40 Short-Term Business Goals Examples to Set in 2023
- OKR - Objectives & Key Results
Short-term business goals should be a road map that shows where you want to go. Setting short-term goals for a business can get a bit trickier. As they must be very clear, practical, and easily understandable for employees. That is why we’ve compiled 40 + examples of short-term business goals and objectives in this article.
What’s more, when setting business objectives you must always keep the long game in mind. Otherwise you might stray from the really impactful daily tasks.
How to Set Business Goals with OKRs
For setting business goals, you can use the popular Objectives and Key Results ( OKR ) method. This is an increasingly flexible methodology for increasing your own and your team’s productivity and focus. In simple terms, OKR is an easy process of setting company, team, and personal goals then connecting each goal with 3-5 measurable results.
Objectives should be qualitative and describe the desired outcome. Make it inspirational and understandable to those reading and working toward it! Key Results are the quantifiable measures that help explain how from reaching your Objective you are – adding metrics to Objectives.
Set OKR Goals in Weekdone
Use the popular OKR goal management framework in a dedicated software with OKR examples to get teams on the right track from day one!
Examples of Short Term (Quarterly) OKRs
Here are some of the example business Objectives you can find also from our resource: okrexamples.co
Objective: Research and improve customer satisfaction. Key Result #1: Achieve Net Promoter Score (NPS) of over 8.0. Key Result #2: Get 1000 survey responses to annual satisfaction survey. Key Result #3: Conduct 50 phone interviews with top customers. Key Result #4: Conduct 15 phone interviews with recently churned customers. Key Result #5: Present an action plan of 10 improvements for next quarter. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
Objective: Improve internal employee engagement. Key Result #1: Conduct 3 monthly “Fun Friday” all-hands meetings with motivational speakers. Key Result #2: Interview 48 employees on their needs for improving our work culture. Key Result #3: Implement using OKRs and Weekdone software in all of our 23 teams. Key Result #4: Reach weekly employee satisfaction score of at least 4.7 points. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
Objective: Successfully launch version 3 of our main product. Key Result #1: Get over 10000 new signups. Key Result #2: Get published product reviews in over 15 publications. Key Result #3: Achieve sign-up to trial ratio of over 25%. Key Result #4: Achieve trial to paid ratio of over 50%. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
40 Examples of Short Term Business Goals
In the next 40 examples, we’ll consider the SMART goals criteria. Meaning a suitable goal will follow the SMART formula: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed.
1. Gain X New Customers by the end of X month
Setting business goals in the short term is generally from 1-3 months time. Usually, setting a 3 month (quarterly) period is a good timeframe to satisfy the: achievable, realistic, and timed aspects of the SMART criteria. You’ll gain enough meaningful data to start making better decisions for your company as well.
With all that in mind, ask yourself, when do you want these customers? How many new customers do you want? How can teams set goals to drive this forward as well?
2. Increase Revenue by X Amount This Month
Another great short-term goal to have as a business is to increase your revenue. More revenue = more profits 💵
Set a realistic goal for the amount of revenue you believe you could make in a month.
Note: Before you set your goal, first look at what you’ve done in the past to ensure it really is realistic. If you do reach this goal, you can always make the next month’s goal more ambitious.
Related: Weekdone helps you define your ambitions when setting OKRs since you can set your Objective (goal) with a related confidence level and type! How confident are you that you’ll achieve this goal?
Moonshot: Otherwise known as “stretch goals”, are seemingly impossible to achieve. Forcing you to shoot for the moon (get it?!) and everyone contributing to the success of this goal out of their comfort zone. Aim for 70% achievement here!
Roofshot: These are your more “committed” goals. Maybe you’ve achieved this target before, but it’s been some time. You’re in your comfort zone, but still want to achieve 100%. That’s your drive!
Read more about the difference between aspirational and committed goals.
3. Successfully Host an Event
As a small business owner, a great way to market yourself is by setting business goals that center around hosting events.
While the above goal is a bit broad, you would have to take the event itself and center a more specific and actionable goal around the event.
To use an OKR example for this short term goal, we could frame it like this:
Objective: Host a successful golf tournament with at least 70% attendance Key Result #1: Distribute invitations to 100% of customers Key Result #2: Sign contracts with 12 industry partnerships/sponsors Key Result #3: Raise $50,000 for X charity associated with tournament Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
Key Results help you to break down the Objective into more “bite-sized pieces”. Within each measurable Key Result, you will have various activities that help you make progress toward achieving those targeted outcomes! Using OKRs helps you keep weekly focus on your short term and long term goals.
4. Increase Employee Retention Through the End of the Fiscal Year
If you are a business that sees many employees come and go throughout the year, it’s a good idea to make one of your goals centered around employee retention to reduce turnover.
Whether you choose to put in an incentive program or go through the ropes to find something that makes employees happier like scheduling team-building activities or something else of the sort, setting a goal to keep your employees around is a great way to help the business grow!
5. Reduce Monthly Expenses this Quarter
If you notice that you are spending a lot of money each month, a great short-term goal is to reduce monthly expenses. Review your current expenses to see what you are spending money on, but once you do that, you should be able to eliminate some of the heftier expenses that you realize aren’t needed.
Thinking outside of the box to manage monthly expenses can benefit your business.
6. Create a Budget Tracker
If your business doesn’t have a budget tracker or dedicated accountant, this is a great short term goal! This is the only way to visualize how you’re spending is going and how you can allocate resources better for the next goal term, or quarter.
There are many programs you can use for budget tracking as well as simply using Excel. Just remember to document every single expense so you have access to historic data in order to make better accounting decision in the future
7. Research Various Market Opportunities
As a business, it’s always smart to consider growth and expansion. You’ll notice that this short-term goal only covers “research” – since looking into your possibilities is a big task. Focusing here can set you up for the trial/experimental phase in the next quarter.
If you’re a service provider, are there other parts of the market that you could expand into to offer more services? If you sell products, what other products are in your niche that you could offer to customers? See what opportunities come about as you do some competitor research!
8. Implement a Hybrid Work Model
This short term goal has potential to be carried out in a quarter (3 months) if done so efficiently with the leadership team completely on board!
With so many people working from home these days, hybrid work has proved its value. Happier employees with more flexibility, and offering companies the option to downsize and save on overhead costs.
Of course, in order to do this successfully, you’ll need to find a software solution to support your business goal management and satisfies employees as to keep momentum going rather than deplete it!
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9. create a social media content plan.
Over 4 billion people use social media, so it shouldn’t go unnoticed as an opportunity to gain new customers or higher engagement levels!
One way to implement social media into your marketing technique is to put all of your energy and focus into one platform until you grow that one. Another way to go about this is to choose several to focus on.
To make sure you are giving social media the time of day, you could consider hiring an agency to do the work for you so you can focus on other parts of the business. Otherwise, it could be an employee’s part-time job to run the social media accounts and calendar.
Whatever you do in terms of who runs your social media, you should ensure that you are posting on your social media platforms a few times per week. The most important thing is to stay consistent. If you post once a week and it’s every Wednesday, keep doing that so customers know when to expect to hear or see something from you!
10. Improve Customer Service
When setting business goals, you have to also take into account who you are serving. This goal is specific to Customer Service Teams, if you find that your rate of engagement with customers is on a downward trend, can set the short term goal of making improvements!
When setting this goal, you have to take actionable steps within this goal to guarantee you are reaching it. How do you plan to improve customer service? What are the challenges you need to surpass in order to achieve the expected outcome?
Here are a few ideas: (if using OKR goals , these would be your Key Results )
- Increase our ratings on 10 review websites
- Create an “after purchase” email automation flow that receives a 2.5% open rate
- Complete 50 customer account checks weekly to reduce churn from 3.2% to 1.5%.
Each of these items will have various activities (or initiatives) that individual teammates work on during the timeline to drive the changes and see progress on a weekly basis!
11. Stay Up-to-Date With Marketing Trends
Since trends are constantly changing, you need to be looking out for the newer trends. Simply being behind the times can make you less successful than if you stayed on top of current trends.
So what types of trends should you be looking for?
As of 2022, marketing is trending toward short-form videos and social media. Most is digital rather than in paper form as well.
12. Develop a New Product
Is it time to create or make changes to your product to meet the demand of what people want?
For example, let’s say you make and sell soy candles. While reviewing sales from last quarter, and discussing customer requests with your Sales team, you learn that customers have been asking for a diffuser option! This is a great time to ramp up production on something new.
Having conversations with your teams is crucial to help find new areas of opportunity. The OKR goal setting methodology helps companies and teams adopt a collaborative process with goal-setting at the forefront!
Read why OKRs are so beneficial to teams
13. Create an Employee Incentive Program
Employees love recognition. About 45% of workers in America leave their jobs – because they don’t feel recognized by their employers. It’s so important to create some type of employee incentive and recognition program.
As a business owner, it’s important to ensure that your employees feel recognized, motivated, and fulfilled, otherwise a new opportunity awaits them and they could end up leaving your company.
Something as simple as sending a weekly email to acknowledge a job well done, or something worth supporting will go a long way.
14. Create a Blog
Content creation is a huge marketing win and opportunity for people to find you online through organic search.
On the blog, you have to guarantee that you are posting simply about your niche. If you are a lawn care service company, you most likely don’t want to post about the best going-out clothes to wear around town.
Creating a blog is a great example of a short term goal for your marketing team. Here’s an OKR example to show how it would look:
Objective: Create a WordPress blog that stands out among competitors Key Result #1: Research 30 competitors in our niche and create 1 master competitor’s analysis spreadsheet Key Result #2: Create a content calendar and write 10 articles to promote Key Result #3: Research and test SEO tools, choose 1 to move forward with Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
15. Go Paperless
Going paperless is a step closer to being more environmentally friendly as a business. With more and more customers ( 78% of customers to be exact) preferring to purchase from a green company, you will have a leg-up in the industry if you choose to go paperless.
This could mean a few different things, and doing even just one of these things to start will be working toward your goal.
- Eliminate paper checks for employees
- Eliminate flyers and mail marketing
- Change menus or services/products to online menus
This could be a goal that you set over a three-month period. From there, you could do one of these each month. Making the objective more attainable for a shorter term.
16. Make Company Meetings More Efficient
Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? So, in order to come up with innovative solutions, create products, or solve problems meetings should give everyone a voice, in an efficient way!
Setting a short term business goal like this, proves to everyone that you:
- understand there is a problem with the current process,
- value individuals’ needs and time,
- are committed to making an improvement
17. Improve Company Data Analysis
It’s always great to implement goals and techniques, but without analyzing how it works, you may be left with more questions than answers.
Make a short-term business goal to improve your collection and analysis of data. This is a very general goal, but for example you could create reports for individual teams based on what they need to measure their success on short-term team goals.
18. Prepare an Investment Portfolio
Investing in your business is crucial for growth and opportunity. If you don’t already have a portfolio for investments, this is a great short-term business goal to implement!
Set yourself a timeline of 3 months (1 quarter) to review investment opportunities, meet with investors or a financial advisor, or whatever you need to make this goal achievable and lasting.
Of course, once you achieve this goal, you could consider an annual goal surrounded by the growth you hope to see within 1 year.
Read about annual vs. quarterly goals
19. Test OKR software for Better Goal Setting
There are so many goals you can have as a business owner, as well as individual team goals. But if you’re not using software to track everyone’s progress it can be frustrating trying to keep up with others, losing momentum all around!
So, it may be time to consider using software to help you track quarterly goals company-wide! At Weekdone, we fully believe in the benefits of the OKR methodology – OKRs not only help you break down your goals into measurable outcomes, but the framework brings focus back to what’s really important.
Read our extensive list of the best OKR software . It shares details about 20 goal management tools + their supporting features that help you make positive changes with lasting results!
20. Raise Brand Awareness on Social Media
As a brand, you should always consider how to grow your audience, whether through social media, blogs, or various email campaigns. For a short-term business goal about raising brand awareness, consider choosing one outlet – social media, or even further, Instagram! This removes the ambiguity and gets you that specificity!
