, improving employee communication, or improving productivity
- Financial goals such as improving profit margins, increasing revenue, or reducing expenses
- Process goals such as finishing a checklist before making a blog post or contacting ten people on social media daily
- Social media goals such as increasing website traffic from social pages, generating new leads, or increasing followers
- Time-based goals such as improving customer service in 90 days or reaching a metric in a year
How to Set Business Goals
Now that you have a better idea of what business goals are, how do you set them? The following steps will help you set useful future goals.
1. Define clear and specific goals that are SMART.
One of the best things to keep in mind as you set goals for work is to make them SMART. As you set your goals, keep in mind that they should be Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
- Specific: Make goals as specific as you can, including what you expect you will achieve.
- Measurable: Decide which metrics you’ll use to consider achieving the goal a success. This can help you keep track of progress.
- Achievable: Make sure you can actually achieve your goal, as you don’t want to waste time and resources. Choosing a lofty goal is admirable, but it may turn out to be unachievable. This can lead to a lack of motivation among your team, so make sure to stick to attainable goals.
- Realistic: This ties into setting goals that are achievable, as you also need your goal to be realistic, but the two concepts are different. For example, it might be achievable for your company to become worth a billion dollars, as others have done it. But if you have a small target market, the goal isn’t realistic.
- Time-Bound: You need a firm end date for your goal. This creates a sense of urgency and helps build motivation.
2. Align your goals with your company’s vision and strategic direction.
When you start deciding on future goals, think about your company’s vision and strategic direction. After all, a company that wants to focus on delivering a high level of customer service would have very different business goals than one that wants to focus on expanding its locations or its product line.
3. Prioritize goals.
Whether you are looking at short-term goals or long-term goals, you will need to prioritize them. You simply can’t focus on every single goal at once. So, go back to your company’s strategic direction and vision and figure out which goal to focus on first. Doing so will also help you use your resources more efficiently.
4. Break down your goals into milestones or objectives with deadlines.
When discussing the difference between business goals and objectives, we mentioned that objectives are the steps you take to achieve your goals. Creating actionable steps will give you a process for achieving the goal and make it more achievable.
As an example, one of your business’ long-term goals is to improve your search engine ranking to eventually rank in the first spot of search results. These goals may include objectives and milestones such as:
- Getting ten new backlinks each week.
- Publishing a new blog post weekly.
- Refreshing current blog posts to remove dead links and add keywords.
5. Assign tasks.
After dividing your goal into actionable steps, assign each task to an employee or a smaller team. This will allow for accountability and ensure that no team members get overwhelmed with their tasks.
6. Regularly track progress, make adjustments as needed, and celebrate milestones.
The “measurable” aspect of SMART goals makes it possible to track your progress toward a goal. This is crucial, as it lets you confirm that you are on the right track. It also lets you know when you need to adjust your strategies. Maybe you must change one of the smaller steps or business objectives along the way. Or maybe you have to change the timeframe of your goal.
Tracking progress isn’t just to measure success and see if you need to make changes. It also lets you see when you reach milestones or objectives. Celebrate these achievements, as they indicate you are on your way to your goal. Taking the time to celebrate milestones will help you maintain motivation. It will do the same for your team, encouraging productivity and confirming that your goal is achievable and realistic.
7. Effective business goals examples.
With those steps in mind, it is time to look at examples of business goals. These will provide inspiration by showing you the types of goals that your company may want to consider. Remember that you can (and should) adjust these goals to be more specific and measurable based on your business needs. So, as you choose development goals for work, add a timeline and a metric you can measure.
8. Create a business plan (or mission statement).
Developing a business plan should be one of your priorities, especially if you’re launching a startup. This would be a short-term goal, as you should do it early on when creating a business.
Similarly, you could have a goal to create a mission statement. This is another goal you can complete in a couple of months or less.
9. Increase revenue.
A common goal is to generate more sales and boost overall revenue. You can take several approaches to this goal. Some companies want to increase their overall sales volume each quarter or each year. Others measure their average or overall profit margins.
10. Improve profitability.
This goal could be to increase your net profit margin by reducing costs and identifying revenue opportunities. This can also include increasing your prices, which you can do over a set timeframe.
