Goals, Strategies, and Action Plans
What are the goals for your business? It's a fundamental question every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves. Why are you in business? What do you hope to accomplish and when? Goals can be defined as what you want your business to be when it grows up. Set a reasonable number of goals, one is probably not enough and twenty would be way too many. The goals relate to a time period as well, a year, or perhaps six months, is a good target. One way of setting goals is to describe your company one year from now.
Goals, objectives, and strategies are incorporated when you are writing a business plan that is used for internal purposes rather than raising capital. It's an important exercise for management to go through and then incorporate the results in a working business plan.
It's a good idea to complete the Historical background of the company the Industry and Economic Review and the Product section before tackling goals, objectives and strategies. Looking at where you've been and where you are is the starting point for where you want to go.
Brainstorming is a good way to get started on goals. Make a list of all the achievements you could make in the upcoming year. Just list them. Don't make any value judgments on whether they're achievable. Now rate each goal in five different categories: effort, money required, like and dislike, talent required, and payoff.
Effort is simply the amount of energy and time that will be expended to achieve the goal.
Money required is the investment that will be made. For example if staffing will have to be hired or outsourcing will be utilized that means it will be necessary to invest money in the business to pay for the employees or the outsourcing. Nearly all businesses require some investment of capital, if nothing else for Internet access and phone lines. Use ballpark figures.
Liking or disliking the tasks required to achieve the goal has an impact on whether the goal will be achieved successfully. If you like to write then it won't be a problem establishing a ghostwriting service, but if writing is the last thing you'd choose to do, you probably won't be a success at ghostwriting.
Talent means whether you have the abilities required. If you have no artistic talent then graphic design isn't for you, unless you have such great contacts for clients that it makes sense to outsource the design function.
Payoff is the reasonable amount of money that can be earned. This is a guestimate of what you believe will be the payoff if the other factors - effort, investment, like or dislike, and talent hold true.
This is a simplistic way of rating the goals. It may turn out that the goal with the highest score also requires the most money to accomplish and that just doesn't fit in with your budget. Or perhaps the lowest rated goals are the goals you have the most talent for and require the least effort. The point is rating the goals gives you a starting point.
Goals, objectives, and strategies are incorporated when you are writing a business plan that is used for internal purposes rather than raising capital. It's an important exercise for management to go through and then incorporate the results in a working business plan.
It's a good idea to complete the Historical background of the company the Industry and Economic Review and the Product section before tackling goals, objectives and strategies. Looking at where you've been and where you are is the starting point for where you want to go.
Brainstorming is a good way to get started on goals. Make a list of all the achievements you could make in the upcoming year. Just list them. Don't make any value judgments on whether they're achievable. Now rate each goal in five different categories: effort, money required, like and dislike, talent required, and payoff.
Effort is simply the amount of energy and time that will be expended to achieve the goal.
Money required is the investment that will be made. For example if staffing will have to be hired or outsourcing will be utilized that means it will be necessary to invest money in the business to pay for the employees or the outsourcing. Nearly all businesses require some investment of capital, if nothing else for Internet access and phone lines. Use ballpark figures.
Liking or disliking the tasks required to achieve the goal has an impact on whether the goal will be achieved successfully. If you like to write then it won't be a problem establishing a ghostwriting service, but if writing is the last thing you'd choose to do, you probably won't be a success at ghostwriting.
Talent means whether you have the abilities required. If you have no artistic talent then graphic design isn't for you, unless you have such great contacts for clients that it makes sense to outsource the design function.
Payoff is the reasonable amount of money that can be earned. This is a guestimate of what you believe will be the payoff if the other factors - effort, investment, like or dislike, and talent hold true.
This is a simplistic way of rating the goals. It may turn out that the goal with the highest score also requires the most money to accomplish and that just doesn't fit in with your budget. Or perhaps the lowest rated goals are the goals you have the most talent for and require the least effort. The point is rating the goals gives you a starting point.
Books on Business Planning
How to Start a Home-Based Event Planning Business, 2nd (Home-Based Business Series)
Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 12/20/2009) 
Strategic Planning for the Family Business: Parallel Planning to Unite the Family and Business
Amazon Price: $24.22 (as of 12/20/2009)
The Successful Business Plan, 4th Edition: Secrets and Strategies (Successful Business Plan Secrets and Strategies)
Amazon Price: $19.77 (as of 12/20/2009)
Business Planning How To Set Goals: A Few Examples
Goal setting is important in a business. Think of goal setting as an end destination. Once you know where you are going you can develop strategies to get there.
Here are several examples of goals (all for different companies):
Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing.