What is your Objective? What is motivating you to raise awareness on social media this quarter? Maybe you saw a drop in traffic from this channel and would like to see more referrals coming in. Consider the “why” and surround your focus on this!
Marketing Short Term Business Goal Example (specific to raising brand awareness using OKRs )
Objective: Increase organic traffic from Instagram and raise brand awareness Key Result #1: Solidify 10 influencer partnerships within our niche Key Result #2: Create, run, and optimize 2 paid advertisement posts to drive organic traffic Key Result #3: Improve engagement from 50% to 90% Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
Now, in order to reach your desired outcome for each Key Result, to drive your Objective forward, you’ll have to create some initiatives or larger projects to work on daily that keep you on track!
Initiative Examples connected to Key Result #3 Example #1: Prepare, Run, and Analyze results from an Instagram Giveaway Example #2: Share 50 relative accounts from ours in stories/reels Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone
Now, you have larger projects that help you stay focused on your goal! Now, set yourself some weekly plans , and daily tasks to improve focus and motivation for yourself!
21. Test various hashtag methods
On social media, you also want to focus on getting your content seen! There is a method to all of the madness that is social media, and one of them is focusing on the hashtags you use when you post.
For instance, if you are a travel agency, you may use hashtags like:
- #travelagency
- #webooktravel
- #travelmore
- #travelandexplore
Expanding your reach on social media with hashtags is a great option and you could dedicate some time (possibly even shorter than 3 months) to analyzing and testing different options!
22. Start producing video content
Videos are an upward trend for marketing campaigns. Whether you post a short-form customer testimonial video on your website or create a reel on Instagram or TikTok, these are fast moving attractors!
With short playing times, they hold people’s attention a bit longer. Sometimes they are also played quickly, so people will watch them more than once (which, on social media helps you get more reach, and more reach means more customers!).
Short-form videos are trending on websites, blogs, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and even other platforms, too!
23. Improve Customer Feedback Channels
Having a short-term business goal related to customer feedback, allows you to think further into how you receive it, measure it, and what you do with it!
You can get more feedback from your customers through: anonymous customer satisfaction surveys, rewards for reviews, check-in calls or emails! However makes sense for your business.
24. Improve Employee Morale at Work
As a company, you want to ensure your team is connected, happy, and motivated. Some initiatives that could help drive this goal forward are:
- Plan and hold X company events this quarter
- Test and implement an employee engagement tool for the company
- Hold 1:1 weekly check-ins with employees
25. Go Green
Our society is making the push to go green, so your company should also make this a goal. While this is a large goal in itself, there are ways to chunk this “go green” goal into smaller goals.
For instance, as mentioned before, you could take three months to go paperless.
One month you could make the goal to hire a green cleaning company to use healthier cleaning products and fewer paper towels. The next month you could install energy-efficient hand dryers in the workplace.
Another month you could incentivize workers to walk or carpool to work.
Every month could be a different goal toward going green, but each month you grow closer to being as green as possible! The short-term goals help to lead you to your long-term goals.
26. Formulate your Company Mission Statement
Having a mission statement as a company is not only helpful for customers and others to see, but it also helps make the workplace more cohesive. Everyone knows the values and goals you have as a company.
To achieve this goal, it’s important to gather the leadership team for a brainstorming session. Only after this should you include individuals, maybe you could create an anonymous worksheet to help float ideas around and understand what the company means to your workers.
27. Promote a New Version of Your Product
After creating products, you also need to promote them to make sure they sell.
Just before the launch of your new product, start planning the next quarter to be your active promotion time. During this time, Marketing team prepares promotional materials, the Product team is fixing any reported bugs to ensure proper functioning, the Design team could be working on a new landing page on the website to share feature developments!
28. Organize Business Expenses
If you don’t have a way of tracking items that you can write-off for tax purposes, you may find yourself stressed when tax season rolls around since you have to get everything in order. Instead of waiting until the last minute – have a system in place to meet the goal of not being stressed once per year.
Your goal could be to track your business expenses every Monday. This is a short-term goal is more of an individual weekly goal that will help you with your business tracking and tax filing every single year.
29. Improve Internal Organizational Structure
As your company grows, responsibilities are dispersed among teams and you can easily lose sight of whats going on in the day to day, feeling overwhelmed and confused! That’s why it is important to have a system that works and can grow with you as you scale up.
We recommend finding a way to improve this internal struggle for yourself and your employees! There are plenty of tools out there to help you save the day, however we wholeheartedly recommend the OKR framework to help you turn that chaos into confidence! Building internal processes, structure and ultimately a more positive organizational culture through goal-setting and tracking!
30. Improve Company Communication
As a business, it can be difficult to keep track of what everyone is doing! And with so many tools available, where did you make that important note? Improving company communication is a great short term goal or initiative that you should start seeing positive changes immediately!
Some ideas to help you get started here are:
- Create a digital company calendar where everyone has access
- Use a digital communication tool like Slack or MS Teams so everyone stays connected
- If you choose to improve organizational structure and communication in one quarter – test out these OKR software with Slack integrations!
31. Hire consultant for X project
Say you have a new project coming up, but your current resources and employees cant handle the workload, or it’s outside of their wheelhouse – you’ll need to hire outside of your team.
This short term goal would begin with creating a job description, finding the right platforms to list it, interviewing consultants, negotiating contracts, and whatever else you may need.
32. Increase customer retention
If you’ve noticed that your customers are less active over time, or are churning quicker than before – retention is a great place to start. Begin with your Sales team and discuss numbers and try to place where the issue started based on collected customer feedback, product issues, and more. Then start setting yourself some targets related to retention. This helpful article shares 10 customer retention metrics you may want to consider using to help you achieve your outcome!
33. Improve New Market Knowledge
By setting the short term business goal of improving your knowledge and understanding of a new market, you’ll be more active in getting to know potential customers, competitors, and value you could bring to this new market.
This is a short term goal that you could set for yourself in 1 quarter; make sure you consider putting together your research in a report and comparing it against other markets down the line. Having this data will allow you to see how quickly things change and what you’ll need to do to adapt if you want to grow.
34. Participate in X Community Events
This short term marketing goal could be a part of a broader Company Objective to expand community outreach. However, with your Marketing Team aligned with that Objective you’ll be able to move things forward with actionable outcomes.
How many events can you realistically participate in during a 3 month period? Consider choosing, planning, and preparing – given your current available budget and resources.
35. Test New Messaging on X
If your business is going through a transition phase, this is a great short term goal to try out some new messaging. Before you change elements across all of your platforms, it’s important to see what sort of engagement and people this new message drives to your product.
The Marketing team could test and optimize the message, while your Sales Team analyzes the quality of those new leads. A collaborative short team goal that can provide valuable insights into the next quarter.
36. Improve the SEO on Your Website
Assuming you have a website and are creating content for your users, you need to go through and improve the SEO throughout.
There are plenty of ways to do this, but to get started:
- Ensure your website is mobile friendly (check Google Search Console )
- Sign up for a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to help analyze keywords and current positioning.
- Learn some SEO best practices and implement them, examples: strategic internal linking, best page structure, and optimizing images for search.
It’s important to note that SEO is a long term game, most results will show in 3-6 months time, but tracking and keeping up with it will improve your organic reach to bring in new customers!
37. Facilitate More Employee 1:1s
As a business owner or manager, it is crucial to have one-on-one time with employees to make sure they feel valued. This is also a time for them to voice their concerns as well.
Having a monthly meeting to check in with individuals’ progress, challenges, and general thoughts on their role and responsibilities helps employees improve in addition to you as a manager. Ask and give feedback regularly – make it your goal to be a better leader.
38. Complete a Course on X
Learning opportunities are always a great short term business goal to set. You should allow and encourage your employees to do the same. Whether you give them a quarterly stipend to enroll in a certification program, or take a course together as a team/company, you won’t regret it.
39. Encourage Monthly Self Care
To avoid burnout, you need to take care of yourself, and you also need to take care of your staff. But it’s not enough to tell everyone to take care of themselves!
You have to encourage it in the short and long-term.
Here are a few ways to encourage self-care in the workplace:
- Allow employees the flexibility to work from home
- Give employees one half-day on a Friday each month
- Give a gym stipend to employees every month
- Create a contest that centers around self-care
40. Change Up the Office Space to Be More Trendy
Another goal of yours as a business owner could be to change up the office space. This could be to make it a space that people like to be in or to simply stay up with the times of more collaborative office spaces.
Instead of having individual offices, you could have an open space with tables, couches, and chairs for employees to hang out in and work.
Start with a budget and go from there.
Ready to Set Awesome Business Goals?
Without short term goals for your business, you’ll be overwhelmed by the long-term agenda.
There are so many examples of short-term goals to choose from that it can be easy to get distracted. Ultimately, you’ll want to use these examples as inspiration. In the end, remember the SMART formula for effective goal setting – S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R ealistic, and T imed.
If you found our OKR examples interesting, read more about how to write and set good OKRs .
Try Weekdone to help you set more strategic goals with Objectives and Key Results and lead your company with confidence
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Examples of Long- & Short-Term Goals for a Business
- Small Business
- Business Planning & Strategy
- Business Goals
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How to Uninstall Google Web Accelerator
Nonprofit advertising grants, how to determine the grp in advertising.
- Examples of Business Goals & Objectives
- New Revenue Ideas for Small Newspapers
Growing a business requires setting short- and long-term goals. Often the short-term goals are the steps necessary to achieve the longer-term goals. You can choose related areas such as advertising and revenue, and base short- and long-term goals within these categories.
An example of a short-term goal is to increase your advertising budget each month for the next three months. An example of a long-term business goal that the short-term goal helps achieve is to double business revenue by the end of the fiscal year.
Revenue Goals and Supporting Goals
If your long-term revenue goal is to double revenue by the end of the current fiscal year, another example of a supporting short-term goal is to contract an advertising consultant for one month to help you analyze and capitalize on your customer's buying trends. Another short-term goal example is to spend the next month learning your primary competition and brainstorming on what you offer that they don't. You can us this research and design a new advertising campaign that highlights the unique points about your business or products.
Customer Service Goals
One long-term goal for customer service would be achieving at least 95 percent positive customer feedback. An example of a supporting short-term goal is to redesign the customer service research process to include new questionnaires and incentives, such as monthly drawings for free products or discounts on future purchases for customers who take the time to respond.
Employee Appreciation Goals
Some businesses establish a long-term employee appreciation goal of awarding an employee of the year award to the employee who provides the most creative input during the year in terms of practical ideas to improve the company. Supporting short-term goals are to award employee of the month designations each month throughout the year to mark the progression of creative input, and to include more employees in the reward process than is possible with a single annual award.
Community Outreach Goals
Building the company's name recognition within the community through community outreach projects is a popular long-term goal for businesses. Examples of short-term supporting goals are to reward employees who volunteer with designated community programs with additional time off, bonuses or gift cards. Another short-term supporting goal is to choose one or two high-profile annual charity events to sponsor.
Website Traffic Goals
A long-term goal regarding web traffic is to increase traffic to your company's site by at least 50 percent by the end of the current fiscal year. Supporting short-term goals are to research and purchase web traffic analysis software to better pinpoint current traffic trends, to hire a web consultant for one month to propose and implement programming changes to make the site appeal to a broader audience than your traffic trend research suggests currently exist.
Another example of a short-term goal is to select a medium for advertising your site other than the Web, such as a bus campaign where you advertise your site address on the side of city buses for one month, or billboards, where you lease a billboard in a conspicuous place in town for one month.
- Reference for Business: Capacity Planning
- Flying Solo: Setting Big Hairy Long and Short Term Business Goals
- Morebusiness: Setting Short Term Business Goals
An attorney for more than 18 years, Jennifer Williams has served the Florida Judiciary as supervising attorney for research and drafting, and as appointed special master. Williams has a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Jacksonville University, law degree from NSU's Shepard-Broad Law Center and certificates in environmental law and Native American rights from Tulsa University Law.
