It's the holiday season and now might seem like a good time take a rest from your business, but before you go to lots of holiday parties and drink lots of eggnog, take a moment to think about defining your business goals for the first quarter of 2010. Yes, only the first quarter, because realistically a lot will change in three months for you.
When I talk about goals, I'm not talking about new years resolutions which are vague and abstract. I'm talking about a defined end result and an action that helps you achieve that end result. I'm talking about picking out specific business activities that your business engages in and defining actions that helps you reach end goals for each of those activities. A business activity could be networking, marketing, social media, customer service, etc. You will ideally know what your business activities are.
For each business activity, first rate your level of satisfaction with that area. a 1 indicates you have a lot of work to do and a 7 indicates that you are doing just about everything you can and its working great.
After determining the level of satisfaction, you'll next want to think about where you would like to be with that business activity in 3 months. What would the end results be. An end result needs to be measurable so you should have an idea of what results you would like to accomplish.
Next you need to determine what action you will take to help you achieve that end result. The action needs to be targeted and specific to the business activity.
Here's a goal I have for the next three months
Business Activity: Services and Products
End result: I want my clients to be able to sign up for classes without me having to email them.
Action: Learn how to use auto-responders and integrate them into my website and event announcements.
A specific result and a specific action. Now apply that same approach to your goals. Of course setting goals is wonderful...following through is another matter, so make sure you can follow through by not just writing the goal, but putting it somewhere you can see it everyday.
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