Goal Setting for 2019

By Chloe Smith

It’s about to be the start of a new year so goal setting is on everyone’s mind!

As you plan out your strategy for 2019, you’ll most likely start with your overarching goals for the company and then your goals for each aspect of the company. You’ll create a goal setting business plan.

This can always be a daunting task, especially as you’re still trying to wrap things up and kick off the new year. We’ve outlined some ways to ensure your goals are the right goals and some tips for how to achieve a goal successfully.

How to Set Goals

A huge part of your goal plan is actually setting your goals. Life altering right?

Setting your goals should not be a five minute process. You want to complete some background work so you’re not only creating the right goals but also setting yourself up for success!

Math Comes in Handy

I know we always thought we would never use those math lessons from school, but statistics will come in super handy for your goals (and in your marketing in general really).

Goals should be based on past performance and past results.

Hopefully, throughout the year you’ve been tracking your customers and clients and business growth. Use those numbers to forecast for your new year!

Everyone wants growth. But growth will look different for every business. If you grew 20% over 2018, growing by 60% may be an unrealistic 2019 goal for your business.

Sustainable development goals need to be created.

Look to past performance and past successes. You want to stretch your team and goals, but not be unrealistic.

SMART Goals Creation

SMART goals stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

Think through this acronym as you set your goals.

To continue with the growth goal from above, stating you want business growth is great, but how will you get it? Do you want to grow one aspect of the business? Do you need more products for growth?

A SMART goal example for growth could be “We will sell 240 small purses in 2019.”

The goal is specific, you have a set amount and type of product. It is measurable because you can track sales. It’s achievable because you sold 204 small purses in 2018 so it’s a small increase and you’ve expanded your outreach. It’s relevant to your growth plan. And it’s timely because you need the growth in that product area.

Download the SMART goals template to start developing your SMART goals.

Goal Creation

Break The Goals Down

Now you have your general goals. You know you want to sell 240 small purses, but how will you achieve this goal? You’ll most likely need other smaller goals built into your strategic plan for the year.

Break your large goals into smaller goals.

These smaller goals can be team based or quarterly based to ensure you’re reaching the yearly goal. For instance, you could say that you’ll sell 20 small purses more month to break it into a manageable goal and see how you’re doing quarterly.

You’ll break them down in a way that fits into not only your team structure but also your processes.

Talk About Your Goals

No one is an island. Especially in business.

After you’ve reviewed the math and created your SMART goals for the overall company, you’ll have broken them down.

These should then trickle down to each team.

Have a conversation not only with each team but as an overall company as well. See how your goals overlap. How do they work together?

Having these conversations from the beginning might take some extra meetings, but we promise they’ll be worth it! Then your team not only understands where they fit into the overall mission for the year with a bird’s eye view of what’s happening but they also have insight into each other to know how to work together.

It’s like a kumbaya around the campfire.

Evaluate the Systems and Your Team

The talk through with the team can also illuminate any holes in the system.

Do you have what you need to be successful? Are you missing a key sales funnel or maybe a skill on your team? Do you have the manpower to complete everything you need to? Do you have the right team to be successful? Do you need to hire for a particular skill set or need more people?

If you debated some of these answers or see that you’re missing a key system, add the acquisition of it into the strategic plan for how and when they’ll be implemented.

How to Achieve a Goal Successfully

Think About What Works for You

There’s a million articles out there about successful people’s morning routines and what successful people do. None of that matters if it doesn’t work for you, though. If you know you’re not a morning person, waking up at 5am to start your day probably isn’t ideal for you.

When do you work better? What helps you to work your best?

Once you figure this out, we recommend taking some time in the mornings or the evenings to solely focus on your goals.

Give your team the freedom to work this out as well.

Are morning meetings usually most productive or do end of the day recaps with next day priorities lead to better project management?

We understand there’s only so much freedom you can allow in the workplace—stuff still needs to get done. But by tailoring the day to how people work best and offering teams the ability to shift their work days, it  will help them manage their time effectively.

Time Block

We’ve recently become time block converts.

How time blocks work are you set your day in blocks of time for different tasks. So maybe you’ll have an hour in the morning to read and respond to emails and an hour at the end of the day as well. Assigning chunks of time to tasks help your team know when you’ll be working on things—aiding communication—but also helps you accomplish them.

You don’t have to break down every minute of your day (but if you can, why not!). You can start small; have certain days for certain things. Like Tuesday and Thursday will be your sales day.

A huge benefit of time blocking is it helps you focus on each individual task instead of jumping around. Some days, this works better than others, so you still need to be open to flexibility in your days.

The time blocking plays into the smaller breakdown of your goals. Be sure to review it monthly to check you’re still aligning with the larger goal.

With these tips, you should be well on your way to crafting successful goals for 2019. And achieving them!