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2022 Business goals: Definition, Types, Examples and Guide
- Starting Your Business
The nature of, and the environment in which we work is dramatically changing – workplace culture trends are widespread and optimism post-covid is running high. Going into 2022, it is important to set business goals and be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish.
You may have heard of some of the more popular goal-setting strategies, such as SMART goals and OKRs – both these strategies are put in place to navigate the process of achieving goals.
A SMART goal is one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive – by forming your business goals for 2022 around this structure, you will be able to gain perspective on the steps you must take to achieve it. The SMART goal formula avoids businesses setting unrealistic goals that will scarcely be achieved.
An OKR (Objectives and key results) goal is a framework that helps businesses define their goals and then track the outcome. The OKR structure aids businesses and employees to achieve change in days instead of months – first used in the 1970s, this goal-setting framework has been around for a long time and is proven in its effectiveness.
Types of goals
There are many categories of goals, such as financial, operational, and customer based. These categories are fairly self-explanatory - financial goals relate directly to your business bottom line and improve the overall profitability of the business, whilst operational goals may be associated with a production line or increasing the efficiency of back-end procedures, and customer-based goals can be exercised in the hopes of improving their experience and interactions with your business.
No matter the category that your goals fit into, they should all contribute to the advancement of the overall business.
Short term goals
Short term business goals are ones that can be achieved in a quarter or less. Whilst you may think that creating short term goals is easy, it can be incredibly challenging – often businesses ask too much of themselves when creating their goals for that quarter. The very nature of establishing set goals is to take a measured approach to improve some aspect of your business.Don’t overextend yourself and your business – set goals that you know you can meet and inspire your staff to progress towards those goals.
All that being said, shorter-term goals should be flexible, if something isn’t working you can augment your goals to fit the changing environment. Keep the end result the same, but feel free to change the processes you undertake to get there.
9 Short term business goals for your business
1. hire your first employee.
You may have just started your business, or you could be an established player in your community – regardless, hiring your first employee is a critical milestone in the future success of your endeavour. Hiring an employee represents growth and a step up in the business world to a multi-person business.
2. Improve productivity
Productivity can be measured by the amount of output from the level of input put in – your business is productive if your employees work hard, and their work is subsequently reflected in either more sales or higher profits. Improving business productivity can be done by setting goals to either reduce waste or sell more products. Businesses that are more productive will prosper and spend less time and resources on needless projects to help with growth. Challenge yourself and your employees to set goals to increase their productivity today! Products such as the Square POS system provide improved workflow and efficiency for your employees to ensure they spend most of their time doing the right things to grow your business!
3. Provide awesome customer service
Setting a goal to provide great customer service is one that should be constant throughout all quarters. Businesses that excel at customer interactions are more likely to retain those customers and extract more purchases from them. Leaving a smile on your customers face will help your business grow through word of mouth and organic reach. Steps such as greeting and farewelling customers can have an instrumental impact on their perception of your business and the friendliness of your staff. Try it out with your staff.
4. Acquiring customer feedback
Setting the goal of acquiring customer feedback is super important if you want to improve your business and exceed the expectations of your target audience. Square Customer Feedback is a tool that makes this possible – experience what your customers see and learn how to excel at providing the ultimate browsing experience. Businesses who take on board customer feedback are more likely to succeed as customers feel as if they are valued and heard – making them feel good about shopping with your business!
5. Team building
If you have 1 or more employees other than yourself then your business is a team, a team of people working together to get you more sales! The saying ‘ teamwork makes the dream work ’ is incredibly accurate in the way that it paints the power of teamwork. People who work together in harmony are likely to be more productive and achieve greater things for your business. Engaging in team-building exercises with your employees will make them feel valued and they will enjoy their job!
6. Increase website traffic
It’s common sense, the more visitors to your website, the more likely you will gain higher sales – as long as your conversion rate stays high then the aforementioned statement will be accurate. Having a fully functioning website is critical for business success as it provides legitimacy and confidence to potential buyers as they seek to browse your products online. Platforms such as Square Online help business owners build strong and fast websites that can facilitate the purchase and payment for products. Create a website with Square Online and see your sales grow as your business reach increases.
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7. Increase market share
This goal is based on your target customer. The purpose of increasing your market share is to sell more of your product to your primary customer, and in turn, boost your control over the market. For example, if you own a burger store then your goal should be to sell more burgers or open new locations to increase your market share. The more effort you make, the more perfect customers will flock to your business.
8. Maintain profits
Profit doesn’t last forever, and if your business doesn’t innovate and create new ways to turn a profit then it may negatively impact the future of your operations. Maintaining profits as a goal can look like retargeting campaigns and encouraging past customers to repurchase. Financial goals are often the ones that business owners strive most to meet as it directly affects their hip pocket. To effectively maintain profits, you must balance revenue with investments - not expanding too fast without having the previous sales to justify the expansion. Businesses that have healthy profits and a good cash flow are likely to get better investment deals and succeed overall.
9. Decrease debt
Decreasing your business debt can be both a short-term and a long-term strategy to increase the profitability of your business. Having too much debt can negatively impact an investor’s view of your business - paying down your debt at the earliest convenience will show the lender that you are a good borrower, this will be critical if you plan to take on debt to expand in the future.
Ultimately, business goals are critically important to ensure that your business does not become stagnant, but rather continue to flourish in an ever-changing environment. Owners who understand the importance of goals and setting them are likely to achieve their success milestones faster and with more precision.
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5 Examples of Short-Term Business Goals to Set Now
Best short-term goals for a new business or old.
Let’s talk about short-term goals for business today. Because I have 5 examples of short-term business goals you must have for your company right now.
We will also review how to set your business goals. And how to measure the daily activities leading to the achievement of those goals.
That is what we are going to cover. So, let’s not delay. And get on with short-term goals for your business today…
Disclosure: At no cost to you, I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Examples Of Short-Term Business Goals
Here are my 5 best short-term goals for businesses:
- Define your value proposition
- Analyze your target market
- Develop a business plan
- Increase profits this year
- Make smart investments for future years
First, this group represents great short-term goals for a new business. Or, an old business you are trying to revitalize.
And be sure to understand that this…
Your short-term business goals should be achieved in the next 12 months. While medium-term business goals are 1-5 years out. And, long-term goals span more than 5 years .
Finally, you might be surprised. That long-term thinking is required. When setting these 5 short-term business goals examples .
Here is what I mean. Starting with short-term business goal #1…
Short-Term Business Goal Example #1: Define Your Value Proposition
Clearly define your value proposition. Because if you don’t identify your customers. And deliver value to them.
You don’t have a business.
So, think long and hard about who your customers are. And what they desire from your product or service. In addition to the customer service level they require.
Furthermore, your value proposition should be closely tied to your business strategy. And you should know there are 3 generic business strategies…
1. Cost leadership strategy.
This strategy relies on being a low-cost producer . It is usually best for a commodity-type product or service. But it can be of benefit to other types of businesses too.
2. Differentiation-focused strategy.
Where delivering a unique product to your customer is valued over all else.
Branding, design, and innovation. They are several elements that make this strategy a success.
3. Niche strategy.
Here, both cost and differentiation take a back seat. To a narrow focus on a target market or target customer. And their highly specific needs.
Maybe you have heard the expression. “The riches are in the niches”.
Finally, one of these 3 strategies should be dominant. Because it is very difficult to be good at more than 1.
So take a step back. And do some deep thinking about goals at an early stage in your business. And, the right business strategy to deliver on those goals.
Ask yourself. What value do you want your business to offer? And how does that value relate to the business strategy you want to adopt.
Because a business value proposition. And business strategy should be tightly linked.
And, they should be supported by our second short-term business goal example…
Short-Term Goals For A Business Example #2: Analyze The Market
There is no sense in defining your value proposition. And determining your business strategy. Without knowledge of the market. That your business pursues.
Market analysis involves, at a minimum, knowing the market opportunity. Or, the revenue potential.
Allow me to give you an absurd example to drive home the point…
Let’s say you are going to start a niche retail clothing store in Southern Florida. The store’s focus will be selling heavy winter coats.
Well, I doubt there is much of a market for the products from a store like this in Southern Florida. So, I predict this business will fail.
In theory, the business may have a great value proposition. And a sound strategy.
But, it won’t be successful in Florida. I suggest relocating the business to a city like Minneapolis.
So, complete enough research to suggest that if successful. The market opportunity will support your business.
In addition, there are many other important aspects to market analysis. Beyond market size. For example, pricing and competition are also important things to understand.
What if the market size, pricing, and level of competition do not support your value proposition and business strategy?
Then go back to short-term business goal #1. And reassess.
Once, you have short-term objectives examples for business numbers 1 and 2 working together. It’s time for our 3 rd example of short-term business goals every successful company must have…
Business Short-Term Goals Example #3: Develop A Business Plan
After you have a value proposition. Linked with a business strategy. And supported by a market assessment.
Then you are on your way to having a business plan. But, I suggest you make your business plan more comprehensive.
Because every business should have a plan . No matter how big or small the business happens to be.
Think about and document how you intend to market and sell your product…
Will you use advertising? Develop a social media strategy? Sell through a website? Or have a salesforce?
How will you produce your product or service? Do it yourself out of your home? Secure a facility and hire employees? Or, contract out the production process to a 3 rd party?
Finally, you should complete a financial planning exercise. Specifically, prepare budgeted financial statements.
Do this to project the financial success of your business. And any outside funding it will require.
If you need help. Outsource your financial management.
Then put all of these pieces together. With an executive summary at the beginning.
And you have the makings of a business plan short-term goal to complete. Get it done in the next six months. Or, twelve months at the very latest.
Because a business plan is your road map.
A perfect tool for pitching your business to partners and investors. It is a key ingredient for setting additional short-term goals for a small business owner .
Okay. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect.
Reflecting On Short Term Business Goals #1-#3:
The first 3 short-term business goals examples must be done immediately. Certainly in the first 12 months of starting a new business. Or, trying to pump new life into an old one.
They require long-term planning and thinking. Even though they are the short-term goals of a business.
So, think long-term. But get these goals done in the short term.
Because your business is more than the side hustle you were running. To improve your finances in your 20s .
Then you are ready for the 4 th short-term business goal…
Short-Term Business Goals Example #4: Increase Profits
Profits, and the cash flow they generate, are the lifeblood of your business. So set a short-term goal to increase your business profits in the next 12 months.
This is one of many standard financial business goals . That every company should have.
There are 3 ways to go about increasing business profits in the short term.
3 Examples Of Short-Term Business Goals For Improving Financial Performance
1. Raise prices.
Increasing prices can be the fastest way to boost profit. Because price increases fall right to the bottom line profits of a business.
But make sure your pricing strategy aligns with your business strategy.
For example, if you sell a commodity. Raising prices may not be one of the best financial goals .
Because your customers will switch to a lower-cost supplier. Since there are other products like yours in the market.
On the other hand, a differentiation-focused business strategy. Is usually better suited for price increases.
2. Sell more.
As long as your product or service is profitable. Increase market share by selling more.
So, put some sales and marketing muscle behind your business. And sell more to make more money.
3. Reduce costs.
Finally, and especially for executing a cost leadership strategy. Look for ways to reduce expenses.
Go through every expense line on your income statement. Look for ways to reduce costs. And become more productive. To benefit from higher cash flows .
Here’s another suggestion to reduce costs. ..
Do you make purchases online? Then save money on everything you buy with Rakuten.
Rakuten offers electronic cash rebates for buying things you need anyway! So, it is money in your business’s pocket!
You can learn about Rakuten here . And it works fine for any personal purchases you make too.
Okay. It’s time for our 5 th and final short-term business goal example. And we are going back to long-term thinking again…
Short-Term Goals For Business Example #5: Make Smart Investments For The Future
Identify investments to make in your business . During the next 12 months.
That will increase profits. Not only in the following year. But for many years in the future.
