Tag: goals

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Your 2013 Mid-Year Check-In — 5 Steps to End 2013 With a Bang Rather Than a Whimper

With 2013 half over, it’s time to pause, take a breath, and see if you’re on track with your goals.

 

This is an essential part of running a successful business — taking structured time throughout the year to work ON your biz and make sure the path you’re on is, in fact, the path you want to be on.

 

Don’t do this and you’re just asking to build a biz that doesn’t serve you (not to mention waking up one more morning and realizing your actual results are nowhere near what you want them to be).

 

We don’t want that to happen to you so let’s get started with your Mid-Year Check-In.

 

Now there are a lot of ways to do this, I’ll share some steps I use and you can modify or implement to make it work for you.

 

1. Block off time in your calendar. Maybe it’s a couple of hours, maybe it’s a full day, but it’s important to make this commitment to yourself.

 

2. Gather the necessary documents. You’ll need your marketing calendar and your revenue report, plus you’ll need the goals and plan you put together at the beginning of 2013. (What? You didn’t write down your goals or put a plan together for 2013? Well let’s put that aside for now — but know we’ll be coming back to that in another article.)

 

3. Take some time to analyze where your biz is right now. Now this is NOT about judging yourself or your biz, all you’re doing is taking a realistic picture of where your biz is at this moment. And I also want you to review your initial 2013 goals and plans.(If you have them — if you don’t, I suspect you have some hazy idea in your head where you wanted to be in your biz at this point in 2013 so take some time to write that down just so you have something to compare.)

 

Where are you on track? Where are you off track? The places where you’re off track, was there a time this year where things were clicking and then they stopped? And how off track are you?

 

And for all the places where you’re on track — give yourself a big congratulations!

 

4. Okay so now that you know where you are and how that compares to where you wanted to go, now it’s time to look at the rest of the year. Do you want to continue on the same path? Do you want to change paths? Did you lose the path and you need to retrace your steps to get back on the path?

 

This might be a good place to do a little journaling or maybe some meditation or some other sort of inner check in to decide what you want the rest of your year to look like.

 

5. Put your plan together. Get out all your calendars — your meeting calendar and your marketing/promo calendar — and actually put your plan to paper. This is CRUCIAL — successful people have WRITTEN plans and goals and you are FAR more likely to actually achieve your goals if they’re written down. (And this isn’t just me saying it — there’s an actual study out there about it.)

 

And I have 2 bonus tips — first make sure you give yourself a pat on the back — this is FANTASTIC you did this for yourself. And don’t forget to start working your plan (a plan is great but now it’s time to actually implement).

Categories
Business Ideas

3 Steps to Starting the New Year on The Right Foot for Your Business

There’s no better time to take stock of your business than the time between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It’s “out with the old, in with the new” and that includes out with anything that isn’t serving you or your business at the highest level, and in with what you want your business to look like.

To help you get on track for the fresh New Year and all it’s possibilities, I thought I’d share 3 simple steps to get you and your business started on the right foot.

1. Start by cleaning out the old year. Are you surrounded by stacks of papers or old files? Now is the time to clean those up and make room for all the new business and opportunities that are bound to come your way (unless there’s no room for them).

What about old products or programs? Is everything you’re offering in your business still a good fit? Or maybe there’s something you’ve outgrown or doesn’t work with your brand anymore?

And don’t forget to look at your mindset or your habits. What are you still not doing you know you should be? What habits or blocks are you finally ready to ditch for good?

Get it all out there. Write everything down you want to throw out with the old year. Then you may want to destroy it — burn the paper or shred it. Remember, this is all about clearing away what you don’t want or don’t need anymore.

2. Be grateful for what you HAVE accomplished. Now that you’ve gotten rid of the old and worn out, don’t forget to take a moment and write down everything you’ve accomplished last year. What are you grateful for? What are you most proud of? It’s time to celebrate your accomplishments — take the time to do this. (If you’re anything like me, this is the first thing to go. It’s difficult for me to celebrate anything, I’m constantly looking at all the things I WANTED to do and didn’t.)

