Be Proactive – Start Planning Business Goals for 2021 Today

With such a hectic year behind us, it’s crucial to set aside time to plan your business’s future for the next year. It’s important to be proactive rather than reactive, so your business can succeed when the unpredictable happens. Being proactive means starting to plan early, and taking time to decide where you want your business to go in 2021.

Analyze which processes worked for your business in 2020 and which processes can be improved. This may include sitting with your employees and listening to their feedback. Get your business in gear for next year by devising a 2021 business plan.

FAST Goals

When you’re ready to plan for 2021, you can get overwhelmed trying to imagine your company’s goals. Luckily, there are several proven processes to get you started conceptualizing your company’s future.

You can use the acronym “FAST” to help you develop lofty but realistic goals for 2021. FAST goals are:

• Frequently discussed – Goals should be discussed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These goals should receive ample time during meetings.
• Ambitious – Goals should be difficult but not impossible to achieve.
• Specific – Goals should be measured with concrete metrics.
• Transparent – Goals and current business performance should be visible to your team throughout the year. Don’t hide them because everyone from entry-level employees to managers can pitch in to help your business reach its goals. Not only that, but your employees can reach their personal goals by working on teams.

If you develop your business’s goals using the FAST method, you’ll be able to get a clear picture of where you want your company to go. Then, you can construct a plan to get there.

[Related: Finding the Right Business Growth Strategy]

Set Aside Time Dedicated to Planning

The most effective way to make sure you’ll reach your FAST goals is to dedicate substantial amounts of time to communicating about those goals and identifying obstacles in the way of reaching them. As you transition into next year, set aside time during each meeting to ask your employees for feedback. A good way to do this is by using the “Start, Stop, Keep” method. Your employees have the opportunity to let you know if there are any processes or practices they want to see implemented at work in the “Start” category. In the “Stop” category, they can let you know if there’s anything that should stop taking place during the workday, and in the “Keep” category, they list processes and practices they’d like the business to continue doing.

Working directly with your employees is crucial to having a happy and productive work environment, and they’ll know that you value their input as we come out of the unprecedented events of this year.

Write it Out

Once you get input from your employees, spend time together outlining how each individual should track their progress toward the goals you’ve come up with. It’s easiest to track progress if you use a measurable metric, like sales, revenue, number of projects completed, or calls taken.

For example, if one of your goals is to reach a certain number of sales annually, calculate how many sales employees would have to bring in monthly to reach that goal in a year. You can even break it down further and figure out how many sales they would have to make in a week or a day. Then, write out an action plan to achieve that goal. You might have to decide how many calls you have to make, how many follow-ups you have to reach out to, or how many existing accounts have room to grow.

Ensure that your business goals and plans are in writing. Have your employees also put theirs in writing. There is an old saying that reads, “What gets written gets done.” Writing your goals down makes them more real, and research proves that writing your goals down increases your accountability and motivation to reach them.

Hire a Business Coach to Keep Your Company on Track

If you’re looking for help planning out your business goals for 2021, give Wolf Creek Business Growth Institute a call. Our one-page business plan is a simple tool we use to develop strategies to reach your short-term and long-term goals. This style of planning makes it easy for everyone in your company to be on the same page about where the company is headed and how it plans to get there.

The team at Wolf Creek BGI is trained to spot processes and practices that can be improved or streamlined to increase efficiency so that we can give your company a smooth transition into 2021. As a business coaching team, we take great care in helping our clients reach their business goals. Give us a call at 225-219-8866 today to get started on your business plan for 2021. It is not too late to start. The journey begins with taking the First step. Call today.

[Related: Business Coach vs. Business Consultant: What’s the Difference?]