Within one year generate enough income from my Internet marketing company to maintain my family's current standard of living without increasing the number of hours I work per week.
Brand my company as a membership site for fitness centers.
Develop a network of blogs/websites to generate Pay Per Click (PPC) revenue.
Take the goals and decide what benchmarks you need to reach to achieve the goals. The benchmarks, or objectives, are subjective in some ways. Generating $3,000 a month from an arts and crafts business might be on the low side for a professional crafter who sells at a craft show nearly every weekend, but totally unreasonable for a new mother who doesn't have a lot of time.
Keep the goals realistic. It's fine to set high goals. We all tend to live up (or down) to our expectations, but don't make them so high there's not a reasonable probability of achieving them. If you've never done any Internet marketing, give yourself time to learn and set goals that give you a sense of achievement and don't set you up for failure.
Objectives should be set for each goal, and of course you can have more than one objective for each goal. They don't have to be money oriented but should have some quantifiable characteristics. That way you'll know whether you've achieved the objective or not.
Monthly objectives lead to a continuous level of activity and monitoring as opposed to yearly objectives. The tendency is to procrastinate for 11 months and throw everything into the last month. Or worse yet, not doing anything at all and roll the objective forward from month to month.
Examples:
Goal - Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing.
Objectives -
Place three articles in national publications on the topic of writing or book publishing within six months.
Obtain interviews with the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times by the first day of spring 2008.
Be invited to speak at four writers' conferences with all expenses paid by the end of the 2008.
The second step is to determine what strategies you need to take to achieve the objectives. Objectives just don't happen by themselves. Strategies are specific actions.
Examples:
Goal - Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing and writing.
Objective -
Place three articles in national publications on the topic of writing or book publishing within six months.
Strategies:
Get the names of the editors and addresses of 12 appropriate national publications.
Find out the demographics of the readership.
Read at least four back issues of each publication to get a flavor of their style.
Research the last year's worth of issues so the topic isn't duplicated.
Develop a set of ten possible articles. Write a query letter with the articles synopsis for each of those articles.
Query the editors on a monthly basis with one query letter to each editor on a different article. .
These are a few examples of goals, objectives and the strategies that will help achieve the goals when you write a business plan.
Here are several examples of goals (all for different companies):
Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing.
Within one year generate enough income from my Internet marketing company to maintain my family's current standard of living without increasing the number of hours I work per week.
Brand my company as a membership site for fitness centers.
Develop a network of blogs/websites to generate Pay Per Click (PPC) revenue.
Take the goals and decide what benchmarks you need to reach to achieve the goals. The benchmarks, or objectives, are subjective in some ways. Generating $3,000 a month from an arts and crafts business might be on the low side for a professional crafter who sells at a craft show nearly every weekend, but totally unreasonable for a new mother who doesn't have a lot of time.
Keep the goals realistic. It's fine to set high goals. We all tend to live up (or down) to our expectations, but don't make them so high there's not a reasonable probability of achieving them. If you've never done any Internet marketing, give yourself time to learn and set goals that give you a sense of achievement and don't set you up for failure.
Objectives should be set for each goal, and of course you can have more than one objective for each goal. They don't have to be money oriented but should have some quantifiable characteristics. That way you'll know whether you've achieved the objective or not.
Monthly objectives lead to a continuous level of activity and monitoring as opposed to yearly objectives. The tendency is to procrastinate for 11 months and throw everything into the last month. Or worse yet, not doing anything at all and roll the objective forward from month to month.
Examples:
Goal - Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing.
Objectives -
Place three articles in national publications on the topic of writing or book publishing within six months.
Obtain interviews with the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times by the first day of spring 2008.
Be invited to speak at four writers' conferences with all expenses paid by the end of the 2008.
The second step is to determine what strategies you need to take to achieve the objectives. Objectives just don't happen by themselves. Strategies are specific actions.
Examples:
Goal - Establish myself as a recognized authority in the field of book publishing and writing.
Objective -
Place three articles in national publications on the topic of writing or book publishing within six months.
Strategies:
Get the names of the editors and addresses of 12 appropriate national publications.
Find out the demographics of the readership.
Read at least four back issues of each publication to get a flavor of their style.
Research the last year's worth of issues so the topic isn't duplicated.
Develop a set of ten possible articles. Write a query letter with the articles synopsis for each of those articles.
Query the editors on a monthly basis with one query letter to each editor on a different article. .
These are a few examples of goals, objectives and the strategies that will help achieve the goals when you write a business plan.
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by DeePower
Dee Power was born on the East Coast and grew up on the West Coast. She holds a Master of business Administration.
She started her writing career in th... (more)
She started her writing career in th... (more)