Only you can decide what is a smart investment for your business. Some examples include:
- Outsourcing a business process
- Adding a new employee
- Buying a new piece of machinery
- Implementing business software
- Expanding facilities
- Developing a new product
- Moving to a business-friendly state
The possible investments come down to a simple formula. Will the money spent today bring more money back in profits in the future?
Once again. It takes long-term thinking. To set short-term goals in a business.
And remember. Your business investments must support your value proposition and business strategy. And they should be included in the cash flow of your business plan .
Finally, making an investment for the future is much easier. When your business makes money today. So, don’t forget about short-term business goal #4: increase profits.
However, some investments will require outside funds. So, you may need financing.
Consider a small business loan. Look for a lender who is easy to work with. And offers very competitive rates.
I hope you are starting to see it. Specifically, how these short-term goals for business inter-relate. And need to fit within your business strategy.
Okay. It’s transition time as I promised at the beginning of this article. To discuss business goal setting…
Make Your Short-Term Goals For Business SMART
You can learn much more about setting SMART goals . But allow me to give you a brief overview.
SMART goals have 5 main ingredients. They are…
Define precisely what you want to accomplish. Because a goal is the desired outcome.
Document your short-term business goals. And include as many details as possible.
Next, determine how you will measure your success. Success is when the desired outcome is achieved.
Each of the 5 short-term business goals examples we discussed today is easy to measure. For example, take the goal “increase business profits this year”.
The goal should state exactly how much profit increases. Will meet the desired outcome.
It’s okay to set aggressive business goals . But, make them achievable.
Is increasing profits by $100,000 this year your goal?. Well, it may sound like a good goal. But perhaps only $50,000 is achievable.
Business goals must be realistic too. This is closely related to achievability. But, slightly different.
For example, increasing revenue by $200,000 may be achievable. Especially if you have done your market research. And fine-tuned your value proposition.
But if it requires 5 new people on the sales team. And you haven’t hired 1 yet. Perhaps this is not a realistic goal in the next 12 months.
A better goal might be hiring and training the 5 salespeople. Then setting a medium-term goal to increase revenue by $200,000.
Finally, give yourself a date to accomplish the goal. We are talking about short-term goals for business today. So the completion date must fall within the next 12 months.
Okay. One more topic. And then I will wrap up.
You now have 5 examples of short-term goals for a business. They represent both financial goals. And non-financial business goals too.
Furthermore, you know the characteristics of SMART short-term goals for a small business. Or, a larger business you are trying to refocus and revitalize.
Then here is our final topic. That is measuring the daily activities required. To achieve the business goals you have set forth.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) To Support Each Of These Short-Term Business Goals Examples
KPIs are daily, weekly, and monthly performance indicators. They measure the activities required to achieve your business’s short-term goals.
Underlying them are the employee activities that drive business outcomes you desire. So companies set and measure KPIs. To achieve their business goals.
Thus, a KPI is a measurable activity. That drives the result. That result is the achievement of a business goal.
For example, let’s say the short-term business goal is to increase revenue by $200,000. And you feel you have the resources in place to do just that.
Then what is the activity that will drive the achievement of the goal? That’s for you to decide depending on the type of business you are in.
But let’s say you determine increasing sales by $200,000 is realistic and achievable. But only if each salesperson calls on 5 potential new accounts each week.
Then there is your KPI. 5 new sales calls by each salesperson each week. Because you believe this activity will result in achieving the increased sales goal.
This assumes the products or services your sales staff is promoting. Are tightly aligned with your business strategy and value proposition.
Finally, as your business meets with more success. I think it is wise to keep your personal finances separate from the finances of your business.
I use Personal Capital to pull all of my non-business expenses and investments together in one place. And keep them separate from my business.
Best of all, Personal Capital is free to sign up and use. You can learn more about Personal Capital here .
Let’s summarize to wrap this article up…
Summary: Short-Term Goals For A Business
First of all, understand that long-term thinking is required. When setting and achieving short-term goals .
Then we have the goals…
Short-Term Goals Examples For Business
List of short-term goals for business examples:
Short-Term Goals Of A Business Should Be SMART
Furthermore, make your business goals SMART. Whether they are short-term, medium-term business goals , or long-term business goals.
SMART is an acronym that stands for:
Short-Term Goals Business KPIs
Finally, set key performance indicators (KPIs). They are the daily activities required. To meet each of these short-term business goals examples we have discussed today.
That’s all for now. Good luck to the small business owners in the audience. And the big business owners too.
Now it’s time to get to work on the 5 examples of short-term goals for businesses.
More Reading About Setting And Achieving Goals
- Our money management library of articles
- Make financial plans in your 30s and beyond
- Money mistakes to definitely avoid
Excellent Resources To Jump-Start Your Business Goals
I mentioned several resources throughout the article. They are useful for attaining both your individual financial goals. And your business goals.
Here is a summary…
- Get cash back on your online purchases with Rakuten
- Manage all your money with Personal Capital
Author Bio, Disclosure, & Disclaimer: Please join me (Tom) as I try to achieve my goals, find my next place to live, and make the most of my money. However, I am not a licensed investment adviser, financial counselor, real estate agent, or tax professional. Instead, I’m a 50-something-year-old, early retired CPA, finance professional, and business school teacher with 40+ years of DIY dividend investing experience. I’m here only to share my thoughts about essential topics for success. As a result, nothing published on this site should be considered individual investment, financial, tax, or real estate advice. This site’s only purpose is general information & entertainment. Thus, neither I nor Dividends Diversify can be held liable for losses suffered by any party because of the information published on this website. Finally, all written content is the property of Dividends Diversify LLC. Unauthorized publication elsewhere is strictly prohibited.
Short-Term Goals For Business
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43 Short Term Goals Examples to Achieve More
Fred Wilson
Short-Term Goals…. Are they necessary? Do they help us achieve bigger aims?
If you feel that you may lose your momentum in the pursuit of the bigger picture, or getting to your targets is a slog… then try setting clear, short-term goals.
You may have several goals to achieve in your personal or business life. But you can’t achieve any of them unless you break down the bigger goals into shorter achievable targets, each target moving you that much closer to the eventual goal.
Long term goals are good, but, hey, they are still long term. Wouldn’t it be better to create short-term goals that are realistic and have a higher possibility of goal achievement?
Moreover, you can use a goal tracking app that will remind you every time you’re about to miss a deadline.
If you use short-term goals as stepping stones to your main goal, you’ll find yourself getting there quicker. The advice for short-term goals, mentioned in this article can be applied very easily to your personal life goals.
We will cover these in short term goals:
What are short-term goals, why short-term goals are important.
- Short-Term Personal Goals
- Short-Term Career Goals
- Short-Term Financial Goals
- Short-Term Study Goals
- Short-Term Business Goals
- Short-Term Health and Fitness Goals
- Best Goals Tracking Apps
The short-term goals are ‘short’ for a purpose. They bridge the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be. These goals are, but are not limited to; tasks and to-dos to be accomplished within a short time frame of not more than a year.
These short-term actions will help you to achieve your long-term bigger goal . It will help you to set your focus and see where you are heading, identify your next steps to take, and check your progress if you are in the right direction.
Expert Advice: If you realize that your short-term actions will not take you to your bigger goals, just stop and pivot over to your ‘Plan B’. It’s better to change the direction before the burnout stage. Use Kanban Boards for better goal visualization.
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Here are some of the points which explain the importance of setting short-term goals:
1. Short-term goals let you create effective strategies
What if you want to increase your company revenue by 30% by the end of the year? There are several strategies to achieve this year-end goal, such as; investing in the marketing budget, decreasing the price per unit, running seasonal promotions, and discount offers.
There are many ways to do it but things will be vague and lack effectiveness. If you have set short-term goals then it will be much easier to achieve these bigger goals that come eventually during the project lifecycle. When long-term goals are broken down into short steps, it will pave the path to achieving the target much easier.
2. Provides quick feedback
Getting feedback—positive or negative – can easily act as a motivation to set short-term goals. Setting short-term milestones assist you to align your other tasks to get to the bigger picture. That way you will have quick feedback in a relatively short time to help progress toward your goals.
For example, if you want to increase your customer base to 10,000 within six months, you devise a road plan for the actions to take to reach the user level. So, after a month you will have a clearer picture of whether your plan is working or not, and if you need to incorporate other strategies.
Short term goals give you clear feedback in a quicker way to enable planning adjustments and make improvements to achieve your organizational goal.
Pro Tip: Are you facing trouble in setting short-term milestones for your tasks and projects? Don’t you worry! Now you can do it in just one click with, nTask | Work Management Software , to help manage your short-term and long-term goal setting!
3. Short-term Goals help kill Procrastination
Are you prone to the evil of procrastination? Setting short-term goals and combining them with some determination can do it for you. When your goals are small, clear, and specific, the effort involved in accomplishing them drastically decreases—lessening the need to constantly procrastinate. So, plan to publish only 10 posts you had on your list or set aside 15 articles to be written and put up.
On the other hand, if your goals are big, they’ll take more effort making it difficult for you to get to the end. Don’t make a goal-achieving path vague; it will overwhelm you. So, breaking down your goals is very likely to prevent you from procrastinating.
4. Short-term Goals keep your Focus
Achieving a long-term target will often seem unrealistic. You may easily lose focus while you work towards getting it done. You’ll have many detours, you’ll have to backtrack and set your feet on the right path again. However, if you have clearly defined your short-term goals that are measurable, realistic specific you will find yourself with a converged focus.
Successful entrepreneurs who set a goal to achieve a million-dollar monthly revenue from their product never get to this point solely focusing on the big picture. They make a clear and deliberate roadmap to reach their ultimate goal. This is accomplished only after the completion of smaller achievable actions. If you don’t know where to start and where you are heading; you will easily be lost in no time.
Now, I will explain 43 short-term goal examples to inspire you to achieve more and become insanely productive.
Short Term Personal Goals
1. build a morning routine.
An organized morning routine will help you to get disciplined in how to align your work schedule with the day you face ahead. Getting up early; morning exercise, healthy breakfast can improve your habits to build your morning routine.
Going through these steps and habits can bring ease and create harmony in your life, ultimately making you more prolific.
2. Keep a Daily Journal
Writing is a cathartic habit that can eventually present a solution to your problems as well. It can play a vital role in formulating and organizing those scattered thoughts in your mind into potentially successful ideas.
Keeping a journal allows you to align your routine and get out of the complex scenarios you face in your daily life. Unleash your personal creativity and enrich your personal life by writing at least one page in your daily journal.
It enables you to plant yourself in the present with the routine of writing down your thoughts as a form of meditation. If you are already a pro writer , then this habit will improve your writing craft immensely. Even if you are alien to the writing habit, then it will help you in generating self-awareness.
3. Double your productivity level
If you want to excel in your career, achieve your professional goal, and get things done on time, then you should double your productivity with the help of task management software, nTask . In the world of tech, you cannot manage all your work by creating a to-do list on a piece of paper, or remembering your schedule by yourself if you manage complex projects.
You will need a robust application that can help you to double your productivity level and save much of your time to focus on more critical tasks. You don’t need to worry, as you can use nTask free forever to get started with the boost your productivity to the next level. When you get successful in improving your productivity with the help of the nTask management software, you can get a step ahead of your team members and grow your skillset.
4. Practice Daily Family Ritual
If you practice a daily family ritual, this will help create a sense of belonging among your family members. It brings your family members closer and strengthens ties. This short-term goal bolsters you to face tough times with ease if you are staying close to your family members.
As a family member, the rituals will teach your children family values like kindness, compassion, and responsibility.
Best Daily Planners for A Productive Week
5. Explore Something New Every Day
Have a sense of adventure and be spontaneous!
Unleash your inner capabilities by trying out something new every day. Learn a new skill; learn about new terms and words and try to use them in your daily conversation. When you adapt to this habit, you will tune your brain to learn new information quickly and with ease (Apart from keeping away Alzheimer’s).
