Welcome to the new year! This is the perfect time to create a vision for your business and set goals for the year ahead. To set achievable and effective goals, it is important to look at the previous year and evaluate what aspects of your business needs attention moving forward.
Whilst 2020 threw many challenges at business we also see that for many businesses it provided some gifts for the years ahead. Before setting your 2021 goals sit and review your numbers from 2020 and what you learnt from 2020. I.e. for some clients with the recent lockdown some clients were surprised how many of their clients were from Brisbane. This will give a new insight for future marketing. For others it was reviewing systems to reduce the number of hours they are working and how efficient they are.
Once you know where your business needs improvement, you will be able to move forward with some suitable goals.
There are many different goals you might want to set for yourself and your business. Some business goals could include hiring more employees, reducing expenses, increasing your customer base, increasing sales and revenue, creating business processes, adjusting your marketing strategy, or launching a new product or service. Some personal goals might include embracing a new hobby, spending more time with family, or taking more leisure time out for yourself.
When setting goals, a helpful framework to follow is the SMART criteria. See the table below.
S | Specific |
· The goal should be clear and well defined.
· Who, What, When, Where and Why? |
|
M | Measurable |
· Make sure you can measure your progress towards achieving the goal.
· What is the indicator you will use to measure progress? |
|
A | Achievable |
· The goal should be attainable.
· Do you have the resources and knowledge to achieve this goal? |
|
R | Realistic |
· The goal should be realistic and relevant to your life.
· Is the goal within reach? Can you commit to achieving it? |
|
T | Timely |
· The goal should have a clear timeline, including a start date and a target date
· What is the deadline for your goal? |
In addition to the SMART framework, some other things to keep in mind when setting goals include:
- Believe that you can achieve the goal
- Visualise what the goal looks like in the bigger picture
- Write down the goals and how you are going to commit to achieving them
- Have a clear plan of action – Write down your action plan
- What can you do right now to get started?
- Review your goals and your progress towards the goal regularly
An area we find beneficial for clients is really understanding their numbers for their goal setting that can then be used to prioritise the goals they have.
Below is a Case Study: Breakeven Analysis for our Clients
Client Issue
The client does not know how much revenue they needed to generate within their business to cover their staff wages, business overheads and allow for sufficient profit for the owners.
Solution
The team at MJJ Accounting creates a ‘business breakeven tool’, which looks at their fixed and variable expenses and allowed them to run some ‘what-if’ scenarios. This helped to determine how much revenue they needed to generate each month within the business.
Outcome
The business break even tool allows our clients to be confident in their monthly required sales and revenue. This reassurance allows them to redirect their focus on marketing activities and business efficiencies, to help generate additional income. Further, our clients now know when they need to take immediate action to reduce costs or if they need to work with us on a new business strategy, as they can clearly tell when they are achieving their monthly targets, or not.
If you have goals and you need help to achieve them, please feel free to contact us for assistance by phone on 07 5451 1118 or via e-mail reception@mjjaccountants.com.au
Comments are closed.