How to set realistic goals for your business?

Setting goals is a powerful process that allows you to plan for your future. . It inspires you to succeed every day. Your plan for the future outlines the strategic priorities of your business and defines the most meaningful future accomplishments. These are tasks based on today’s decisions and initiatives that need to be completed in the next three to five years. While you set your goals, you gain short-term motivation and long-term vision. The most important part of growing a business is the willingness to do what it takes.

Analysing every market detail is essential. Set targets that are precise, quantifiable, and time-bound. . Think about making them concrete and challenging as opposed to abstract and unrealistic. Prepare a support team and visualise your goals. Let your team know your goals too. The entire company is interested in achieving them, so every department and every individual should understand how their output will affect the objectives and therefore, the company's overall success. Be consistent and communicate your thoughts regularly to keep your team invested.    

Given below are some important pointers for setting achievable goals and growing your business:

1. SWOT analysis

An acronym for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats, and Opportunities", a  SWOT analysis is a high-level strategic planning technique that helps companies, both from an internal and external viewpoint. . . This analysis revolves around aspects such as finance, customer service, learning, growth, marketing, etc.

2. Market analysis

A thorough quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a market is called market research. It analyses barriers to entry, the scale of the market in terms of both volume and value, the different consumer groups and their purchasing habits, and overall economic competitiveness.   A market study specific to your industry will help you understand how (methodology) and where (geography) you can expand your business.

3. Team input

Inputs from your team can help your business grow. A motivated team with diverse ideas can collaborate, brainstorm, and contribute productively. . Teamwork also helps overcome conflicts. Collaboration can help resolve difficult issues. Brainstorming is a good chance to share ideas and come up with new methods and processes. Taking inputs from your staff will provide insights on what you can change, newly implement, or eliminate. . Be open to actively incorporating the suggestions given by your staff, otherwise, your staff would be less willing to share their views in the future.

4. Develop a competitive environment

Run internal competitive benchmarking to evaluate the performance of departments and teams within your organisation.  Comparing your internal benchmarking results with those of rival  organisations or your colleagues from different fields will give you valuable operational insights. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you can improve your business goal-setting process.

5. Evaluating your past performance

Your past performance may or may not be fulfilling, but evaluating it is necessary to get an idea of where you stand. It is difficult to determine where you should be going without being aware of where you are right now or where you have been in the past. Past performance will influence the number of your business objectives of the future.

6. Resource management

Another way organisations measure the competencies of an enterprise and the importance of capital allocation is through a thorough resource analysis.. More than the volume of your resources, what will matter in the end is how efficiently you have been able to use them. So during the goal-setting process, resource allocations and budgetary constraints should also be considered.

7. Determining  participants for goal setting exercise

The size of the organisation will determine who and how many can participate in this discussion. For small-scale businesses, it is easy to identify the top performers. But when it comes to large companies, you have to be very selective irrespective of how many high-ranking professionals you have on your team. Are you going to include mid-level executives or just senior leadership?

8. Preparation attitude

Share the agenda of every meeting in advance with your employees. This will ensure that they come prepared to the meeting. When the meeting starts, you want everyone in the room to be on the same page and ready to go. Let them know they are a part of this and whatever goals you are trying to achieve are impossible without their wholehearted contribution.

9. Red Ocean Strategy

A red ocean strategy means competing for existing business within the sector. This often involves an extreme degree of competition and often entails a fierce price war. The main objectives of the Red Ocean Strategy are to beat the competition and take advantage of the current demand. The beverages (soft drink) industry is one industry in which a Red Ocean Strategy fits well.

10. Blue Ocean Strategy

An effective blue ocean strategy means identifying the right market opportunity,  reaching the market before your competitors making them irrelevant, and generating demand that does not currently exist. You have to bear in mind that the marketplace has a broader potential that has not yet been explored. Many blue oceans are created by extending established industry boundaries from within the red oceans.

When we say that we need our goals to be realistic, we mean they must be achieved within a specific time span. So here are some essential pointers to follow after goal-setting:

1. Prioritise goals

Trying to tackle several tasks at once may sabotage progress across the board, making it difficult to accomplish your goals. . Setting 50 different targets and achieving them in time would be commendable. Sadly, our brains do not work like that. Arrange them in the temporal order to linearise the objectives. Decide which objectives you would like to tackle first to minimise goal switching as much as possible.

2. Check in regularly on the progress

This means that everyone involved, no matter how much time goes by, remains on-task. Bear in mind that when the team continues to achieve these objectives, some changes will be needed. Don't worry about adapting as needed. Learning where you are failing is one of the key advantages of assessing your results. If you have a master budget, a monthly variance analysis will help you see where your results do not reach your estimates. . You can discover that your aspirations are too optimistic or that your performance does not live up to its potential. This may help you recognise that you are overspending, using marketing tools that do not produce enough revenue, taking on too much debt, or poorly handling cash flow, leading to more debt service. Measurements help you recognise your weaknesses and encourage you to put in place controls or take other initiatives to improve your business.

3. Reward

There is no better boost for your team than rewarding them on achieving targets. You need to keep them away from working just for rewards. However, at the same time, you also need to acknowledge their victories.  A celebration boosts the work environment. The company’s target-setting process may be daunting, but accomplishing these targets is even more so! So take the time to appreciate your staff when the company reaches a goal. Knowing that their efforts are acknowledged, not forgotten, would give those involved renewed encouragement.

Also read:

1) ‘Small’ is the new ‘Strong’!💪 Here’s why we should support Small Businesses
2) How to Know if Your Business Idea is Going to Be the Next Game Changer?
3) Top-5 Startup & Business Ideas for Indian villages
4) Top-14 Small Scale Industries in India