Successful Secrets to Achieving Your Business Goals

Do you ever wonder how some people just seem to rock at getting things accomplished, while others seem to dream big but never really get anywhere? It's not luck and it's no accident. Successful entrepreneurs know the secret to setting goals and making their dreams come true - they know about SMART goal setting.

You may be thinking, "Well, I'm smart...why aren't my dreams coming true with my existing goals?" The trouble is not your I.Q. The trouble is likely with your goals. Successful entrepreneurs set goals with 5 key factors. Their goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic 
Timely

Let's break down what all that means...

Specific Goals
Goals that are specific address the what, why, and how of the goal. An example might look something like this: "Increase our Facebook followers to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign." Breaking that down further, the "what" of this goal is increasing your Facebook followers. The "why" is to reach more clients. The "how" is by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign.

Measurable Goals
Goals should be measurable so that you can have real evidence of whether you've accomplished your goal. To build on our prior goal, we could add the following: "Increase our Facebook followers by 50% to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign." This way we know where we started and where we want to go, and can also gauge our progress based on interim numbers.

Achievable Goals
We've all made goals in our lives that have been clearly unachievable, like losing 50 pounds in 10 days. There's just no way that's going to happen without us hacking off a leg, right? On the other hand, we don't want to limit ourselves. So, it's best to find a balance as to what will stretch your company a bit while still being achievable so you don't give up. You want to keep yourself and your employees and partners motivated.

Realistic Goals 
In setting goals, we want the focus to be realistic or results-focused goals. That means focusing on the results of our efforts, not necessarily the activities we undertake to get there.

Timely Goals
Finally, you want your goal to be fulfilled in a discrete period of time. Goals without deadlines just turn into dreams if you keep pushing things off until tomorrow. So, let's go ahead and bring this all together. Let's say you've got 5,000 Facebook followers and it took you 1 year to get that many followers. Now, you want to increase that by 50%. Applying the above, our SMART Goal is now:

"Increase our Facebook followers by 50% in 6 months to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign."

You've now put an achievable deadline for this goal of 6 months, which seems reasonable given the time it took you to get the first 5,000 followers and the fact that you've got some traction now to build on.

Try this technique with the rest of your goals, no matter how small they may be, and you can start tracking and achieving your business goals like a pro.