Before you drill down into the various implementation activities in your business such as marketing, operations, technical and administration, you need to identify your overall key business goals, also referred to as business objectives.
And although we understand that a business goal’s main aim is to increase revenue, there are many other types of goals that your business should strive to achieve.
Below is a list to get you thinking and taking action to identify other business goals to follow on from the main important financial objectives…
To grow and expand…
A key business goal is to grow and expand so you eventually move into new markets and perhaps different types of ventures. If this becomes one of your goals, then conducting in-depth market research to find these new areas would be a major part of your overall business objective.
Product innovation…
You may be motivated by an aspiration to offer excellent products and services that help people and other businesses. In which case your business goal may be to create and bring innovative products to the market. This is an admirable goal because new products and services are the basis of business’s success and help to change people’s lives.
Efficiency and effectiveness…
A major goal for your business may be to tighten up your processes to do things right inside your business to improve efficiency such as improved quality and saving time and money. This could include challenging your sales team for higher sales ratios or streamlining your delivery system to reach your customers more quickly. Effectiveness is about doing the right things, especially for your customers such as…
Customer service…
An obvious business’s goal will be to serve your customers to offer value and help them solve their problems, but it may also include less obvious objectives such as helping to strengthen the network community of your customers or supporting them with a good charity cause.
Customer retention…
Another key customer goal, besides bringing new customers into your business, would be to increase revenue by keeping the existing customers you have and selling more to them. Your businesses can do this by creating nurturing programmes to build loyal long-term relationships with their customers by remaining open to their feedback to improve their existing products and services and ‘partner’ with their customer groups to develop new products and services.
Social change…
Your businesses could have a goal as part of their vision to enable social change. This might be to work towards making the world a better place and through the use of your products and services, such adapting to new online social trends, by producing environmentally friendly products, or working to streamline your manufacturing operations to address the ecological balance.
Although businesses have to survive and grow through increasing revenue and profit, this doesn’t have to be the only goal of your businesses. So, also start to look carefully at how your business is being now and then begin the process of identifying which other goals you could introduce. This will help create new goals and a very different and interesting overall business plan going forward for your company.
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