Raise your hand if growing your business is one of your goals for 2022 🙋
But what does that look like for your specific business? Do you need more revenue? More customers? Need to improve retention? Are you launching a new product or service? Or maybe you’re wanting to drive more volume to a product or service that has been successful in the past.
Getting to success on your goals, and in your business, is infinitely easier with these five steps.
Step #1 – Be specific about your goals
Writing out your business goals, or your strategic plan, each year is a vital exercise for every business owner. Whether you are just getting started or have been at it for years, getting clarity around your specific goals for 2022 can be the difference between growing or just staying busy.
Nowhere in business is clarity more important. As the old quote says, “Not all activity moves you forward.” So the process to gain clarity on what your goals actually mean is essential to your growth in 2022.
Having the goal of “increasing new sales by 25%” vs. just “growing your business” can make a huge difference when it comes to shaping your advertising, marketing, staffing, and investments in your business.
Not only that, knowing exactly what you are focusing on will also help you make better decisions on what products or services to offer, what data you need to be tracking to know if you are moving in the right direction, and what you may need to “stop” doing (more on that later).
It’s also important not just to “know” your goals but also to write them out. Not only will this will help you organize your efforts, but research also shows that you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. Your teams (and your bottom line) will thank you later
If you need help defining and getting clarity around your goals, we recommend you start by turning them into SMART goals. Read more here.
Step #2 – Get the facts
Setting goals absent of data is a recipe for disaster. In order to be truly successful in meeting your goals, you must have all the facts – good, bad, or ugly. You need to get familiar with these three key areas: your starting point, your endpoint, and which data will tell you if you’re on the right track.
Your starting point:
In order to grow your business, not only do you need a clear idea of where you want to go, but you also need a clear understanding of your starting point (aka. where you’re at right now).
We recommend going through this audit process alongside your team in order to get the most insights possible. Some questions you may want to ask:
- What is our current revenue, sales, loyalty, retention status?
- Where are most customers coming from? Who are they?
- What product/service are they buying the most?
- What are they buying the least? Is it worth promoting it?
- What are customers saying about your business?
- What are people saying about your competitors?
Asking yourself (and your team) these questions will help you identify strategic priorities, highlight any gaps in the market that you can fill, as well as demonstrate what is and what is not working in your current marketing, sales, and advertising efforts.
This critical analysis will be key throughout the entire growth process, so it’s a good idea to dial it in early in the process.
Where are you heading?
There is an old saying that says “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Too many business strategies are not specific enough to help you navigate the growth you want. So, just like trying to determine where you are starting, be sure to be specific on where you are heading.
Not just, “grow my business”, but “increase online sales by 30% by end of Quarter 2. Or, “capture 10% of abandoned carts” through retargeting and email follow-up. These are easily identified, easily measured, and specific enough to let you know if you’re on the right track.
What data do you need?
Data and knowing your business numbers is essential to your business success. Period. No strategy or goal will help if you don’t know your customer and business data.
More often than not, the technology we use (websites, social, sales processors, etc.) can give us a lot of important data that will help inform our strategy. This data will tell the company’s story and give you deeper insights into your products, customer experience, service, reputation, brand, and more.
Knowing your numbers will also help you set realistic goals. For example, if you made $2000 in online sales last year, you might determine that this year you will triple it and make $6000 in online sales. But if you also know that you had no repeat customers, that may shift your focus to product review, customer experience, fulfillment process, or another way to address loyalty.
You might want to understand what is keeping customers from coming back and subsequently not becoming brand ambassadors for your company. Understanding the whole picture of your data is essential in setting the right goals.
Step #3 – Prioritize your efforts
Whether you have a team of 2 or 200, you need to prioritize your strategic goals.
It’s tempting to try to launch and tackle all of your goals at once, but we have seen so many – from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies – dilute their effectiveness and ability to drive change by trying to “boil the ocean”. Not to mention, the burnout rate on staff is real and as leaders and business owners, we need to prioritize our initiatives to drive sustainable growth.
According to a McKinsey study of 1,500 executives worldwide, only 52% of leaders said that how they spent their time matched their organization’s priorities. Read that again: only half of the surveyed executives worldwide are working on the things that are their organization’s top priorities! This is very common and the way to avoid that is by prioritizing your goals.
Simply, identify which campaigns or initiatives have the most impact on your organization’s bottom line. Which ones can you successfully implement this year? Or with the resources you have currently? Pick one or two strategic goals to focus on first and then the others can be implemented later.
In working with our clients, we help them identify near-term and longer-term fixes for their business. We prioritize the near-term solutions that will get some early wins and movement and help map out a timeline for the longer-term solutions that may require broader changes in staffing, resourcing, or time.
This approach helps them gain buy-in from their teams, demonstrates movement and success, and keeps the organization moving forward. Better to accomplish two initiatives than have 6 or 7 started and not moving.
Step #4 – Keep your goals visible to your team
Your business success can not be owned by leaders or owners alone. You must inform your teams of your goals, your approaches, as well as the measurements needed to achieve success.
Research also demonstrates that employees want feedback, recognition and to be engaged in their work. The key to engagement is communication. Communication is critical to good culture. And happy employees provide a great customer experience, which leads to happy customers…all of which turns to growth in your business.
It’s been proven time and time again. When we worked with a large call center for a corporation, the employees were very unhappy, insecure, and performing poorly. The adjustments that we made to that team’s culture – honest communication, visible and regular posting of the goals, as well as regular feedback for each individual – were key to helping increase productivity, quality and satisfaction by more than 30% in two years.
Step #5 – Monitor and celebrate wins
Once you have identified and prioritized a couple of top priorities, stay close to the data to ensure you are on the right track. Goals require monitoring, adjusting, and adapting over the year, so don’t be surprised if you need to change things up.
You should also consider creating platforms, opportunities, or mechanisms to capture feedback from your teams so you can continuously improve your service, culture, products, offers, etc. This will give them the best view of what is working or not from the service side, and it’s almost certain the data will reinforce their view.
And finally, make sure to schedule regular celebrations of progress, lessons, wins, and effort. It will go a long way to keep your teams engaged and moves you quickly toward your growth success in 2022.
Bonus tips:
- Don’t forget to make sure that you have the right measurement capabilities in place when you start implementing changes, in order to accurately monitor your strategies and track results.
- Also, don’t be afraid to ask your team, and even your customers for feedback along the way, so you can get qualitative feedback from those who matter the most to your business.
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If this all sounds a bit too overwhelming, good news: you don’t have to go at it alone! At Boss Lady Consulting, we will walk with you through the entire process, from deep assessment and recommendations to implementation.
Our superpower is bringing you clarity by helping you identify, prioritize, and operationalize the specific brand, messaging, experience, and engagement initiatives that will drive your growth.
You can book your free, no-commitment discovery call with us today.
