How to improve business goals setting.

Posted by jpayne on January 14, 2009 under Business Goals | Be the First to Comment

When strategy planning, most management teams do a very poor job of setting their business goals. Typically, they set business goals which measure nothing more than the basics, such as revenue or profit and in professional service firms, delivery or internal/external utilisation.  Whilst these may show the scores on the doors, they offer no help in tracking how the business is really performing.

The most successful companies however, set business goals which will show the true picture, no matter how painful. A classic example will be in an area such as business development. Do you really know how that area of your business is performing or are you reliant on sales meetings where your own tracking methods are reliant on the sometimes nebulous verbal conversations your sales force has had with prospects during the course of the last week or month?

Do you have a pipeline that tracks the prospects through from start to finish, do you set yourself targets for new accounts, are those targets accompanied by timelines? This can apply across the business from customer complaints to improving the quality of your products.

It is essential to follow a proper process when setting your objectives:

1. Decide which activities are the most important in your business
2. Plan a strategy which supports those activities
3. Develop business goals which directly measures the success of that strategy

Most organisations will have a series of KPIs. Make sure these are relevant to your company and your strategy. Take notice of what they are telling you. To disregard them will not enable you to maximise your business performance.

Julia Payne Associates have been providing consultancy and business coaching to SME’s and FTSE 500 companies for the past 20 years.  Why don’t you contact us to discuss solutions that make a clear difference.