What are Business Goals?

Business goal plays a significant role in developing a company’s priorities and putting the company on the path to success. When you take the time to set goals and objectives, then it amplifies your capability to achieve them. Today, we’ll discuss what are business goals; short/long-term goals, and steps, along with examples and tips.

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Business goals are the predetermined goals and targets that the company or business plans to achieve in a specific period of time. You can plan your company’s specific goals in terms of customers, managers, employees, and the department. Goals speak the purpose of the company and end goals for the employees to work toward.

Business goals aren’t specific, precise, and clearly defined action plans, rather they’re broader than the company plans to achieve. When it comes to setting goals for the company, it is significant for various reasons;

Making sure that the company is moving in the right direction
Offering a clear understanding to the employees that how decision making helps the company to achieve its goals
All employees should be on the same page relevant to the company’s goals
Offering the standard to measure a company’s success

An Overview of How to Set Goals

While setting goals, you should follow the SMART strategy and its elements are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-constrained. Their details are as follows;

Specific. Specific means that you have to clearly define your goals. For instance, “making money” or “losing weight” aren’t specific and clear goals. You can make them specific by saying “I’ll learn new skills from the course of Envato Tuts, so I could freelance my services and earn money from it.” Or you can say “I’ll participate in the half marathon in April to lose weight.”
Measurable. Your objectives should be measurable in terms of success or failure. Whether you earn one penny or lose a pound weight, it falls under the category of losing weight. When you can measure your objectives, it amplifies your chances of succeeding in life.
Achievable. Unachievable goals are the worst types of objectives that you can ever set. For instance, you’re 30 years old, and it is very late for you to work on your career in NASA. It doesn’t matter whatever goal you set, becoming an astronaut at such an age isn’t possible. Therefore, you should set goals that you can achieve.
Relevant. There should be relevant to your bigger aims. For instance, small goals motivate you to achieve bigger targets. If you want a promotion in the job, then you should work on learning new skills and taking on more responsibilities. You should avoid setting such goals that would put you in the wrong direction.
Time Constrained. You should avoid setting open-ended goals like “I’ll do it someday” because they won’t become reality. Therefore, you should include the time limits on your goals like one year, six months, or two weeks from now.

Why Business Goals are Important?

Business goals and objectives are important for the company for various reasons; some of the main reasons are as follows;

To Define Your Success Path

If the company’s team is growing and succeeding in the right direction, then you can describe what the success seems like. While setting goals and objectives for the company, you should keep in mind the capabilities of your company, and slightly push them a little further to perform better. You can use some common frameworks to define goals like actionable and measurable goals by following the OKRs (objectives and key results framework).

To Keep Your Team Focus and Aligned

Goal setting benefits you by aligning your team with the company’s goals. It makes the team leader clearly define strategies that the team should use to achieve its goals and objectives. For instance, the goal of your company is to amplify growth and profitability by 10%. It’s a very big goal, and the company could reach its destination by using different ways.

A business leader can subdivide the bigger goal into smaller tasks and strategies in order to reach there. The sales team should amplify its targets, and the marketing team should implement a new strategy. Ultimately, there are two different strategies that the company should implement to reach its destination.

To make Informed Decisions

If a business measures its performance by tracking goals regularly, then it can employ its previous goals to make better decisions. For instance, if the team develops a new marketing strategy to track its growth and progress, then you employ this information to develop a business strategy for the upcoming years based on the performance.

To Maintain Accountability

After setting objectives, you should subdivide the bigger goal into the individual level. It is a very good strategy and it would allow you to maintain accountability from the top level to the individual team member level. When the individual team knows its goals and what they’re responsible for, it becomes much easier to manage their performance and what type of support they need to be better.

Short-Term Goals

Short-term goals are set for a specific period of time, and the time duration usually ranges from a few hours to a year. On the other hand, long-term goals are also time-oriented, but they’re for more than one year. Often, short-term objectives work as the building blocks toward long-term goals.

A very common strategy that companies usually follows is to have multiple short-term goals in order to make the long-term objectives easily achievable.

Examples of Short-Term Goals

Some of the main examples of short terms goals are as follows;

20% increase in employee satisfaction rate
Amplify the social media activity and post three to four times per week
Launching a new profile on various social media platforms
Choose a charity organization to start sponsoring
Start the “Employee of the Month” award
Offering “giveaways” to the customers on social media every month
Increasing the traffic on the company’s website
Hiring three marketers over the period of the next five months
3% increment in the price for the next three months

Long-Term Goals

Long-term goals comprise a bigger vision in terms of what the company plans to achieve in the future of the next 10 years. Imagine how you see your business and where you want to take your company 10 years from now. However, if you don’t achieve your objectives somehow, what new strategy you would follow. If you plan to expand your business; then what category of new business line you should enter.

The mission statement and vision of the company represent the long-term goals, and they give direction to the company and keep it moving in the right direction. Long-term objectives serve as a map and direct you where you should go. However, short-term goals act as GPS and they give direction to the company step by step.

Examples of Long-Term Goals

Some of the main examples of long term goals are as follows;

Developing and launching five new products
Recruiting 50 new employees across the country
Inaugurating new official location points across the US
Increasing the company’s market share
Amplifying the overall brand awareness
Decreasing the manufacturing expenditure roundabout 5% in the next three years
Increasing the company’s net income by 10% over the period of 2 years

4 Tips for Setting Effective Business Goals

Clear defined and not complicated
Set goals in terms of short term and long term
Ambitious and achievable
Make employees see the overall vision of the company and clarify their role in it