How To Achieve Your Business Goals In 8 Steps

Goals-setting is important for business success. But working towards achieving the goals is what brings the success. It is very interesting to find out that there are many people doing business without goals. They don’t have a place they intend to get to in the next 2, 3, 5 to 10 years, with their business. When you don’t have goals, you don’t know where you are, where you are going and how to get to where you intend to get to.
 
Working towards the achievement of your business goals is working towards the success of your business. It deserves anything you can give it. It must be your preoccupation daily. After reading my posts on how to set goals for your business, here are the steps to follow in working towards achieving your goals.
 

Step 1: Set & Discuss The Goals With Your Staff

For any business to achieve her goals, it has to be the efforts of all the staff, put together. This is easy when the staff have a great sense of ownership of the business. One way to make this possible is to set and discuss your business goals, with your staff. This system of management which is participatory is called Management By Objectives (MBO) and it has proven to be the best management method.
 
Have goals and budgeting forums, say twice in a year. Before each forum, ask your staff (from top management to  lay workers), to write their desires for the business for the next period of 6 months, making suggestions on how they think such desires could be achieved and what they think will be the impact on the business, if achieved.
 

Step 2: Determine Your Drivers

As you set goals, you become more aware of what is required to achieve each one. For each goal, write all the requirements necessary to achieve it. These are your drivers.
 
For example, if want to double your sales by the end of the year 2014, you may need to increase the size of your marketing team as well as create a research department attached to the marketing department. Here your goal is to double sales by the end of the year and your needs are additional marketing staff and a research department with staff.
 

Step 3: Determine Your Needs

When you determine your drivers, the next thing to do is to think of the things you need, to make them possible. If for example your driver is the creation of a research department, some of your needs will be, new or increased office space, more money for salaries, more materials for daily work, increased running costs, etc. All, if not most of your needs will trim down to one thing - MONEY.
 
Money is very often, the ultimate means by which you can get your needs met and consequently achieve your goals. You need money to hire a new staff, open a new office, start a new department, train your old staff, etc. Try to write down all the things you need, to meet up with your drivers and achieve your goals.
 

Step 4: Determine Your Actions

As soon as you know what you want to achieve, how to achieve them and what is needed to achieve them, the next thing to do is to plan with your team, how you intend to use the things you have, to achieve your goals. This has to do with actions/activities. Unless your goals are broken down to action steps, you cannot achieve them.
 
Draft an action plan that shows all the necessary steps you will take to achieve each goal, with the time you will take each one. Make sure your goals are all broken down into the little actions required each month, each week and each day, in order to ensure that at the end of the year, your goals are achieved. 

Step 5: Consider Changes & Obstacles

One thing that is constant is change. There shall be PESTLES (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental and Scientific) changes in your business environment that will affect your business. Also, the workers, the market, the competitors and the customers could all change. All these will necessitate a change in the business operations and this will certainly affect the achievements of your goals.
 
Now that change is certain, what do you do? You need to anticipate and expect it. Then plan (Plan A) and have contingency plans (Plan B) that takes into consideration all possible changes that you could witness. Though it is not possible to anticipate and prepare for all the possible changes that could occur, considering them will minimize the amount of difficulties you could face.
 
Remember also that some changes could work in your favor and so when they come, analyze each one to know if to take advantage of them of face them and adjust accordingly.
 

Step 6: Write Down Your Goals In Terms Of Priority

Now that your goals, needs and action plans are well articulated, go ahead and write them down in order of priority. In prioritizing, you want to ensure that you allocate your resources to the most important goals, first. Remember that your resources are always limited compared to the goals you desire to achieve. You cannot hope to achieve all. If you ever succeed to achieve all, you did not have enough goals.
 
In prioritizing, list the goals in order of which ones will have the greatest impact on your overall business goal, than the other. In other words, which ones will move the business to its destination, faster than the other? List them in that order, right down to the least important. As you write each goal, write the needs, action steps, etc. for it to be accomplished.
 

Step 7: Allocate The Resources You Have

Your resources include men, machines, money, materials, space, etc. They are always not enough. So you need to wisely assign these resources to the different tasks which need to be carried out daily in order for you to be able to achieve your goals. Assign tasks daily, weekly and monthly making sure you give the most complex aspects, to the more skilful staff and the trivial aspects, to the least skilled staff. However, keep all your staff busy on a daily basis and let each one realize just how important his/her work is, to the achievement of the goals of the business.
 
Motivate your staff daily by making them see just how the success of the business will change their lives. Encourage initiative-taking but sit back and supervise from time to time. Adequately compensate them and appraise their work both privately and openly.
 

Step 8: Carry Out Evaluations

In the achievement of your goals, you need to sit from time to time with your team, to evaluate how far you all are gone in the achievement of your goals. I will recommend monthly evaluation.
 
In evaluating the business and the team in general, you need to also evaluate the work of each member of your team and help them improve on what they do. Don’t forget that it is the one dollar that John and James each make on a daily basis, that account for the 730 dollars that the business makes at the end of the year. Do little evaluations, daily.
 
When you set your SMARTA goals and follow the steps above, you will be very much on the road to success. Do you have any goals for your business in 2014? How much have you achieved so far? You can begin today and I will wait to hear you tell me the difference, come the end of this year. I wish you the best as you work tirelessly to succeed on your business. Don’t get tired, success is very close.
 
By Kadzem Claude

Share on Google Plus Share on Linked in

Attend The EPIC BLOGGING Seminar (Jan 29th - 30th, 2016)

Do you want to learn how to blog professinally like me and earn real money, I mean millions of naira every month? Then start making arrangement to attend my 2days EPIC BLOGGING Seminar taking place in Lagos on January 29th and 30th 2016. You've never seen anything like this before and believe me, you'll miss the whole world if you miss it >>> CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS Follow @DarlintonOmeh