Last week we spoke about the current business position, where is your business currently? So, you now know where your business is, how do you develop it into the successful enterprise you want it to be? Lets pick up from last week so you can grow your business.

Let?s think about where you want to go long term with your business. This can be a year, 3 years, 5 years, and it?s entirely up to you how far ahead you want to plan. By having a long term objective you can set yourself goals of how to get there. For example 5 years could be your long term plan, your medium plan is 2/3 years and your short term plan is within the next few months, but remember it?s whatever works for your business.

What sort of goals should you be setting? You want to be talking about business objectives, not marketing objectives. You want to be looking at ?I want employee 5 new members of staff within the next 2 years? or ?I want to sell the business in 10 years?. You want to avoid looking at ? I want 5 new clients within the next year? and ?I will attend 2 networking meetings next week?, you want to be looking at big picture business plans.

When creating your goals you want to start with your long term goals. So let?s look at your long term goal, your long term goal is in 5 years time you have decided in 5 years you want to sell your business and retire. If this is your goal then how do you get there? How much do you want to sell it for?

Medium goal I would personally say that this Is within the next 2-3 years. A medium goal could be that you want to re locate your business. You want to move into a small office space in the local town. How much is going to cost to rent a small office?

Short term goal. Your short term goal is going to be objectives that you can implement very soon- id? personally say to be implemented within a few weeks to a month or two.  Your short term goal is that you want to start selling a new service. Is there a gap in the market? Do any of your competitors off the same service?

There will be a lot of you saying ?I?ve never particularly had business objectives? which is completely fine, but only if your happy with that. I would say the big problem with not setting objectives is you will get stuck on the feast and famine roller coaster.  If you do not have focus for your business then your business is going to float along and not grow. If your happy with floating and keeping your business at a level pace then that?s fine, but if you want it grow you need to set yourself goals.