How to Set Goals as an Entrepreneur

Setting SMART goals

• Specific: Start with one goal, what you want to accomplish and consider all the details it will take to achieve it. This includes other employees's expertise or stakeholders you need to be involved. Map out where and when you would like to achieve the goal.
• Measurable: Keep track of key milestones you want to hit along the way to achieving your goals. And how you will measure your progress.
• Achievable: Your goals should stretch and challenge you, but they need to be ones that you can achieve. Do you have the capabilities and resources at hand?
• Realistic: Check that you can achieve your goal given your current resources and time. Be fair and honest with yourself to see if your expectations are realistic and feasible.
• Timely: Set a deadline for when you would like to hit your goal. If you give yourself a start and finish date, you create more drive and urgency towards actually accomplishing that objective.

Setting goals for your SME

• Financial Goals – Increase your revenue by reviewing ways you can cut costs across your departments, save on raw materials through your contracting and suppliers or increase your production levels. When setting your financial goals, break them down into quarterly figures to keep you on track.
• Growth Goals – This kind of goal requires a strategic approach to achieve your overall business vision. It could range from entering new markets and launching a new product or range to gaining more customers or business expansion. You should start this with an in-depth market analysis and build your short-term goals from there.
• Customer Goals – Instead of creating broad goals like improving customer retention, break it down into identifying the roadblocks to creating a seamless customer experience, addressing specific areas of concern and considering the impact it has on your bottom line.
• Employee development – I have personally found that motivating my employees and discovering ways to enhance their own personal growth results in a more productive workforce. Ultimately, my people are my focus in my business as I wouldn’t have the successful companies I own without their expertise and passion.

Setting goals post COVID-19

• Review the ways COVID-19 has impacted your business
• Derive business goals out of the opportunities that arose
• Identify whether COVID-19 showed the gaps in your processes that you need to address to drive your customer retention, profits and digital presence
• Leverage the digital technologies that have become our new normal way of doing business
• Create contingency plans for future scenarios (such as tighter restrictions)
• Consider your approach if an employee changes roles or companies
• Observe your clients’ behaviour through the pandemic and take the learnings out of that to enhance your customer’s experience
• Set goals to address your employee’s mental health throughout the recovery from the pandemic

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