Learning new things will keep you motivated and lift your morale, especially when you have to go through a tiresome and monotonous routine. Follow some popular blogs that talk about new things to get inspiration for your new adventure for the day.
6. Develop One Good Habit Every Month
You might have never thought of it this way: a good habit dictates your daily life. Many of your actions are not done by choice or coincidence, but by the habits you adopted over a time period.
Habits are a powerful force that drives your thoughts and actions. They are something you can fall back on when you are feeling blue. So, you must focus on building one good habit each month to improve your decision-making.
7. Attend a Personality Development Seminar
Other peoples’ experiences can be a source of deepening your knowledge and enlightenment. So what better way to learn than from professionals who are experts in their respective areas? You must keep it in your monthly checklist item to attend a personality development seminar in your locality.
Attending such a workshop is a good way to improve yourself. It gives you an opportunity to expand your network and eventually learn from them as well.
Eventbrite is a good place to search for the next event you might be interested in.
8. Leave One Bad Habit each Month
Self-assessment time! You need to assess yourself and work out what habits you must leave out. If you plan to leave some common bad habits associated with time wastage, leave out unproductive activities. These activities vary from person to person, but some common examples are social media, smoking, or anything else.
How to know that you have a bad habit? It’s really simple. Just think of the things you do that don’t turn out to be useful or healthy for you.
Short Term Career Goals
9. organize your work station.
If you want to increase your productivity at work then you must organize your workstation and declutter as you go by. Side effects may include getting things done on time and increased productivity.
10. Get a professional certification
Companies mostly promote and hire individuals based on their level of knowledge, experience, and skill set. Moreover, they encourage employees to improve their competence with the latest work trends and practices.
Getting a certification will show your willingness to work and achieve better results for your organization’s success. Apart from this, more certifications will help you build a healthy resume and LinkedIn profile. You know what? The certifications that are in high demand help you to get into a good company or an office for that matter.
11. The early bird experience
You need to get to work early to set your pace and deliver projects on time. If you are someone who gets late all the time then this is the moment for you to set this short-term goal and improve your productivity.
Moreover, you can get more confidence in your job or any event you attend.
12. Improve your communication skills
Good communication skills are fruitful in your career in many ways. They also help out in case of workplace conflicts, team presentations, and communication with clients.
If you are in the customer support department or in sales then communication skills are a must to have to deal with customers’ queries and help them out in solving their problems.
13. Attend networking events
Networking is your ticket to collaboration and learning from your industry’s point of view. You should go to networking events relevant to your industry and department. This is your ticket to success.
This opportunity will help you to learn things about your interest and get other people’s advice on your project(s). If you are seeking a coach or mentor to help you out in your career then attending the networking events will be beneficial.
14. Get feedback on your work
It is not a good practice to go toward your long-term goal achievement without getting feedback on your work. What if you are going in the wrong direction and ruining all your efforts? This is why you create short-term goals and it is really important to get feedback from your peers or manager along your path.
Ensure your direction on every step and quick feedback from your team or manager will help you achieve your goals easily. It will allow you to make adjustments to your strategies and action in an effort to achieve goals.
15. Focus on the next step
Once you achieve the first short term goal your next action should be to focus on the next step. This will help you avoid being distracted along the way to achieve goals successfully and reduce end-time delays while keeping your focus on the next step you can easily progress on your action plan.
nTask helps get the focus on your projects and tasks by setting start and end dates, task dependencies, and project milestones to help you focus on your project timeline.
16. Develop confidence
Do you want to meet your long-term goals? Your team needs to think that they can achieve them as easily as you can. Urge to meet the target depends on the level of confidence in your team.
How you and your team can develop confidence? You can do it by breaking down big goals into short achievable targets or short-term goals that have lots of milestones lined up. Once you start to accomplish small goals, you will develop the confidence to meet your long-term goals naturally.
This is the reason the ‘Sprint’ system is used by the software and tech teams to meet small targets through small speed bursts.
Many organizations use nTask to manage their sprint releases and love features such as meeting management , meeting schedules, start and end dates, repeat tasks , and Gantt charts .
17. Remove Procrastination
If you feel lazy, overwhelmed, and procrastinate at your job, it will be hard to meet your job goals and deliver your projects on time. You need to work way to remove procrastination by making your work interesting and fun to keep you motivated.
This is a useful short-term goal you should set this year to make you productive and grow your career by breaking down work into small wins.
18. Get Early to Work
If you want to achieve your long-term career goal, then you should have a short term goal of getting to work 20 minutes earlier every day. This is a good step to show that you are a hardworking and professional resource who takes the work seriously.
Getting earlier to work gives you ample time to organize yourself and prepare better for your work meetings. Your boss will really like a resource who is always on time and ready to take on new challenges. Moreover, this will give a happy start to your day 🙂
Short Term Financial Goals
19. eliminate your credit card debt.
If you want to focus on your personal finance then you should eliminate your credit card debt as they eat up a big chunk of your monthly income. Outstanding debts will be a big burden on your pocket and affect your finances.
More importantly, the debt burden will also affect your health. Paying them off will give you relief. You will be less stressed if you remain debt-free and spend your money on things you really need. Removing your debt burden will help you meet your financial long-term goals.
20. Reducing your monthly expenses
This is really an important short-term financial goal if you want to save money for a special purpose. In order to save some bucks for your year-end event or for emergency cases then you should start reducing your monthly expenses.
You can start off by reducing those expenses which are of less importance to you and start doing your monthly groceries from wholesale stores where you can get more discounts. This is a good way to save up money by the end of each year.
21. Track your monthly budget
If your goal is to have financial security then you should start tracking your monthly budget. You can do it by keeping an eye on your monthly bank statement and utility bills. As you start tracking your monthly budget, you become aware of your monthly spending habits and can learn how to stop wasting your finance on useless things.
You may know that when you enter a grocery store, a bakery, or a garment shop you do impulse buying and end up exceeding the monthly expenditure limit you have set. It can be a useful short-term financial goal to track your monthly budget to learn where you can reduce your expenses to save more.
22. Create multiple income streams
Even if you love your business or job for that matter, you can look to create multiple income streams to help you financially. You can have multiple income sources without getting into big hassles. How about doing a bit of freelancing in your free time or investing in real estate etc.?
This is a helpful short-term goal if your goal is to get early retirement . If you don’t want to quit your job, you can start a side business or get into a partnership with your friends. With this goal in place, you can easily pay off your medical bills or debt.
Short Term Study Goals
23. submit your assignments a week before the deadline.
If you want to relieve yourself of study-related stress and get ahead of your classmates, then submitting your projects, assignments, and term paper ahead of time will be advantageous.
This will tell how well you have managed your time and demonstrate your commitment to the projects assigned to you in front of your professors. You will be left with more time to do fun activities rather than spending weekends working on your class assignments.
24. Spend your free time in the library
You can develop your learning skills and your mental ability through reading. It helps to grasp knowledge that can result in better grades eventually.
Reading books, research papers, and journal articles to utilize your free time in the best way.
25. Spend less time on TV
According to a report, the average American adults spend 5 hours a day in front of the TV screen. Students can use this time on reading and study their coursebooks, or work on their school projects.
If you want to take a break from your studies then it is better to spend time on sports or on your hobbies as this will improve your creativity. This way you can become productive and helps in networking with other people.
26. Know your professor
This is the first lesson you will learn about professional networking that will help you out in your future career. When you get to know your professor and get in their good books than you, will give more attention during their lectures.
It is the best way to learn from an experienced professor and they can help you out in your course materials. You will realize this short-term goal benefit when you get a worthy recommendation letter from your professor when applying for the universities and help in landing your first job.
27. Build your ability to take notes in lectures
Effective note-taking activity will improve your focus on the class lectures and helps in organizing information. It will help you to keep awake during your lecture and engage your brain to think.
Good notes help in preparing for exams and preparing your assignments. You might not remember everything during a class lecture, so taking notes is a good habit to equip yourself to do more in your studies.
You can take notes on your writing pad for starters. However, smart students use note-taking apps to help in becoming more efficient and productive.
Short Term Business Goals
28. reduce business overheads.
This is the short-term goal that fits the best with small and medium-sized businesses. If you want to make your business profitable then there are two ways to do this; either increase your revenue or reduce your overhead cost. Period.
You will need to do a thorough analysis of your business overheads ( in-direct costs ) and work our how to reduce the expenditures without affecting your business operations. The best short-term actions to reduce it are using technology, becoming paperless, and reducing debts.
29. Improve business productivity
It is always a good idea to set goals to improve your business and team productivity. It directly impacts your key business metrics and financial statements.
You should adopt the best practices to boost your team productivity like eliminating distractions, organizing the workstation and work processes. Smart businesses use productivity apps to help organize their daily tasks, meetings, projects and help in team collaboration.
30. Incorporate social media marketing
Social media is a good channel for performing marketing activities for startups, professionals, and consultants. You can leverage these social channels to engage your audience by sharing useful content and using it as a customer support portal.
If you have some budget to invest in advertising then social media is a good option to start with a low budget. Having a social presence will help build your online presence. Another important thing is that people search online or on social media before making a purchase decision. Thus, using social platforms wisely will help build your business.
31. Develop MVP (minimum viable product) Ahead of Time
If you are planning to launch a new product next year then it is a good approach to launch an MVP to test if it finds a market fit. Launching a completely new product without proper research and testing might end up in complete failure and ruin your investment in the project.
It is a safe way to develop an MVP with minimum features and launch it as a beta version in a specific market. If your target market loves your MVP then it is okay to invest time and money to see it reshape into a usable final product.
32. Improve your customer service
How do you improve your customer satisfaction score and communicate with your clients for your product or services? You work out to make your customer service phenomenal by handling customer queries and complaints efficiently.
If you lack good service to your customers and have an angry bunch of people, then improving your customer service standards should be your immediate short-term goal. You should realize the importance of customer feedback and incorporate them to improve the feedback score from people at the other end.
33. Know your competitors
This is an important short term goal example to remain in business for the long term. You should regularly research your competitors on what they are doing currently in the market, what products they offer, their pricing strategy, the companies with which they collaborate, and their content and marketing strategy. This will help you develop the product and service better than your competitors.
You know that the customers choose the company that offers the best product/service at a suitable price. You should get help from online competition research tools such as BuzzSumo , Ahrefs , and Follwerwonk .
34. Learn about market trends
If you want to grow your business’s sales volume and revenue then you should become familiar with the current market trends. You can leverage the industry reports, expert advice and predictions, and financial statements of market leaders. In the short term, it is a useful starting point to get benefits from others’ research. Moreover, you should also do first-hand research yourself by executing customer feedback surveys, vendor surveys, and making a report that will help in your decision-making.
Make use of the online trend tools that can help you identify the in-things in the online market sphere such as Alexa Rank and Google Trends . This can also help you draft your branding, content, marketing, and sales strategy.
35. Develop a new product
You can’t rely on a single product or service for a long time. It’s time that you diversify your business for its stability and growth. If you don’t have multiple product lines then you should consider developing a new product and adding to your portfolio of offerings.
After a few years of experience in the industry, you have adequate knowledge and data generated from customer feedback about what new product you should develop to gain more users. It’s the right time to have a look at that information and create a new product in the short run to help you secure the business’s future.
36. Create an employee incentive program
To make your employees work hard for your business with full dedication you must incorporate an employee incentive program. The incentive program may include both tangible and intangible perks (especially for startups that have limited resources). Even a small appreciation helps in motivating your employees.
Look for the different employee incentive programs that you can adopt in your organization. It is necessary for productive teams that achieve their business goals timely.
37. Incorporate SMART goals
As soon as you have set your short term goals for your business and personal development, it’s time to get to the next level by making your goals SMART. SMART goals are defined as a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. If your short-term goal is to increase the revenue, you can make it SMART by defining it more clearly like, increasing the company revenue by 10% by the first quarter of the next year. Now, your short-term goal has met the SMART criteria.
SMART goals can make your work easy and help you to keep full track of it. This will help your team to easily achieve even tough goals.
