Behind all successful businesses are its goals. Just as every individual sets personal goals, a business must also base its operations on its goals. Setting proper goals for your business is like piloting a plane heading toward a defined area for landing. You must have a reason for putting up a business. Well, earning profit is a given but identifying other important aims and objectives for the business is also crucial. Otherwise, you are putting money and resources at stake for defining no purpose at all for engaging into an entrepreneurial activity.

Goals are simply objectives that need to be achieved to attain satisfaction. The accomplishment of business goals brings satisfaction to a business. It makes a powerful contribution to the growth of every business in many ways. If you are into business, the process of goal setting will guide and direct you on what you want to happen with your business and how you want it to grow.

Business goal setting defines what the company or business should do and what should not be done in the various areas of the business concept. With a set of established goals, employees will know what they are working for and what output they expect to get.

Elements in Business Goal Setting

Knowing the essential elements of business goal setting helps in demonstrating these goals effectively. Here are the important factors to consider in every business framework:

• Income: Profit generation is a primary goal of every entrepreneur for the financial security of the business. You need to consider making a goal of how much income you expect to earn for the business after a given period of time.

• Availability of Resources: It is not wise to set up a business without considering one’s capability to run a business. This must include the skills and manpower as well as the resources needed for its operations. A goal can be difficult to achieve without its needed requirements especially if it is in quantifiable terms.

• Type of Busines: Just as you have to identify what it is you really want in order to create personal goals, the same concept is true for business. You have to know what interests you so you can put your heart on working for those goals.

Basic Rules in Business Goal Setting

Every goal, whether for personal or business, needs drive and motivation for it to be accomplished. But only the right and properly defined goals can bring a business to success. So the following are the rules every business owner must adhere to establish the right business goals.

• Business goals must be relevant in terms of profit: In defining business goals, you must always consider the profitability. Your business aims have to demonstrate a clear and specific advantage to the business. If you are running a profit-earning company, there is no point in making goals that are not in any way relevant to being profitable, whether directly or indirectly.

• Business goals must be action-oriented: Specific goals are clearly effective for a business to take action on every goal. Any objective that is vaguely stated will only make a goal fail.

• Business goals must be achievable: With goals that are achievable, a business minimizes the risk of losing profit and even the risk of losing the business. A better approach to managing a business these days is practicality instead of being idealistic in terms of generating profit, acquisition of target market, and other essential concepts in business.

Strategic Business Goal Setting

The primary focus of every strategic planning in a business is the setting of its goals in accordance to the vision and mission statements. Business objectives have to be at its best and so a business must remember that the goals must:

• Be focused on desirable outcomes, not on activity
• Maintain consistency instead of constantly changing goals
• Be specific and realistic rather than vague and abstract
• Be measurable and quantifiable in terms of figures and other variables
• Have timeframes and deadlines
• Be achievable and attainable

Business goals provide direction for any business. It is motivating and inspiring enough to foresee where the business will be headed and how it will grow years from now.