11. Drive sales.
Driving sales also ties into increasing your revenue, as it is a popular way to achieve that goal. You can achieve more sales by running promotions or doubling marketing and sales efforts.
12. Enhance customer satisfaction.
You can also set a goal to improve customer satisfaction by delivering exceptional experiences. It could also be to improve the quality of your product or services. When in doubt, ask your customer base what you can do to improve their satisfaction.
13. Improve customer retention.
Improving customer retention will frequently overlap with enhancing customer satisfaction because happy customers are more likely to be loyal to your business. But it can also be a distinct goal on its own, with different metrics and milestones. It will also likely involve some additional strategies.
14. Improve product quality.
While improving the quality of your product or service could be part of your goal to enhance customer satisfaction, it can also be a separate goal. This will likely include a few short-term goals of adding or modifying product features or studying prototypes of products.
15. Expand market share.
This goal could be to capture a larger portion of your target market and outperform your competitors. An increased market share will also help with brand awareness.
16. Reach new audiences.
In addition to expanding your market share, you can have a business goal of reaching new audiences. This can be a specific demographic or geographical area. Or it can mean entering new markets.
17. Foster innovation.
This type of goal involves continuously developing new products, solutions, and services to meet the needs of your customers. This could easily be one of your 5-year goals or have another long-term timeline.
18. Secure funding.
This is an especially common goal among startups as well as smaller businesses looking to expand. These companies commonly need money from investors to achieve their visions.
19. Build stakeholder relationships.
If your company needs to secure funding, you will have stakeholders. Smart companies do their best to have strong, positive relationships with these stakeholders. For example, you can keep the lines of communication with stakeholders open and encourage them to participate in decision-making.
20. Boost brand awareness.
A goal to boost brand awareness could be to increase visibility and recognition through effective marketing strategies. As you increase brand awareness, you will find it easier to attract customers.
21. Improve reputation.
This is usually a long-term goal that can go together with boosting brand awareness. You will need to talk to customers to see how they feel about your organization and improve that sentiment.
22. Improve efficiency.
This goal could involve streamlining your processes or optimizing your resource allocation to reduce costs.
23. Increase on-time delivery.
Your goal to improve on-time delivery can help improve customer satisfaction and improve your company’s reputation. This could easily be a long-term goal or a short-term goal depending on what you want to achieve. An overall improvement in delivery time would be a long-term goal, while reducing the delivery time during your busy season could be a short-term one.
24. Boost website traffic.
Increasing web traffic is a very common goal for those looking to drive leads or boost brand awareness. This usually involves SEO efforts.
25. Improve employee retention.
Retaining employees saves you the hassle of hiring and training new staff. It also indicates a high level of employee satisfaction, which should improve their productivity and motivation. As such, this is a very common goal.
Reach Your Goals with Podium
No matter your business goals, you will want to take advantage of tools to help you achieve them. Podium is one of these tools and it can help you achieve a variety of goals effectively.
For example, increasing customer satisfaction is a very common business goal. Podium’s Review tool can help with this by letting you get feedback via customer reviews. Meanwhile, Text Marketing from Podium lets you improve customer satisfaction by communicating with customers on their preferred platform.
Or maybe your goal is to communicate more efficiently with your clients. In that case, Inbox will keep you organized by letting you access every conversation in one place. Or maybe your goal is to improve the payment process. Podium Payments will streamline that process for you.
FAQs
What strategies can I use to track progress and stay on course towards my goals?
A: As you set your goals and make sure they are measurable, decide what you want to measure and confirm that you can measure this. Look for tools that will measure the relevant KPI or metric for you.
Then, set intervals at which you measure this KPI or metric and compare it to your past figures and your goal. This could be anywhere from once a week to once a month depending on the timeframe of your goal.
Q: What should I do If I encounter obstacles or setbacks while working towards my goals?
A: Remember that setbacks are a natural part of any business. Work to come up with mini-goals or objectives to overcome obstacles and push forward past setbacks.
At the same time, be willing to adjust your goals, as necessary. You will sometimes be able to overcome obstacles, but sometimes they will change things too much. In those cases, you might have to adjust your timeline or the goal itself. Evaluate why the setback occurred, what you can do to mitigate it, and how it will affect your results.
