Sign-in: How to evaluate your business goals throughout the year

The second quarter is coming to an end-this means it’s time for mid-year registration. The midpoint of the calendar or fiscal year is a great opportunity to reassess the goals you set at the beginning of the year, analyze your progress, and make adjustments.

The benefits of setting business goals

Setting goals and measuring your progress on a regular basis is the key to continuous business improvement. Thoughtful goal setting not only forces you to plan ahead, it also provides you with a way to track your work and results.

However, in order to make the most of your goals, you need to revisit them frequently. Evaluating your goals in the middle of the year is especially valuable because it gives you time to correct your course and prepare for success. Mid-year check-in and reset can make it easier to:

• Stay focused and complete the target tasks
• promote cash flow
• Boost morale in the second half of the year
• Eliminate ineffective strategies or projects
• Discover potential problems in operations, financial, Or marketing
• Make sure you use your time and energy wisely

How to evaluate your goals in the middle of the year

Are you ready to start? You can take the following four steps to review and reset your Q3 and Q4 business goals.

1. Organize and review your goals

Start by revisiting the goals you set at the end of last year and at the beginning of the first and second quarters. To get a clearer picture of your progress, try to organize them by category and timeline.

Categories can include income, Customer acquisitionFor example, marketing, operations, sales or growth. Within each category, group your goals on an annual, quarterly, or monthly basis.

2. Assess your progress

Based on the specific milestones you set, check your goals one by one and evaluate your progress. If you already have a system to track progress, this step is very simple. If you don’t, now is the time to implement one.

For each goal, try to answer the following questions:

• How do you define progress? What specific key performance indicators (KPIs) are you tracking?
• Have you surpassed the goal, reached the goal, or failed to reach the goal? To what extent?
• If the goal is still in progress, are you on track to achieve it?
• What strategies did you adopt to achieve the goals for the first half of the year? Which strategies are helpful?
• Have you encountered any obstacles so far? If so, what are they?
• If the goal is still in progress, do you think it is realistic to achieve it?
• Are there any unique circumstances that have affected or will affect your ability to achieve your goals?

Answering these questions in detail will give you a clear idea of ​​whether you are achieving your goals-if not, what changes you need to make in the future.

For example, suppose you set a goal to increase your total income by 10% compared to the same month of the previous year. If you fail to reach your goal every month, and there are no special circumstances that affect your progress, you need to re-examine the marketing and sales strategies you have been using.For example, you may need to redesign your sales funnel or allocate your resources to different Marketing Distribution channels.

Considering your customer base and budget, the goal itself may also be unrealistic, which means you may need to change it.

3. Adjust your goals with new information

Once you have measured your progress, think about what changes (if any) you need to implement in the second half of the year to reach or exceed your goals. Here are some factors that can help you succeed or struggle:

• Seasonal
• Changes in your team
• Changes in your customers or customer base
• Fluctuations in cash flow
• Unforeseen event or crisis

Countless changes in the environment will affect your goal progress. If your customer base has grown significantly in the last quarter, your cash flow may be taken up by inventory. If your project manager resigned recently, you may not have enough resources or time to receive new clients. If your peak season is approaching, your income may be more than usual.

However, it is also important to consider your business from a holistic perspective. For example, maybe you reach your sales target every month, but you learned from a recent employee survey that your sales team feels overwhelmed and exhausted.In this case, continuing to use the same benchmark for the rest of the year may endanger Satisfaction and happiness Your team.

This is why it is helpful to ask the following questions when adjusting goals:

• Is this still an important goal?
• Is it realistic?
• Does this goal conform to our company’s values?
• Do we have the resources and time needed to achieve this goal?

Based on your answer, you can cancel the goal, modify the goal or leave it as it is.

4. Develop monthly and weekly plans for achieving goals

The most reliable way to achieve your goals is to develop a reasonable execution plan. Breaking down your goals into smaller parts will make you feel easier to achieve. For each goal, consider the following:

• Task: In order to make progress on your goals, what do you need to do every month, every week, and every day?
• people: Who will be responsible for performing each task?
• resource: What resources do you need to achieve your goals?
• result: What is the success of this goal?

Imagine that one of your goals is hire Become an administrative assistant by the end of the third quarter. Using the above format, you may include the following information:

• • Task: Write a job description for the role before the end of the first week, post the job description to several different job committees and recruitment websites before the end of the second week, review all applications before the end of the fifth week, and arrange an interview for the seventh Wait for the end of the week.
  • people: Business owners and human resources administrators write job descriptions together, human resources post jobs online, human resources screen all applications, and then send the top five to the business owners, etc.

• resource: Subscribe to job search engines and recruitment websites; market standard salary information; new employee training guides, etc.
• result: Let the new administrative assistant complete the onboarding process by week 12.

You can use a spreadsheet to list various task details and schedules, or try a project management tool.

Set SMART goals

When you run a business, it is tempting to set ambitious goals, but ambitious dreams can only make you go further. If they follow the SMART format, which means they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely, then you will be more successful in achieving your business goals.

For example, rather than saying that you want to get more customers by the end of the year, you want your customer base to grow by 5% every month until you reach 5,000 customers.

Embrace the midpoint check-in

Figuring out what works for your business requires trial and error, but the more frequently you set and revisit your goals, the more success you will achieve.

This year, instead of moving quickly without looking back, take the time to check, honestly evaluate your efforts, and make adjustments if needed. In the long run, your business may become better because of this.

Fundbox and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material is for reference only and is not intended to be provided and should not be used as a basis for tax, legal or accounting advice. Before conducting any transaction, you should consult your tax, legal and accounting advisors.