3. Now, get set up for the New Year. Some of the things I do include getting my new calendar in place and writing down my goals in it. Then I put together a marketing and promotional plan for the year so I can reach those goals.

You also may want to take some time to lay out a plan for getting rid of those blocks. Is there a program you need to buy? A coach you need to hire? Or maybe there’s something you need to implement. (Ditto for the changing those habits — what do you need to do to ditch those old habits that no longer serve you for good?)

Now, when you set up a plan, make sure you do what many people do when training their dogs — set yourself up for success. Create the plan with your success in mind. Don’t make it so overwhelming or paint yourself in a corner so there’s no way for you to succeed. Push yourself but be realistic too. There’s no shame in taking small steps toward your goal — the only shame is making yourself feel bad because you didn’t give yourself a realistic plan to meet your goals.

And, whatever you do, don’t forget to celebrate! You deserve it.

Categories
People & Relationships

A Crystal Clear Vision Ensures Success Throughout Your Organization

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With steadily increasing global competition, it is more important than ever that each employee in your organization have a clear understanding of the company’s overall vision, be in alignment with the organizational goals, and have identified how their day to day activities contribute to the accomplishment of these objectives.
No longer do people have the luxury of arriving at work, completing their assigned tasks, and going home, thinking, magically, that everything will continue to work out as before. We are experiencing a rapidly changing business climate, which demands shifts in attitudes and creative thinking in order to meet the challenges of the future.
How can your company accomplish this throughout your organization?
Beginning, as author Steven Covey, reminds us, “with the end in mind.” As an executive, you must ask yourself and your team what the “ideal” looks like in each key area. In sales, for example, what would be the ideal situation? How would it appear? What about manufacturing, administration, and distribution? If everything were operating perfectly, how would you describe it?
Bringing key management together for this type of strategic planing session will result in your having identified a crystal clear vision for the entire organization, with each and every segment of the business functioning at it’s optimal level.
This visioning exercise can then be adapted and used by each department to create a “mini” version for their own area of responsibility and, further, to the individual, enabling she or he to relate their job to the bigger picture as well as their personal goals.
Once you have a clear vision of what the ideal would be in each area of your organization, the next step is to identify several goals by which you can measure your progress. For the sake of this exercise, we’ll use a one year time frame, since this is a reasonable period to institute change, while allowing you to experience success early on.
Looking at each segment of your business, what would have to happen to accomplish your ideal vision? If, for example, in distribution, the ideal was to achieve 100% on time delivery and no more than a 72 hour turnaround, what are the measurable goals that would support it’s accomplishment?
When setting goals, it is important to use the S.M.A.R.T. method , whereby each goals is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timed. Specifically, what will you accomplish by when? Then, from your list of goals, you can develop 30–90 day milestones and further reduce those to identify the daily actions that must be taken in order to succeed.
For example, part of the vision for your sales department might be, “To be the best in our industry. To be the ‘gold standard’ by which our competition measures itself against.” This will likely translate to an increase in sales, improved customer retention, better referrals and so on.
From this, the sales woman in your New Jersey territory may, looking at her personal vision and goals, decide she wants to earn 50% more in commissions and calculates that this would require XX dollars in sales each quarter. From this, she has determined, based on past performance, how many sales per month she needs and, further, how many presentations she needs to make each week. This breaks down further into how many calls she needs to make each day in order to accomplish this, what additional systems she might implement to achieve better customer retention, and which networking functions would best support her vision.
With each and every individual, in each and every department, holding the same, clear vision and knowing their role in it’s accomplishment, you will experience a level of success beyond your wildest expectations.
JimDonovanPhoto.jpgJim Donovan, is the author of several critically acclaimed self-help and business books, published in 22 countries, a highly sought after motivational speaker, and the President of Jim Donovan Associates, a peak performance consulting company that offers programs and services to help companies grow and prosper in today’s competitive marketplace. To learn more visit JimDonovanAssociates.com.