When you set the right goals for your business, it can really boost your success. However, did you realize there are a lot of mistakes you can make when setting business goals?
If you set the wrong business goals, it can actually damage the business, rather than help it.
So, if you want to ensure your business goals are a success, below you’ll discover 5 mistakes to avoid when setting them.
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1. Not making The Business Goals specific
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when setting business goals is to make them too vague. It’s crucial you make the goals as specific as possible if you want to make sure they are achievable.
A good example of a vague business goal is stating that you want to increase your profits.
While this is certainly a great goal to have, it doesn’t exactly give you much to work with does it?
How are you going to increase your profits? How much do you want to increase them by? What steps can you take to do it? These are just some of the things you need to consider to break your goals down.
The more specific your goals are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve them.
2. Setting unrealistic Business goals
Equally as detrimental to your progress is to set business goals that are unrealistic.
You likely have tons of big dreams and a vision board full of where you want the business to go. However, you need to make sure the dreams are structured with realistic goals along the way. This includes smaller, actionable goals that easy to achieve as well.
Even a realistic business goal can be made unrealistic by setting too tight of a time frame. Goals should be motivating and help you to feel accomplished, but if you are stressing out or feel like you've already missed a false deadline, it can work against you.
The trouble with unrealistic goals is that they can really damage productivity and motivation. If you don’t achieve them, you may become frustrated and create more excuses as to why you are slowing down on your dreams.
3. Prioritizing the wrong things
One of the most common mistakes when setting business goals is to not truly assess what good the goal is going to do in the long run.
Goals that focus on output or innovation, for example, might seem like good ideas at the beginning. However, goals need to correlate to a strong “why” to make sure they are relevant to your overall business vision.
If you spend the year creating 50 new products to meet a goal you set, is it actually going to make your business better by the end of the year? Maybe your customer doesn't want those products, or maybe you drove your expenses up too high with all of the research.
The key to effective goal setting is to prioritize goals based on overall positive impact to your business strategy.
Think about the areas of the business which need the most work or improvement. While you may want to expand overseas for example, is the business ready?
You’ll need to make sure your company at home is thriving before you even consider expanding overseas. So, before planning to expand, set goals to optimize your existing business. Then, when it does come time to expand, you can focus your efforts on the new endeavor rather than having to deal with issues at home, too.
4. Failing to review Goals
Setting goals is just one part of the process. However, you also need to make sure you review them frequently.
Without reviewing your goals, you’ll have no idea whether or not your efforts are paying off.
It’s important to regularly review and track the progress of your goals to determine whether any changes need to be made. There are no rules set in stone to say that we can't adjust our strategy – or even our original goals – along the way.
5. Not being prepared for failure
Finally, it's important to understand that just because you’ve set business goals, it doesn’t mean you’ll achieve them. In fact, failure is pretty much guaranteed at some point.
It’s through our failures that we learn how to succeed.
So, continue to set goals and as realistically and specifically as you can. Meanwhile, never 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.
Avoid these five mistakes while setting your business goals. By learning from these mistakes, you’ll have a much higher chance of succeeding and ensuring you actually fulfill the goals that you set.
