First of all if you don’t have a mission, vision or any business goals set, now is the time to do that. It is very hard to start achieving your goals without writing them down and laying the foundation for you to achieve those goals. We believe in goals both personally and as a business.
If you have a mission and vision look at them and really read and understand these. Do they still represent what you are trying to achieve? A companies mission and vision don’t change often but there are times when a change to a companies mission or vision is in the best interest of that company being able to grow and move forward. Sometimes these changes occur just simply because the world has changed and sometimes they change because the company has grown past them.
Having an updated mission and vision is very important to the success of your company. They are a great check point when making company decisions. Let’s say you are trying to decide if you should add a new product or service to your company you can easily read your mission and vision and see if these new services or products support your mission.
Now goals are something that should definitely be set at least annually as a business. I recommend you aim high but don’t aim unreasonable. If one of your goals is to grow your business by 30% this year that is a high goal especially in this economy but it is possible depending on how much you are willing to work at it. If you set a goal to grow your business by 200% that is probably unreasonable unless you are a brand new company.
After setting a couple of business goals you will be able to come up with action items that help you achieve these goals. Here are some goals and below them are some action items to help achieve those goals:
- Grow business by 50%
- Establish referral sources
- Improve marketing materials
- Create a marketing plan
- Increase Community Awareness of Our Company
- Align with a Charity
- Send out Press Releases
- Join the Chamber
As you can see once you have picked some goals it becomes easy to come up with ideas that could help you reach those goals.
We recommend you share your mission, vision and goals with your employees. It is important for them to understand what you are striving for as a business and they can often help participate in the action items. In fact you could even have your employees come up with personal goals that help them grow as professional within your business. The more involved employees are the more they feel valued and the more valuable they are helping everyone to grow.
Get started and get ready for Part 2.