Today Christina, one of our managers here at Dolphin Outsourcing is talking through her top tips for setting goals for your small business! What are business goals? Starting a business from scratch can be tough and it's often hard to know what to focus on - and so setting relevant and accurate goals is important to help keep you on track and give your business the biggest chance of success!
Find out the answers to all the questions above and more, by watching the video or reading the transcript below.
If you have any questions or you're looking for some business support, please get in touch with us and we will be happy to help - https://www.dolphin-outsourcing.co.uk/. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel!
"Hello everyone, I hope you can all hear and see me okay. I'm not sure if anyone is going to jump on tonight cos I'm doing a bit of a late one this evening, but today I'm here to talk to you about goal setting for your business.
So if you haven't already set your goals for the year, I would like to help you out with that by giving you a guided session. So if you would like to grab a pen and paper or your phone, or your notes or wherever you want to write a few questions down or for some note to go there, let's sort your goals out today. I'm going to reel off a load of stuff, so if you've got any questions, in the meantime, ask them in the comments so pop them in. If you're not watching live, I can go back and answer any questions that you've got, so we are here to help you. So let’s get started.
So first of all, what is goal-setting? Goal setting is obviously the process of deciding what you want to accomplish and devising a plan to achieve those desired results. So for business owners goal setting is an important part of your business, so you should be doing it. We want to get you sorted out for 2021. So why is it important for a business to be doing goal settings? When a company sets goals, it makes its priorities clear for everyone involved in the organisation. The purpose of goal setting is to show employees what they need to focus on the most during the upcoming quarter, which then helps them to able to prioritise their tasks. So for managers, it helps them decide which major projects to focus on, how to best hand out the work to its employees. You might have employees, you might not have employees, but it's good to kind of set that structure if you do have employees, so they know what to do. So you should be telling them what your plans are, or at least some of the plans. So goals keep everyone motivated. So no matter how much you love your job or industry, there are always times when you just don't want to go into work. A lot of us have been feeling like that lately, haven't we? You'll feel lazy for a day or two, but part of the importance of goal setting in an organisation is that it helps keep everyone motivated. So in times when you do not necessarily feel like, you know, putting that much effort into work, and although someone might feel like giving 100%, they will if they know that there's some sort of reward at the end of the tunnel like if there's a goal to reach, they'll sort of push for it. So that's kind of another reason. They also promote teamwork. So in addition to keeping everyone motivated, setting goals also helps encourage people to work together as a team. When everyone is working towards a common goal, they're more likely to come together to accomplish it. So if there is a group, sort of like group rewards in place, or you've given those goals, they know what they are going to work towards, it encourages them to work together even more because they can't earn the rewards sort of on their own, so you want to encourage people like as a team. They also increase morale as well. So when people go to work every day with no end in sight, no goals to achieve it can wear them down emotionally, so everything starts to feel the same, people just start to go through the motions. However, goals help workers take ownership and pride in their work, when they achieve a goal that you set for them it makes them feel good inside, so a little bit of motivation can increase workplace morale significantly. They also help measure success. So if you plan your goals the right way, it will help you measure your company's success and ways that you never could if you had any goals, if you hadn't set any goals before. So the smart way, what I'm going to explain to you in a second, to setting goals is a proven method that helps ensure your success.
If anybody knows, write it down before I need to say, let’s see if I can see any comments on here, nothings showing up yet, but if you know what the SMART goals are, put them below or above wherever the comments are. If you don't know I shall let you know now. And so, basically, it is:
S for Specific,
M is for Measurable,
A is for Attainable,
R is Relevant and,
T is timing.
So for your goals to be successful, you have to be able to measure that success and your employees, if you have any, have to be able to feel that they have got the chance of attaining the goal. So don't kind of make massive goals make them you know, make them sort of smaller for the time being so they can achieve them. So you can judge the process and adjust the goals as necessary. So the importance of goal setting in an organisation is something that you can't stress enough. Goals are what keeps your employees motivated again if you have any, it also keeps you happy. If you're on your own, so knowing what you have to work towards. It makes them sort of happy and ready to come into work each day. If you set the goals the right way, there is no question that it also will help increase productivity and success in your company. So keep the smart principles in mind and always be open to feedback from your employees or managers. If you're a business owner on your own, you can ask other business owners, there's plenty of groups out there, you can ask us, pop some notes in the comments, message us any time we're here to help. I'd like you to write down how goal setting has affected you either as an employee and manager or a small business owner? Have you been affected in any kind of way so far? Let me know in the comments, or write it down if you wish, you don't have to, but we'd like to see some comments and love to find out how it has affected people because this affects people in various ways, hasn't it?
I'll give you a quick fact, so in a recent survey, more than 80% of 300 small business owners said they don't keep track of their business goals, and 77% have yet to achieve their vision for the company. So, think about what you can do if you actually do set goals. So start by distinguishing your long term goals from your short term ones. So long term goals should have a timeline of about three to five years. They should include your company's mission statement, reflecting a reason your business was founded. So obviously, if you're writing this down, you can pause the video at any time, I'm just going to kind of get it all out there and, you know, write as you go along. These goals usually fall within the sort of four general areas. So service, social, profit, or growth. So service is goals related to improving customer service satisfaction or customer retention. Social is goals that are focused on giving back to the community. Profit is goals to increase profits by a certain percentage. Growth is goals related to the expansion of the company through new employees, for instance. So what I'd like you to do is write your long term goals in the box using the method that I've just explained to you. You can write it in a box or on a piece of paper, or on your phone, and wherever you got it, just write it down your long term goals. You can put a few, you can put a lot, you can come back to it later, but just get thinking about those long term goals. Obviously, if anyone does have any questions, pop them down. Once you do have your long term goals, you want to start putting in your short term objectives. So, what you want to do is go back to your SMART goals system that I was just telling you about. So again
Specific which is objectives that need to be concrete and highly detailed.
Measurable, so put a figure or value such as a cost or percentage to the objective.
Action orientated, so the layout, which actions need to be taken by which people and when that is a really good one.
Realistic, as I said before, kind of make them challenging, but consider your resources so you can actually achieve them reasonably. And then,
Time-specific set a deadline for everything which is going to keep you on track, so what do you want to achieve and when.
In the short term, it could be something like I want to achieve 1000 new followers on Instagram in the next three months like that is, all of the above sort of thing. So if you've got employees, don't if you've got any, or if you have, you might want to share your goals with those as well, because that doesn't really help them, as I said before, so you may have a clear vision of where you want your business to go, but it's crucial that you kind of motivate your employees, so they look in the same direction as you. Then everyone's kind of on the same page. You want to reward those employees who are actually working to help you achieve those goals. It isn't always a financial incentive either, so think of other ways as well. Does anyone have any other questions or anything like that? If you put your, your short term goals wherever you are going to write them down, so write your short term goals in the box, I keep saying in the box, wherever you're going to put your goals and then once you've written them down, we'd love to know what they are. So basically, that is how we as a company, would go through goal settings for ourselves, or, you know, for clients if you need help with that. We do have Laura who can mentor people and to maybe help you think about your goals is just to try and get you thinking about where you want to be a certain length of time, not just plodding along, posting here and there, you want actual SMART goals as such.
So hopefully, that's helped you all. If you do have any questions again, let us know. Write down your goals, we'd love to hear them.
So thank you for watching, and have a great weekend and we'll see you next week."