Whether they are written in ink or stored in the owners mind, all businesses have goals. The big question though comes down to are these goals, actually workable in practice. Possibly more so are they goals that can actually be achieved, do they have an actual target.

Why Goals FAIL

In a large number of cases, where goals fail, it is because they do not have a actual target they are working towards. A good example of a goal that will generally fail is “To earn more money”, and this translates into many other potential goals like “To sell more products” “To convert more sales” “To Lose Weight”. While all of these are goals and they describe what you want to do, they do not quantify what you expect to achieve for a success.

Really how can you expect to not FAIL when you do not set a level to reach for. Looking at the goal “To earn more money”, you will probably find when you do the numbers a lot more people succeed at this then will accept that they do. Maybe you are earning $50,000 per year, and you want to earn more money. Without setting what you want to reach for in this goal success would become earning $50,001 next year. So you get to the end of the year and have earned that extra $1, and while you achieved your goal, you just start along the path that goal setting did not work, because when you think about it what you really wanted was to earn an extra $10,000.

How to Improve Your Goals

Having short and vague goals whether it is in your business or personal life, just do not work. You need to put detail into the goals and build a goal that has a definite point where you know you have either achieved it or failed. To do this there are two key elements that need to be part of your goals creation process. Not having the following two elements as part of the actual goal, will make it all that much more difficult for you to actually get to a point where you either succeed or fail.

• Have a Target - Having something that you are working towards is an essential part of the goal, this being a specific target is greatly more powerful then a simple phrase. In setting a target for your goal, “To Earn more money” becomes “To Earn an additional $10,000″. It creates a specific figure that you know you are aiming for.
• Have a Timeframe - Just like having something specific you are working towards, having a date that you expect to achieve this by is another important factor. If you do not know when you want to achieve the goal by, then it will just keep dragging on. It is often found that a task will expand to fill the available time, a goal is quite similar it will often take about the time allocated to it, to be achieved. In this case “To Earn more money” becomes “To Earn an additional $10,000 in the next year.” Specifying a particular date can also be helpful, as often a year from now you may not even remember the specific date.

Things to Consider

While adding these two elements to your goal will make it a much clearer and more definite, these alone will only increase your chances so much. There are still a range of things that can impact on your individual likelihood of achieving the goals you set.

• Make it achievable - Almost more important than any other factor a goal needs to be achievable for you. This requires a little bit of insight on your part as to what you are capable of. For example if your business has been running for 3 years and making $5000/ month profit, setting a goal to make $50,000/ month profit within 6 months, is probably not very practical, for a number of reasons. Something more practical might be a goal to increase monthly profit by $1000 / month over the next 6 months. Keeping things practical and achievable can help you to achieve and exceed your goals.
• Goals should be a challenge - But not to challenging. While you do need to push yourself a little beyond what you believe you are capable of, going to far beyond may push you a little to hard to achieve. This goes hand in hand with making things achievable. However it can also depend upon where you are in your business. While 100% month on month growth might be achievable in the first few months of business, 5 years in without precedent in your business it will likely be very difficult to achieve.
• Step it up - If you still feel that you would like to push yourself a little harder, but maybe not all in one go, it may be worth considering setting smaller goals that take things a step at a time. For example rather then setting a goal of increasing profit by $10,000/month within 6 months. Try setting three smaller goals of increase profit/month by $3,500 in 2 months, and work on this goal 3 times over 6 months.

Where are you at?

At the end of the day though the most important part of setting goals for your business is to actually get in and set them. Thinking about setting goals is not really going to get you anywhere, it will just leave you thinking what could I have done if only I had set a goal.

So it is time to go and set some goals for your business, all the factors of what you want to achieve, in what time frame and at what speed, is entirely up to you. Just remember to include all the parts of a goal to give yourself the best chance to achieve your goal.

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