Best Advice on Setting Business Goals

Setting business goals is something every business owner should do, yet it's something we often stick in the too hard basket. Yet goals can help us move from point A to point B, keep us motivated and help us achieve more. Today we're going to  share some fabulous advice from our NZ business networking group members (and you are welcome to join our free group too!). We'll follow this up with out own top goal setting tips.

NZ Business Owners Share Advice On Business Goal Setting

A huge thanks to our NZ business networking group members for sharing their advice with us to pass onto you:

• "A reasonable plan implemented is better than a perfect plan never implemented. A dynamic plan is best." - Kim White, The Winners Circle
• "Make goals that are achievable, but not so achievable that they don’t require planning and effort. Review them 1/4ly, make sure they’re still realistic, if they’re not, what’s changed. Goals are to keep you motivated, so there is no point getting to the end of the year and realising that you’ve underestimated your business’s potential (for whatever reason) and you’ve coasted (this night lead you to be over ambitious next time) which leads to the other end of the spectrum, you’re falling far shorter than your mark and you get demoralised and lose the love that you had when you started. Think of regular goal reviews as preventative maintenance for your business health." - Paul Harris - The Snobby Collective
• "Start from the top and work down. Make sure your goals fit your long term strategy. This isn't just a strategy for your business, its for the lifestyle your business will give you. Thinking of this first will help set better goals for the short term, knowing those goals and their long-term motivation will help to establish better decision making processes in the day to day. What's your long term (5 year +) vision? > Where do you generally want to be next year? > What specific and measurable goals will you have for this year to get to next year? > What actions need to be made to get you there > 90 Day Action Plan to get it on the move." - Chris Mercer, MBP Advisors + Accountants
• "Set financial and business growth goals and then use your accounts to measure success and evaluate your KPI's. Your accounts contain a wealth of information and can help keep you motivated as you can see clear results, or lack thereof. Read our blog on management reports." - Geoffrey Hughes-Bus, Hughes Judd Accounting Ltd

Top Tips On Setting Business Goals

Your business goals help give you direction on where you're going and what you should do next. They help to keep you motivated and moving forward in your business journey, plus can help you make decisions in the day to day running of your business. Where we often get stuck though, is the creation of these goals. Here are some of our top tips to get you started:

• complete a SWOT analysis - this means identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• make your goals SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely
• commit to your goals - this can go as far as declaring them aloud, writing them down, or engaging the services of an accountability coach who will keep you on task
• celebrate each success - no matter how big or small, it's important to recognise the successes you have in reaching your goals
• make sure every goal is linked to your business plan - if you haven't already got one, write a business plan. Your goals need to be related to your business plan to keep things moving the way you have decided they should.
• break bigger goals into smaller goals - often a large goal can seem unachievable, so break it down into manageable chunks
• define who is responsible for it - in a smaller business, you may be the one who is responsible. But if you have employees, why not give them a goal or two to achieve?
• identify the resources you'll need - make a list of the resources, be it physical or knowledge, that you will need to achieve each goal, and go get them!

Remember that setting business goals is only half of your job - you also need to review them frequently. In a goal review, identify your progress, any changes that need making and revisit your timeframe. For more help on setting goals, we suggest you read our article called Tips on Creating a Business Plan, which has a lot of useful goal setting information within it.