How to Set New and Realistic Business Goals

When you’re first launching your business, it’s important to have goals about what you’d like to do and achieve. As time goes on, your goals and aims will change and it’s helpful to think about new business goals you’d like to strive towards.

Setting goals and aims is a great way of helping you keep motivated and encouraged to keep your business developing and growing. Goals can play a practical role, in that they help you get a clearer idea of exactly what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it by, plus they can motivate you to keep going through any tricky periods or drier business spells. If you employ staff, then having clear goals in place could help them too and give them things to aim for in terms of sales.

When you first begin your business, many of your goals may be intertwined with elements contained in your business plan, whereas as you progress with your crafts business, new ideas and angles may arise which could become goals. If nothing obvious has sprung up at you, then it’s a good idea to set some time aside to have a brainstorming session and work out what your goals for the future are. If you have employees working for you, then you could also involve them in the brainstorming process.

Coming Up With New Goals

During your brainstorming sessions, have a careful think about the direction in which you see your business going, any new areas you wish to develop or explore an how you’d like to go about achieving this. Consider issues such as:

• Do you want to introduce new products or brands?
• Do you want to expand your business and/or move to bigger premises?
• Is there any way you could improve your existing business approach?
• Do you want or need more staff?
• How do you feel about what you’ve achieved so far and how could you improve on this?
• What are your sales prediction aims?
• Are there any elements of your existing business plan that you still need to implement?
• How might your marketing strategy be improved?
• Are there any ways in which you can use technological advances to improve marketing and sales?
• How many new customers do you want to see coming through your doors this year?
• Could you develop any customer incentive schemes to improve regular custom?
• Are there any new or different consumer shows you could have a stand at?
• Are there ways of improving your craft expert status?
• How might you move forward on a national basis?
• What new advertising routes could you explore?

You can use white boards, computers or good old pens and paper to jot down ideas and work through anything that sounds promising. Don’t expect miracles or instantaneous results, as some ideas may require a fair bit of thought and time to thrash out the practicalities. You may find that there are several ideas that you’d like to form into new goals which is fine, but try and avoid attempting to do too much in one go, as you don’t want to feel overwhelmed.

Remember to keep goals realistic – although you may love the idea of world domination in the crafting world, if you’re currently only a small locally trading craft business, then it’s unlikely to happen quite yet! By keeping goals realistic, then you’re more likely to achieve them, which will in turn make you feel good and be a positive step for your business.

Once your goals are clear in your mind, it’s time to commit them to paper and ensure any staff are clear of them too.