Can you believe we’re in the fourth quarter of 2020 already? I know many of us are looking forward to 2021 because of everything that we’ve experienced this year, including the Coronavirus, fires, hurricanes and more. But it’s time to start planning for next year. And now is the time to look into what you want your goals to be for your business.
You might have heard the acronym SMART to help you determine what those goals should be. If not, I wanted to touch on what that acronym means. S is specific. Make sure that the goal you set is a number that you can actually pay attention to and know that you’re going to hit that goal. For instance, just saying, “I want to increase my business over last year” isn’t going to be specific enough, but saying, “I want to increase the number of customers I have by 50”, or “I want my revenue to hit 500,000,” or “I want to have an increase in revenue of 10% over 2020”. That is a specific goal.
M is measurable. Make sure it’s something that you can measure. So, for instance, what I said earlier about the number of clients that you have, or the amount of revenue increase you’re going to have over a prior year, that can be measured.
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A is achievable. Now you do want to set a bit of a stretch goal, but not so big that it’s not achievable at all. On the other hand, you don’t want to have it so low that you know you’re going to hit it no matter what. So, make sure that you’re really looking at what you think is achievable, potentially adding a little bit more to make it a stretch goal, but make it so you can theoretically achieve it and not have it so big that you’re going to face disappointment.
R: is it relevant to your business; setting a goal for something that’s going to impact your business? Not something that could be considered a side job or a hobby that’s not really relevant to your business. This is different than just adding a new service or product that could enhance the company. But if it’s something that’s not really related to the business and its success, you wouldn’t want to consider that as a goal.
And T is time-based. So, again, you could have your goal be raising your income a certain amount in the next month, quarter or year, but again, have a specific time that you’re going to measure it by.
We at Affordable Bookkeeping and Payroll want to help our clients through advisory services. And this is one of the things that we look at with them. Setting these goals and how they’re doing throughout the time period to make sure that they’re on track. If you need assistance in this area, feel free to reach out to us as well. And we’d be happy to discuss the options available to you.
