Did you know that 45% of businesses close their doors within the first five years of being in business? If you are looking for a few ways to grow your business, then you are in the right place. We have put together this quick guide to share a few top strategic goals to help you increase your chances of success.
Keep reading to learn our top tips to help you build a strategic plan.
1. Target Audience
A top strategic goal is to define your target market. When you know who your customers are and why they make their purchases, you are able to meet their needs. A few ways to figure out exactly who your target audience is is through questionnaires, surveys, and sales reports.
You might also want to consider hiring a business made simple coach to help you narrow down who your target market is with their expertise.
2. Sales
All businesses are in business to make a profit via their sales. When you are setting up your strategic objectives you want to determine the acceptable profit margin for your business. Having this number will make it a lot easier to create any other objectives you might have.
3. Benchmarks
Benchmarks are an important part of your planning because you will always know when you are falling short in your goals. It is necessary to create future objectives and goals with timelines and benchmarks. The last thing you want to do is fall behind in one objective and then have it create a domino effect where you fall short in other areas.
4. Staffing
When you are setting up your strategic planning process take the time to evaluate how your current staff is. One of the key things for a business is to have a reliable staff that is ready to work and talented employees that are able to work without being babysat.
Take a look to see whether or not hiring other employees is necessary in order to help you further your objectives. Also, take a look at the current pay scales and your retention rate. If you find that there is a need to increase retention it might be associated with how much employees are getting paid and their benefits.
5. Culture
Employees that are happy and satisfied because they work in a pleasant environment will stick to their jobs for a long time. Usually, employees that are happy with the culture in their company will also be a lot more productive than those that dread going to work and have zero company culture in the office.
In your strategic plan create a culture that gives individual opportunities and challenges for growth, increases employee morale, and also gives employees opportunities for relaxation and fun via rewards.
6. Resources
The key is to use all of your resources effectively. A top priority is to review your resource allocations to ensure that you are not just throwing money away with non-productive processes and non-productive people.
Make a plan to use every resource you have to its maximum ability.
7. Value
What exactly makes your company more valuable than your competitor’s company? You want to always set yourself apart from everyone else through a list of qualities for your company that you can come up with. Take the time to create this list with all of the value that you bring to the table.
The value that your products and services bring will also help drive all of your future marketing campaigns.
8. Compliance
No business wants to end up with a surprise ticket or bill because they failed to be in compliance with local law. In order to remain legal in all areas of your business, you will have to make sure that you do your research and follow all of the state, federal, and local regulations.
While you are setting up your strategic goals you want to take everything into account from your taxes to your fees to your permits to your licenses.
9. Growth
Although some businesses seem to just take off and grow because they are in the right place at the right time, you have to prepare for growth. Planning this will allow you to make the necessary adjustments to your customer service requirements, your financial backing, and to your resources.
If one of your objectives is to grow because you feel that you are not growing as fast as you would want to, then include specific details on how you can grow quickly and how you will handle the growth as it comes.
10. Management
Your management team can either make it or break it which is why having effective managers is a must. Having an effective manager will help instill the strategic objectives that you have in place. Hiring managers that you trust will allow you to give them the freedom to make changes whenever it is necessary.
They can have the authority to make changes whenever a benchmark needs to move in a new direction or when goals have to be pivoted.
Ready to Set Some Strategic Goals?
We hope that now that you have our top list of strategic goals to adapt, you can make an informed decision on which ones are best for your own business growth. Aligning the needs of your customers will improve the value of your services or your goods.
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