When you set the right goals for your business, you’ll be able to see growth and progress in all areas of your business. However, did you know there are a lot of mistakes you can make when setting business goals?
If you set the wrong ones, it can actually damage your business progress, rather than help it. So, if you want to make sure your business goals are successful you’ll want to avoid making these mistakes.
Setting Business Goals – Avoid These Mistakes
1. Not Making Goals Specific
When setting goals you don’t want to make them vague. This is a common mistake most people make, then wonder why they keep setting goals and never achieving them. You have to make your goals as specific as possible if you want to make sure they are achievable.
A vague business goal is when you say you want to increase your profits. While this is a great goal to have, it doesn’t give you much to work with. It’s just not specific enough.
A specific goal should include things like;
- How you’re going to increase your profits.
- How much you want to increase your profits by.
- What action steps you can take to increase your profits.
These are just some of the things you need to include in order to break your goals down. The more specific your goals are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve them.
2. Not Setting Realistic Goals
I get it, you have a big vision for your business. But if you’re just starting out setting a goal to earn £100m in a year is just unrealistic. Setting unrealistic goals is not just detrimental for your business progress they’re also detrimental for your motivation.
If you don’t achieve them, you’ll become frustrated and it will stop you from setting goals and damage your productivity. You need to ensure you set goals that are realistic and easy to achieve. At least when you first start setting goals.
The goals you set should be both realistic in terms of the type of goals your setting and the timeframe to achieve your goals.
3. Prioritizing The Wrong Things
When setting business goals you have to create goals that align with your business plan, vision, strategy and objectives. It’s a huge mistake to set goals without first having either a business plan and vision at the minimum.
Setting goals that don’t align with your vision or strategy mean you’re just setting random goals that may not move your business in the right direction.
When you create goals based on your business vision and strategy you can ensure that your working on the right things in your business at the right time. So you’re not wasting your time and resources on chasing the wrong things.
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4. Failing to Review Your Goals
Setting goals is just step one in the goal-setting process. You also need to review your goals regularly. If you don’t review your goals you have no idea if you’re making any progress or not.
You have to regularly review and track the progress of your goals to see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you to determine whether any changes need to be made.
5. Not Preparing For Failure
Finally, you need to understand that just because you’ve set yourself business goals, it doesn’t mean you’ll achieve them. In fact, failure is pretty much guaranteed at some point.
It’s through your failures that you learn how to succeed. So, set your goals and be as realistic and specific as you can, but don’t assume everything will run like clockwork. Be prepared for failure and then be ready to come up with an alternative goal if something does go wrong.
These are just 5 mistakes you can make when setting business goals. By learning from these mistakes, you’ll have a much higher chance of setting goals that help your business and ensuring you actually achieve the goals that you set.
If you’re looking to get started with any of these steps, check out the Build Your Business Vault – where you’ll find templates, worksheets and checklists that will help you get started!