Learn more about SMART Goals in this blog:
An Introduction to Setting SMART Goals
38. Adopt a hybrid work model
A hybrid work model is gaining popularity in many industries, especially in tech and consultancy businesses. A survey report says that around 77% of companies adopted a hybrid work setting at the will of the employees.
This short-term goal has the potential to bring flexibility, productivity, and ease of work help businesses to reduce their overhead costs. If you have systems in place, including team management software to help keep your team engaged, then the hybrid model of work can benefit both employees and the organization. Moreover, this opens the door for the organization to hire talent across the globe, and experience business growth in a productive way.
Short Term Health and Fitness Goals
39. cut back on calories.
This is the first step in your short term health goals. You need to cut back on calories to help remain fit and spend a healthy life. If you aim to reduce your weight you should eat fewer calories so that you can easily burn them during the day. Reducing the food quantity will be difficult to carry out in the long term, so you may opt for healthy foods that have lower calories .
You can keep track of your calorie intake by counting them. Check out these apps that can help you in tracking your nutrition and calorie count.
40. Get up early
Getting up early can help you meet your fitness and health short term goals. Moreover, you can become productive by waking up early. Even successful people say that if you want to achieve more in life, then wake up early. If waking up early is a hurdle for you, then check out these tips to become a morning person.
You can spare much time for yourself by waking up early, you can go jogging, take the fresh air and early breakfast will help in improving your immunity level.
41. Join a gym or fitness boot camp
Want to lose weight? And improve your fitness level? You should think to join a gym or a fitness boot camp. Exercise helps build your muscles, cut your fat, improve your immunity, and help in living a healthy life.
So, if you have not taken this step, now is the time to set this health and fitness short term goal to join a fitness club. Get help from expert trainers to prevent any injury and do the exercises in the right way.
42. Stop eating out in restaurants
It is a difficult thing, but if your priority is to improve your health then you should stop eating out in restaurants, especially, leaving out fast food. As explained in the point above, fast food can boost your calorie level and create long-term cardiovascular, obesity, and other problems.
It is wise to cook food at home and make something healthy for yourself rather than eating out, or making a home delivery from a restaurant.
43. Get to your ideal Body Mass Index (BMI)
If you really are a fitness freak, then this short term goal example is for you. You need to keep track of your BMI, to reach the ideal fitness level. Body Mass Index or BMI is the ratio of body weight in kilograms and the height of the person in a square meter.
A high BMI means you have more fat percentage in your body. It is screened for weight category and shows your health and fitness level.
Best Goal Tracking Apps
Apart from tracking your goals on pen and paper, you can use several goal tracking apps as mentioned below:
nTask is one of the best goal tracking application that offers robust features that can help both individuals and businesses in goal achievement.
It is specifically designed to make sure that all the activities performed by you and your team, be properly filed and tracked. All team members can stay informed of all the changes regarding tasks, projects , meetings , issues, etc. nTask help in keeping everything in check and makes sure that you succeed in meeting your goals.
The project feature of nTask can help you manage your project’s financial goals and gives you the ability to align your workflows using Gantt Charts .
Key Features:
- Project planning
- Task dependencies
- Milestones ( Goals )
- Budget management
- Financial Summary
- Team Collaboration
- Time Tracking and Timesheets
- Meeting management
- Risk Matrix
- Free plan with unlimited workspaces and 5 team members
- Premium plan at $3/user per month
- Business plan at $8/user per month
Wrike is another goal tracking app used in project management. It helps track your tasks and project with the ability to track the goals.
The features like Kanban boards, task lists, and reporting can make it easier for users to manage projects successfully. It is more suitable for software and tech companies following the agile methodology.
- Task planning
- Task tracking
- Resource management
- Rule-based workflows
- Professional plan starting at $9.80
- Business plan starting at $24.80
3. Microsoft Projects
MS Projects is one of the oldest project and goal tracking tool. It helps you generate spreadsheets that can help you track entities in your projects.
It comes with easy integration with Microsoft Office Suite 365 applications. The desktop-based tool of Microsoft Projects is loved by project managers to manage their workflows.
- Portfolio management
- Status tracking
- Task collaboration
- Gantt charts and task dependencies
- Paid subscription starts at $7/user per month.
As it turns out,
Short-term goals are just as much important as long term goals. In order to attain your bigger goals, you need to commit to a list of short-term goals.
Follow the aforementioned short-term goals examples and go incorporate them into your life as time goes by. I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below. Good luck and have a great day ahead!
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Short-term vs. long-term business goals: comparison + examples
Not unlike the recipe for your mum’s famous chocolate cake, the recipe for business success calls for various ingredients and steps plus time and patience. It requires short-term work (baking) to yield long-term results (happy tummies).
In business, short- and long-term goals are used tactically to help a business move forward. But what are they? And how are they set? We’ll define and compare short-term and long-term goals and show you 15 examples of what they look like in business.
What is a long-term business goal?
It’s all in the name — long-term outcomes are what your company wants to achieve in the long term. They’re high-level goals or strategies you want to accomplish in the coming years, driving you closer to your vision. Good long-term goals should be adaptable to technological, political and other environmental changes.
No exact period defines long-term goals, but most organisations think of them as goals you aim to achieve in the next one to ten years. While ambitious, they inform short-term goals and day-to-day business flow and vice versa. Knowing a general direction is essential, but keeping a bottom-up approach that supports adaptability, creativity and more input into decision-making is still crucial.
What is a short-term business goal?
The term ‘short’ is key in describing short-term goals. They define business goals you want to achieve in the near future, which can span from a week to a year, depending on the project and organisational preferences. They focus on the present, promoting productivity and good time management.
Short-term goals are clear, easily actionable and geared toward individual or team efforts rather than overall strategy. That being said, short-term goals should still be set with long-term strategy in mind — to set short-term goals, you need to know generally where your business is heading. In simpler terms, short-term goals are the steps you need to take to get where you want to be and a tool to check you’re heading in the right direction.
This AI can create a complete strategy for your goals ✨
Tability's goal-setting AI can generate a step-by-step plan to achieve your goals.
Short-term vs long-term goals
Short-term and long-term goals may differ, but it’s not quite David and Goliath. Below we’ve listed three key factors that set short- and long-term goals apart.
The biggest difference between short-term goals and long-term goals is their purpose. Long-term goals are strategic — they’re a plan for the future of the business. Short-term goals contribute to business success but have more to do with your current performance.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to defining what’s considered short-term or long-term, but generally speaking, short-term goals are more likely to be measured by weeks or months and long-term goals by years. Long-term business strategies require many short-term goals to meet.
Flexibility
Short-term goals and long-term organisational goals are also different in adaptability. Short-term goals are typically more clearly defined and actionable, whereas long-term goals are flexible to changes in strategy.
Examples of both short- and long-term goals in business
Looking for some real-world examples to help you write business goals? Using the SMART methodology — which requires goals to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound — we’ve compiled some examples of long- and short-term business goals that are easily adaptable.
Short-term vs long-term marketing goal examples
A long-term marketing goal might sound like this:
- Drive more traffic to the shop tab on the website
And the short-term goals that support this long-term strategy might look like this:
- Develop a social media strategy that boosts posting from 3 times a week to daily
- Plan an email campaign that achieves an average click rate of 10% before new product launch
Short-term vs long-term finance goal examples
The following might be a long-term finance goal:
- Reduce operating costs
And to support the long-term strategy, short-term finance goals may look like this:
- Automate 50% of payroll duties by adopting accounting software by June 30
- Reduce cost of goods sold (COGS) expenses by 20% this quarter
The best way to track goals
Whether it's quarterly or yearly goals, Tability will help you see true progress on your goals.
Short-term vs long-term HR goal examples
Long-term HR goals would include:
- Improve employee retention rate
Whereas the short-term HR goals for the long-term strategy may look like this:
- Allocate 10% of HR budget to personal development training
- Implement one feedback form a month for more visibility across company issues
Short-term vs long-term sales goal examples
A typical goal for long-term sales growth may look like this:
- Increase total sales revenue
In contrast, the short-term goals for sales might be as follows:
- Generate 50% of sales from clients X and Y by the end of June
- Make $30,000 in new deals by the end of the quarter
Short-term vs long-term customer service goal examples
An example of a long-term customer service goal might be:
- Increase customer satisfaction
Whereas customer service short-term goals are more likely to be specific:
- Increase the first-contact resolution rate by 10% by the end of quarter
- Improve first reply time by 5% overall by the end of the month
How to set short- and long-term goals with OKRs
Whether you’re 20 years into trading or in the early stages of business, getting past the ‘vision’ part of goal setting is not always easy. You may know where you want to be, but getting there is the hard part.
A goal-setting framework like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) bridges the gap between vision and strategy. It uses short-term targets to support medium- and long-term goals.
If your long-term vision is to grow revenue, your quarterly OKRs may look like this:
Objective: Improve monthly sales revenue
- KR1: Increase number of cold calls from 10 to 20 a day
- KR2: Increase average purchase amount from $300 to $500 per person
- KR3: Reduce customer churn from 40% to 15%
Read more on how to set OKRs here .
Simplify goal setting with Tability
Set, share and track goals without a hitch using user-friendly software like Tability . Tability's easy-to-use tools and check-in emails support team buy-in, making it easy for your business to adopt it. Give it a go with a free trial today.
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SHORT TERM GOALS WITH 37 SHORT TERM GOALS EXAMPLES
Bonus material: learn elon musk’s top 4 short-term goals before he started tesla..
Then read on for help on how to set clear and effective short-term goals for your business.
Short term goals form an integral part of success in whatever you do, be it business, career, education, health, etc. They focus on goals that can be achieved within a short amount of time, usually less than a year. They are often the broken-down steps and shorter actionable tasks drawn from long-term goals.
Last week we wrote an article about long term goals. Once you think about the future and create long term goals, you want to move into the near present and create short term goals.
That said, developing and implementing short term goals effectively will bridge the time void created by long-term goals and make their achievement incredibly feasible. In this article, we will explore short term goals, what they are, why you should have them, some tips for setting and prioritizing your short term goals, as well as some short term goals examples.
What are short term goals?
As the name implies, a short term goal has to do with a short time, sooner than long-term goals. A short term goal is a statement of something you want to achieve soon. The near future can be today, this week, month, or even year. Short term goals are goals that you want to achieve soon, and the small timeline of accomplishment is the fundamental characteristic of short term goals. When the timeline of execution becomes longer, like multiple years, it becomes a long-term goal.
Goals of this nature also tend to keep your focus on the present, what you can do right now to meet your ultimate long-term goals. Short term goals help you manage your time well, and even though they might seem like small and minute steps, they steadily set you on the path of success and accomplishment of your life, career, business, etc., goals.
The distance between where you currently are and where you intend to be is bridged by short term goals. They are primarily small, short tasks, to-do’s that need to be accomplished within a short amount of time, usually not more than a year. They are made to be short intentionally, as walking steps that add up to long-term achievement.
Short term goals help to achieve bigger long-term goals. They help you set your focus and pay attention to where you’re heading, recognizing the next course of action to take and assess your progress if you’re headed in the right direction.
Pro-Tip: Grab 30 minutes on my calendar for help setting effective short-term goals for your business. I’ve started every single one of my 12 businesses with a clear set of short-term goals, and everyday I help other business owners set short-term goals and create a plan of action to achieve them, regardless of what stage of growth they’re in.
~ Alan Melton, Small Business Coach Associates
Why are short term goals important?
Short term goals have a unique benefit to an individual and businesses.
They help create effective strategies
For example, suppose you want to increase your company revenue by 30% before the end of the year. With this short term goal, there are several strategies you can implement to achieve this goal, like, invest in marketing, make decrements to price unit costs, implement seasonal promotions and discounts, etc.
Short term goals provide the platform on which to create an effective strategy for its realization. Such broken down steps and strategies are essential if you want to achieve your short term goals as it makes the process of achievement much more effortless.
