TERRE HAUTE —
Goals and objectives are one of the hardest things to set as a business owner. Owners are typically focused solely on results. As an owner of a business, the importance of settings goals and objectives cannot be understated! One of the most efficient and accurate ways to measure success is through goals.
First, your objectives should be measurable and quantifiable. If you want to increase your sales, then you should aim to increase the sales figures daily, weekly, monthly and annually by percentage, dollar amount or units sold.
Second, objectives should also have a time frame. It is important to set a horizon for your goals. You may select a year, a month, a week, or a day. You want to be able to measure your goals from one point in time to another point in time.
Third, your objectives absolutely must be attainable. This probably seems like common sense, but you would be surprised how frequently this is overlooked. It is truly realistic to expect your sales to triple from the previous year. A good example is, “I want to increase my sales of pizza delivery by 20 percent in number of units sold from October through December of the same period last year.” You will see that this statement has a time frame, is specific and measurable.
Additional pointers include the following:
• Measure what makes sense: Many organizations utilize multiple measurements.
• Market share objective: Usually this is stated as a percentage and illustrates the total available market segment that is serviced by a particular company.
• Percentage growth in units objectives: This is a specific measurement and allows for easy tracking.
• Percentage growth in revenue or profit: same as units but substitute number of units sold for revenue or profit.
• Sales variance objective: expressed a percentage and is the number of customers who purchase from your store or website.
• Spend per customer: This is a standard retail goal — how much do your customers spend per transaction?
• Revenue or profit per square foot objective: This illustrates how efficiently you are using your available space.
• Closing ratio objective: number of sales versus the number of quotes or estimates.
Keep in mind when your fiscal year begins so that you may arrange your metrics based on that information as well as if you have seasonality in your industry. For example, many retail outlets will note that October though December is notably busier due to the holidays while the months of January though March are much slower.
Be sure to review personal goals and business goals prior to developing measurable strategies. In addition, look at historical data to determine which are most applicable. The benefit of developing defined goals and objectives is that they provide benchmarks against how you gauge your progress.
Heather Penney is the regional director for Indiana State University’s Indiana Small Business Development Center.
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Business Cents: Setting goals, objectives important task
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