5 strategies for setting business goals

Setting and tracking business goals are important to your company's success and longevity. Good business goals help you connect your everyday activities to your business's long-term success and overall growth. Learn more about why business goal setting is essential and how to define clear goals and make sure your company stays on track to meet them.

Why is setting business goals important?

Effective business goals provide clear objectives that everyone at your company can live up to. The more specific and measurable your goals are, the more likely you'll be able to accomplish them and see your organization flourish.

Here are four reasons why business goal setting is important:

• Allows you to measure the success of your business accurately over time
• Helps you understand how business decisions impact your company's ability to reach goals
• Helps your company's leadership and staff better understand what they're working toward
• Empowers you to make effective changes when your goals aren't being met

Use the following five strategies to define, set and track your goals.

1. Decide how you will measure success

How will you know when your business is successful? Thinking carefully about this question will help you start a list of potential goals. Some things to consider: 

• Where do you want your company to be in three, five or 10 years? 
  
• What new products or services do you want to offer or launch in the future? 
• How much revenue do you want to bring in annually?

Success may look different for every business. When you define how success will look for you, you can set more realistic and achievable goals.

2. Be as specific as possible

When you're determining what goals you want to focus on, it's important to be specific. One way to do this is to finalize your long-term goals and then backtrack to determine the steps you'll need to take to accomplish them. This will help you clearly define what you need to achieve while you work toward your end goals. Specify what each smaller goal will accomplish and help ensure you meet each goal before moving on to the next.

3. Measure your progress

Measuring the progress made toward your business goals helps make sure you're on the right track. For example, you could conduct weekly or monthly goal analyses to see how far you've come with a goal and assess what still needs to be done. You may also use milestones for each goal and mark them off as you complete them.

4. Set deadlines for your business goals

Deciding on and committing to deadlines for your goals keeps everyone accountable. Without deadlines, you can easily lose track of your progress and even lose motivation to reach your goals.

Deadlines put your goals into context and give them clear timelines so that you know when they need to be completed. For example, if you want to increase sales by a certain percentage next year, set a clear date such as the first of February.

5. Reassess your business goals regularly

Once you've started working toward your business goals, you should regularly reassess them to check that you're accomplishing what you set out to do. Sometimes, you'll find that the steps you have taken haven't actually moved you closer to your goals. That's okay. Regular assessments like these can help you identify where you're succeeding and falling short. Reassessing your goals can give you valuable insight into what strategies are working and which aren't as effective as you initially thought.

The more time you take to clearly define and track your goals, the more likely your business will be successful in the long-term. In addition to business goal setting, you should set your business up for financial success with a business checking and savings account to keep track of your revenue and expenses. Speak with a business banker to see how we can help.