They help to provide quick feedback
Getting feedback is vital towards achieving your objectives, as they serve as motivation to your set short term goals. Whether positive or negative, feedback is essential, and short term goals provide the chance to get it.
By definition, short term goals require a shorter time of achievement than much broader long-term goals, and that means milestones are much easily assessed and tracked. Short term milestones help you to align your other tasks to the bigger picture. By doing so, you’ll be able to have quicker feedback in a relatively short amount of time, and this positively impacts your progress towards your long-term goals.
For example, suppose you have a short term goal to expand your customer base to 10,000 within four months, you’ll develop a viable road plan showing clear actions you’ll take to achieve your goal. Then after, say, a month, you’ll be able to tell if your plan is working or not and if you need to adopt other strategies to make it work.
Short term goals give you clear feedback within a shorter time to adjust and make improvements where necessary to achieve your set goals.
They help mitigate procrastination
When you’re plagued with the evil that is procrastination, one way to beat it is to use short term goals coupled with some determination. Short term goals are, by definition, executable within a short amount of time, accurate, clear, and specific. These characteristics of short term goals significantly reduce the effort needed to achieve them compared to long-term goals. Reduced effort to achieve them lessens the need to procrastinate constantly.
This goes to increase the chances of you procrastinating. When your goals ate big, they will take up more effort to accomplish them, and that means it’ll take more for you to see their accomplishment and be motivated to accomplish them right away. So, don’t make a goal-achieving path vague; it’ll easily overwhelm you. Instead, break down your goals and reduce the chances of procrastination.
They keep you focused
Achieving a long-term goal can sometimes seem unrealistic or impossible. There is also the risk you can lose focus as you work towards achieving it. You can also easily have many detours, distractions, and you may need to backtrack and refocus on the right path again. However, when you have clearly defined short term goals that are measurable, realistic, and specific, you will automatically be more focused on achieving them.
Those you know today who pull in massive income streams to their businesses didn’t achieve such feats by just focusing on the big picture (long-term goals). They pen down a clear and achievable roadmap for reaching their ultimate long-term goals and keep track of these small achievements. Achieving these short term goals will add up to reach their ultimate goal. No matter how great your long-term goals are, if you don’t know where to start and what baby steps you can set to get you there, you’ll quickly get lost in time.
Having a list of short term goals, complete with the small actions you need to take to reach those goals, helps keep you focused on your effort and attention. You’ll also not be wasting time on activities that do not foster the realization of your goals which will be a waste of time and energy. Without short term goals, it is pretty easy to get distracted and waste months of your life marking time on the same spot with little or no progress. But when you have clear goals, your eyes are kept on the prize, and you’re less likely to lose sight of what matters.
Tips for setting short term goals
When it comes to setting short term goals, there are many strategies you can use. Here are some quick tips you can use to help you set short term goals for personal or professional advancement:
Use visualization techniques
By visualization, we mean creating mental images of what you desire to achieve and be like, say in 6 months from now. With the short term goal fully visualized, you can then work backward to determine what daily steps you should take and the goals you should set to get to where you want to be. Creating these visual images will also help you fully internalize what you want and what your desires specifically are regarding the future.
Make Sure Your Goals are SMART
In writing your goals , similar to long term goals, you should ensure they align to the SMART model for better focused and more attainable short term goals:
S – Specific: be specific as you state your goal and define precisely what you want to achieve — be as specific as you possibly can.
M – Measurable: you should ensure you have a straightforward way to measure and keep track of your progress, and you move towards attaining your action items.
A – Achievable: Your goals should be attainable. What you desire should be realistically achievable, and you should carefully assess whether or not you can achieve every aspect of your short term goal.
R – Relevant: Is what you’re shooting for necessary? Is it worth working towards the goal now? How does it align with other goals you may want to achieve?
T – Time-Sensitive: for every short term goal, there should be a deadline for accomplishment, and the key is being achievable within a short amount of time, say five months. This helps you to hold yourself accountable. Whether it be a few weeks or months, if the plan is realistic, you’d surely achieve it.
Consider writing your SMART goals down to keep track of your progress. With the SMART methodology, you’ll have a clear path to realizing those short term goals in the not-so-distant future.
Be specific
Drawing from the SMART methodology, including specific details, can help you define the results you want to achieve, as well as the necessary steps you need to take. Let’s take an example: suppose your short term goal is to expand your business’s customer base to 2000 in 3 weeks. You can add specific details to your near term goal, such as publishing social media ads about your product twice daily. These small actions serve as blocks that add up to birth success in your short term goals.
Make goals measurable
Let us also highlight one aspect of the SMART methodology – measurability. Measurability is the quality of your short term goals that allow you to measure and keep track of your progress. This will also help you define the results you want to achieve. Let us take the example of expanding the customer base for your business to 2000 in 3 weeks. To make this goal measurable, you can schedule a check-in where you assess the number of online customers of your products every day, as well as the number of in-person purchases made. That way, you can determine whether you’re on track with your goal or you’d need to adjust your deadline. You’ll also assess how effective the strategy you’re implementing is and where you need to focus your energies for maximum results.
Make your goals achievable
If you set unrealistic goals that you cannot attain, your lack of progress will negatively affect your confidence and motivation. Your goals must be achievable and feasibly possible, as they’d keep you motivated to work towards attaining them.
But there’s a catch; just because your goals are attainable doesn’t mean they are straightforward. Your short term goals may be challenging, but once they are possible to attain, even after hard work, then you can encourage yourself to push through the pain to develop that new skill or meet that business expectation, etc., and boost your confidence even further.
Identify challenges
There’s no achievement without challenges that come along. As such, you should carefully identify and factor in any challenges you may encounter as you pursue your goals. As you identify and understand these challenges before time, you can begin to draw up plans and strategies to overcome or avoid them. This will help maintain your progress because if these same challenges arose unexpectedly, they could throw you off track and even set in discouragement.
Technique to Achieve Your Short term Goal
Having developed your goals, there is the matter of actually achieving them. Here are some tips you can apply to ensure your goals don’t end up as written-down facts but are attained.
Write down your goals.
It is important to pen down your. Documenting them will serve as a reminder and allow you to track your progress. Many people make the mistake of keeping their goals in their brains, convincing themselves they won’t forget. The reality is, your goals don’t carry as much weight written down as they do in your mind. So, pen it down and have it as a reference to keep you focused on achieving them.
Focus on one short term goal
While it is ok to have multiple goals, you shouldn’t have many goals you focus on at a particular time. It is essential to focus on one short term goal or a group of similar short term goals at a time. After all, by definition, short term goals require a short amount of time to accomplish, so you can progressively move from one goal to another only upon completion or when they are similar and can be carried on concomitantly. By doing so, you’d achieve faster than toggling multiple short term goals at once, which can become distracting, and the result is your failure to achieve any.
Develop a List of Milestones
You must identify any important milestones and benchmarks that can serve as indicators when you’re closer to success. Your milestones shouldn’t be so many and should take a relatively short amount of time than the short term goals you’ve set. They should, however, still require some effort to achieve.
Let’s take a short term goal example of incorporating and running social media marketing in 2 months. Here’s a sample list of milestones you can have:
Goal: Incorporating and running social media marketing in 2 months
Milestone #1: Setup suitable social media accounts for the business
Milestone #2: Create two ads daily for the business
Milestone #3: Develop a hashtag for your product
Milestone #4: Create conversation threads about your product on social media, etc.
Create Step-Wise Actions
Once you’ve set your milestones, you then need to break them down again into minimal baby steps you can take towards achieving your short term goals. And the good thing here is, it doesn’t need to be overly complex or a giant leap that’ll last hours daily. Your daily steps are more minor actions. These small steps or tasks can be as small as 10 minutes that sum up your short term goals.
Sticking with the example of incorporating and running social media marketing in 2 months, here are some possible small tasks steps to consider:
Milestone: Setup suitable social media accounts for the business
Daily Step #1: Choose the social media platform(s) to use
Daily Step #2: Research the most suitable type of account(s) to create
Daily Step #3: Create social media account(s)
Daily Step #4: Create a catchy backstory of your business for your social media page, etc.
You can also put the daily tasks into your calendar or to-do list to not miss any tasks.
Share your goals with others
One tip to achieving your short term goals is holding yourself accountable to others. You can share your goals with someone else, like a trusted friend, family member, or colleague. This will promote accountability and push you to be focused on achieving those goals, and you’ll have someone to answer to if you don’t. Depending on your goals, these individuals may even be able to help you achieve them by providing opportunities, advice, encouragement, or support to keep you moving forward .
How to prioritize goals
Having multiple short term goals is commonplace, and to avoid unproductive multitasking , it is essential to prioritize your goals, choosing which to do first and which to do next.
Here are a few steps you can apply to prioritize your short term goals.
List your goals
The first step is to list out all your short term goals. This will lay it all out for you to quickly choose which short term goals to start up with and identify any dependencies that may exist amongst goals.
Tick the most important goals
Having listed out all your goals, the next step is to tick the goals you consider the most important to you. While the definition of “important” may vary from person to person, you generally want to select the most beneficial goals to your life at this point.
Assess the timelines
Having selected the most important goals for your life at this time, the next step is to determine when you would like to achieve your goals. You may, for example, have a short term goal of learning about marketing trends in two weeks for your business. Determining the timeline to each goal will help you identify the goals you should start working on right away and the ones you can push forward to some later time. And as a pro tip, be sure to set realistic timelines for each short term goal so that you don’t set yourself on an impossible task.
Choose which short term goals to focus on right away
Having selected the short term goals that are important to you and assigned realistic timelines to each, you can now use this information to prioritize your goals. For example, goals with a high degree of importance and short achievable timelines can have a greater priority. And as a pro tip, try not to start working toward another goal on your list until you have completed the initial goal with the greater priority, except there is a dependency relationship. The completion of an earlier task requires the commencement or completion of a later task.
Make changes as needed
Having prioritized your goals, it is vital to keep in mind that your priorities can change with time. So, don’t get rigid. Be flexible enough to make any necessary changes to your prioritized goals as needed. For example, you may have had a short term priority goal to improve business productivity within two months. But then, after assessing the reviews from customers and you discovered lapses in your customer service, you may then set a new priority towards improving your customer service within a month or so. Improving your business productivity would now matter less as you’d need to focus on your customer service to ensure you don’t lose your existing customers.
Short term Goals Examples
Business Short term Goals Examples
- Begin an “Employee of the Month” award program.
- Create a profile on a new social media channel.
- Create an employee incentive program
- Develop a new product
- Gain several new customers
- Hire three new marketing employees
- Host giveaway programs
- Implement monthly giveaways for customers on social media.
- Improve business productivity
- Improve your customer service
- Incorporate SMART goals
- Incorporate social media marketing
- Increase business revenue
- Increase product prices by 3%
- Increase social media posting to three times a week.
- Increase traffic on your company’s blog.
- Learn about market trends
- Reduce business overheads
- Select a charity to begin sponsoring.
- Setup television advertisements
Career Short term Goals Examples
- Attend networking events
- Develop confidence
- Focus on the next step
- Get a professional certification
- Get Early to Work
- Get feedback on your work
- Improve your communication skills
- Organize your workstation
- Remove Procrastination
Financial Short term Goals
- Create multiple income streams
- Eliminate Your Credit Card Debt
- Reduce your monthly expenses
- Track your monthly budget
Study Short term Goals
- Build your ability to take notes in lectures
- Know your professor
- Spend less time on TV
- Spend your free time in the library
- Submit your assignments a week before the deadline
So there you have it. Here’s the article on long-term goals .
Do you have any ideas that we overlooked? If so, comment below
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Define Your Short-Term Goals With These 3 Components for Long-Term Success
Hone your short-term goals using these three components to turn strategic planning into tactical execution.
By Laquisha Milner • Aug 12, 2022
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Short-term business goals are the secret ingredient to achieving long-term company goals. Short-term goals act as the bridge between the broad, strategic view of the C-suite and the focused, tactical lens of managers and employees by breaking the over-arching vision into smaller pieces. They allow employees to take on manageable workloads while demonstrating progress towards that larger goal.
When setting short-term goals, you must define how, how much and who. These components are critical for turning strategic planning into tactical execution.
Related: Why Short-Term Goals Lead to Long-Term Rewards
The How: Defining objectives
If the goal is the destination, then objectives are the directions. Objectives are tactical steps taken to achieve an outcome. But like directions, there can be more than one way to reach a destination. It's important to remember that unlike goals, which are fixed, objectives can be changed. How a goal is achieved is not as important as attaining it. If something doesn't work, then try something else.
Defining objectives needs to be a group effort. Managers should include their teams in a brainstorming session and generate as many ideas as possible. Write all of them down, from logical to improbable; there are no wrong answers.
The purpose of this exercise is twofold. First, it gives employees a sense of ownership and creates a deeper connection to the contribution of their work. Second, providing a list of options saves time in the long run. If one plan doesn't work, you can move right on to the next without having to press pause to think of a new approach.
Next is sorting through and ranking all the ideas. Which ones are most likely to work? What can be implemented and tested quickly? A thoughtful comb-through will help the team prioritize which ideas should be tried first, setting your first objectives. Keep in mind that objectives don't have to be run one at a time. When ranking your list, look for opportunities to run objectives in tandem, like A/B split testing.
Objectives must be clearly defined before being implemented. There need to be clear instructions for how the work will be done, how much of an investment it is, what the expected outcomes are and how long it will take. This clarity is necessary for measuring progress. You need to know what you are looking for and how that outcome relates to the work being done.
Once objectives are established at the team level, managers must communicate with one another to develop interdependencies and prioritize resource use, such as the tech and creative departments. Not only does this prevent backlogs and slowdowns, but it also creates project transparency. Managers can see where their projects depend on each other and convey that importance to their team members.
Related: Why Our Brains Like Short-Term Goals
The How Much: Measurement
All objectives must be measurable . If it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed. Without some way of benchmarking progress, you have no idea if your efforts are bearing fruit. Measuring an objective should be part of the defining process before implementation. Usually, this is in the form of a KPI, but if one cannot be correlated to an objective's progress, then setting up a measurable baseline will do.
In addition to being measured, objectives need to be on a strict timeframe. Short-term goals are just that – short on time. Objectives that take too long to produce a result are not viable options. Additionally, set benchmarks from the outset. These act as early indicators and prevent time wasted. This much progress is expected in two weeks, this much in four. If these predictions aren't met, it's time to try something else.
Measurement should be an ongoing process, not a one-and-done task. An objective can show promise at the start, but slow down at the halfway mark. This is why consistent check-ins are vital.
Related: The 5 Golden Rules of Goal-Setting
The Who: Maintaining accountability
Every goal needs a navigator: someone responsible for overseeing the chaos and ensuring all the moving parts are moving in the same direction. Who plays this role is different in any company. It can be a chief operations officer, a governance officer or even an experienced manager. Regardless of title, whoever takes this role is responsible for overseeing every functional piece of achieving that goal.
They are responsible for working with the functional managers of participating teams and ensuring they communicate with each other. They are consistently checking in with teams and measuring objective progress. They hold objectives to their timetables and make the call to pivot when progress isn't keeping up. When new information comes in, it is up to them to look at the plan and decide what changes need to be made. Risk management and contingencies are their responsibility.
Two things that will be vital to their success are documenting everything and remaining impartial . If something isn't written down, then it doesn't count. You cannot find success by working off the assumption that people always understand you. Having thorough documentation for each step of the process provides something to refer to and produces a record of what did and did not work to better inform decisions for the next round of goal setting.
Impartiality is essential because it prevents you from getting bogged down with unimportant details. It does not matter how managers structure their teams, so long as they produce results. It does not matter how much potential an objective has, if it does not show progress in the allotted time frame, you move to the next one.
The transition from strategic vision to tangible results can be a bumpy one. As the saying goes, "Easier said than done." And while you can't account for the unknown, you can plan for it by setting clear guidelines. Defining how work will be done, how success will be measured and who will be responsible creates a framework that is flexible enough to adapt to changes while being sturdy enough to see you through.
Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor
CEO of KServicing
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Setting Short- and Long-Term Goals for Your Business
People use goals to motivate themselves in all areas of life, including sports, school, and their career. However, goals are just as important at any stage of running a business. In fact, Harvard researchers have looked into the importance of goals and found that those who set goals are 10 times more successful than those who don’t. In other words, goals provide us with a sense of purpose and a path forward. It gives us something to work toward, which helps keep us focused on the task at hand.
Setting goals for what you want to accomplish as an entrepreneur and what you want to achieve with your business can make a tremendous difference in your likelihood of success. To create a strong business plan, develop a marketing strategy, and lead your business forward, you need to set critical goals for your business development.
It’s important to note that you’ll need to have a few different types of goals for your business. You will have goals ranging from tasks that you want to accomplish tomorrow to what you would like to achieve in the next few years. Your goals might also change as your business develops and you see new potential areas for growth. You may even realize that you have different goals from when you started your business journey.
However, the critical component lies in making sure that you regularly set goals and revisit your milestones so that you can gauge your performance, adjust when necessary, and continue to inspire yourself to keep moving forward. This article will dive into the importance of having a short- and long-term plan and provide tips for setting goals for your business.
What are short-term goals?
Short-term goals refer to goals that you would like to accomplish in the near future. The near future might include any period of time up to about a year. You might have a series of short-term goals, such as a goal for the day, week, and month, and then your longer-term goals for the year.
It can be a challenge to work only with long-term goals. Often, the endpoint for your long-term goal will be further off in the future, so creating short-term goals helps you remain focused on the task at hand. It will help give your brain that little reward for reaching a smaller goal on the path toward your longer-term goals.
You will also be able to measure progress as you pass the milestones indicating that you are getting closer to reaching your long-term ambitions. You want the goals you set to be specific so you can concretely know if you’ve accomplished them. Your short-term goals should also outline the time frame in which you’d like to accomplish the goals.
Examples of Short-Term Goals
Short-term goals can take various forms depending on your particular industry. Consider the different areas of the business that you need to develop. You might have short-term goals like:
- Incorporating your business and filing your paperwork
- Building your website
- Building a social media presence for your business
- Posting three times per week on social media to attract attention to your company
- Securing your first client
These types of goals can often be reached within a few weeks and will help you gauge your progress as you begin to build your small business.
What are long-term goals?
Long-term goals describe the milestones you want to reach further in the future. This is where you begin to articulate your one-, five-, and 10-year plans for your business. You want to think about your final ambitions for your business and what you want to accomplish as an entrepreneur.
Like your short-term goals, your long-term goals should be specific and have a defined amount of time in which you want to accomplish them. Keep in mind that your short- and long-term goals should work together. By setting your long-term goals and knowing what you want to accomplish professionally years into your business, you can start to set short-term goals that will give you stepping stones to follow along the way. This form of working backward benefits many people as they set their short- and long-term goals.
Examples of Long-Term Goals
As a small business owner, your long-term goals can look at different aspects of your business growth and development. You might have long-term goals like:
- Running your small business full time, with the finances to quit your traditional job
- Generating a specific amount of revenue each year
- Achieving the growth you need to hire employees
- Increasing your company’s market share by a certain percentage over the next two years
These goals help you see where you want to take your business, providing you with the motivation to stay on course.
Tips for Setting Goals for Your Business
Every entrepreneur will need to set goals that matter to them. Only you know what you want to accomplish with your business and what you want to focus on as a small business owner.
Regardless of your goals, though, there are a few strategies to help you make the most out of your goal-setting. We recommend that you:
- Use “SMART” goals
Set realistic and stretch goals
Prioritize your goals, use smart goals.
SMART goals are those that follow the specific criteria of being:
This method helps to develop milestones that provide you with the most information and make it easier to gauge your progress. However, it’s important to understand what SMART goals aren’t. For example, goals like creating a new website, hiring an assistant in the next week, or increasing sales all fail the SMART goals guidelines.
The first doesn’t give a deadline, which means it’s not timely. The second will be nearly impossible to do in a week (you need to post the job, screen applicants, conduct interviews, and make an offer), which means the goal is not achievable. Finally, the last goal doesn’t provide any means of measuring success — how much do you want to increase sales by and in what time frame? You have no way of knowing if you succeeded.
Remember that one of the most important points of a goal is to motivate you to keep working toward success. Therefore, you want to make sure you employ two main categories: stretch goals (that you must reach to achieve the goal) and realistic goals (that you know you can accomplish with some hard work).
Your realistic goals will help you maintain motivation by providing you with steady, positive feedback. As you reach these goals, you’ll build your confidence and drive to keep moving forward. At the same time, your stretch goals will challenge you to see what you can do. They will not allow you to get complacent but will push you to keep striving. Together, these two goals will help you accomplish more.
Many entrepreneurs make the common mistake of jumping in with their business and charging forward without taking the time to set these types of goals. However, without them, it’s easy for small business owners to get discouraged when they don’t achieve noteworthy success very quickly. By trying to do everything at once rather than focusing on a specific goal path, these entrepreneurs can find themselves burning through their budgets and personal energy reserves. It’s also easy to become distracted while working without a clear goal in mind to keep moving forward.
As you begin to develop your goals, you’ll find that you have a number of milestones to hit across various areas of your business. Since you can’t work on different projects and areas of your business at one time, you need to prioritize your goals and know where your focus should lie.
To help yourself, develop a list of your goals and consider the following questions:
- Does it matter the order that the goals are achieved?
- Which goals keep you focused on the top priorities for the company?
- Do you need to create more short-term goals for any of the long-term goals?
Prioritizing your goals will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed in response to different action items vying for your attention. You’ll be able to focus on the tasks that have the biggest impact first and work your way down the line.
Revisit your goals and your prioritization order regularly, as well. For short-term goals, consider checking in weekly or monthly. Just five minutes to read over the list can help you see if listed items need any adjustments. For long-term goals, look at your progress and milestones every six to 12 months. See how well you progress and what needs adjustment.
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If you’re in the process of starting or growing your business, setting short- and long-term goals can help you thrive. At ZenBusiness, we want to make it easy for entrepreneurs to navigate the business world. Explore our resources and see how many items you can cross off your goals list as you establish your organization.
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IMAGES
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COMMENTS
Preparing a financial plan for your business is important if you plan to pursue business finance options such as loans, according to Inc. Business finance companies look at the short-term viability as well as the long-term potential of a bu...
Goals are important in curriculum planning because they determine what the student will accomplish. The goals assist the educators in staying focused on the objective of the instruction and in determining what the student will do to reach t...
Medium-term goals are set to be achieved somewhere between a person’s short-term goals and his long-term goals. SparkPeople notes that after a while, the daily tasks associated with achieving long-term goals might begin to seem boring.
Setting business goals in the short term is generally from 1-3 months time. Usually, setting a 3 month (quarterly) period is a good timeframe to satisfy the:
An example of a short-term goal is to increase your advertising budget each month for the next three months. An example of a long-term business goal that the
9 Short term business goals for your business · 1. Hire your first employee · 2. Improve productivity · 3. Provide awesome customer service · 4.
1. Raise prices. Increasing prices can be the fastest way to boost profit. Because price increases fall right to the bottom line profits of a business.
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The term 'short' is key in describing short-term goals. They define business goals you want to achieve in the near future, which can span from a week to a year
Short term goals form an integral part of success in whatever you do, be it business, career, education, health, etc. They focus on goals that can be achieved
Examples of short-term business goals · Increase product prices by 3% over the next three months. · Hire three new marketing employees over the
Short-term goals are specific objectives that your company aims to reach over several weeks, or months, and no more than one year. Your short-
Short-term business goals are the secret ingredient to achieving long-term company goals. Short-term goals act as the bridge between the broad
Examples of Short-Term Goals · Incorporating your business and filing your paperwork · Building your website · Building a social media presence for your business