Examples of Business Goals & Objectives

According to the Iowa State University Extension website, a goal is a general statement of achievement while an objective is a specific step or action you take to reach your goal. Goals and objectives are important to the entrepreneur, as they clarify the purpose of the business and help identify necessary actions. Goals can involve areas such as profitability, growth and customer service.


Profitability

A common business goal is to run a profitable operation, which typically means increasing revenue while limiting expenses. Revenue objectives could consist of increasing annual sales by 10 percent or landing three new accounts each month. Expense objectives could involve finding a new operating facility that decreases your rent by $200 a month or cutting monthly utility bills by 15 percent.

Customer Service
Examples of customer service goals are to develop a perception that your company is easy to do business with or to improve your response time to customer complaints. Objectives to help meet these goals could be increasing your customer service staff from one to three workers by the end of the year or implementing a policy where customers are guaranteed to receive a return phone call before the end of the business day.

Retention

If you've experienced a problem with employee turnover, your overall goal could be to improve retention. To achieve this goal, your objective might be to develop and implement a training program that details new-hire activities for the first 90 days on the job. You also could implement one-on-one meetings with your employees in an effort to build rapport and find out what's on their mind.

Efficiency

Another goal could be to become more efficient in your business operation as a way to increase productivity. To improve efficiency, you could challenge your salespeople to improve their closing ratio from 30 percent to 45 percent. If you distribute a product, you might consider implementing a new shipping procedure that improves your delivery time from four days to two.

Growth

Perhaps your goal is to grow your business operation. If you own a franchise unit, for example, your objective might be to open three more units within a five-year period. If you operate a retail store, your objective might be to increase your selling space by 25 percent by completing an addition to your building within a year.

Does everyone have a business in them?

"It's not beyond anyone but it certainly doesn't work for some people. It's strange isn't it that Business Link have an introductory section on their site which is headed 'find out whether you can work for yourself' that somewhat suggests they doubt it works for everyone."

"You have to have the fire in your belly to even consider starting up your own business. By the evidence, the vast majority don't have it. There are sacrifices and extra worries and responsibilities you take on which I don't think many are prepared to entertain. The allure of the 9-5 set time set wage every week is too easy to go along with."

"I think the potential is there for everyone to create their own business - although of course the quality of each will vary significantly. That said, can everyone manage to successfully run their own business for a significant length of time? Well, given the right tool set and the desire/ability to utilise the right resources then perhaps. Do most people want to? I don't think so at all.

"At the end of the day, I think many people would create a business where they simply attained the position of a high ranking employee, rather than as a dynamic business owner with the urge to expand and grow. Nothing wrong with wanting the security that that would bring, but the loss of drive could lead to catastrophic failure in the long run."

"I think you will find that going by 80% of the threads on this forum that most people obviously don't. Reasons? I would take a guess at lack of common sense seconded by lack of courage. Get those two together with some finance and you are on your way, for better or worse."

"Who created this daft idea? Is this supposed to encourage people to go into business? And in this current economic climate? How irresponsible. The ability to run your own business is one thing, to make a profit while doing it, is quite another. Maybe the powers that be are looking for extra revenue in tax and VAT."

"Short answer no. Not everybody, not even a majority. Most people can do any job but not all have what it takes to run their own business. It's not just about having some knowledge to carry out the business, but most importantly it's having the grit and determination to keep going when most have given up long before. You can learn just about anything, but you cannot give people a backbone, and sadly some just don't have it in them."

"No, not everybody has a business in them, and this is a political move to try and get people to start new businesses rather than just accept redundancy/the sack and claim benefits. It might be seen as a cynical ploy, but despite higher failure rates of new businesses in recessions, if at least some startups are attempted and become successful than we have at least those successes, which we might not have had. There are those who start the fire and at the other end of the spectrum there are those who tend them. All provide value in some way, but at the moment we are trying to get as much value from the fire raisers as possible because the market for fire carers is getting smaller. We need the startups by fire makers despite high failure rates."

"Has everyone got it in them to be a a employee? Not in my experience. To even suggest that everyone has the ability to run a business is just plain daft. The vast majority of people like security or at least the perception of it which is what a job is, but that perception is better than the chaos of running a business. Look at the failures of business as it is and that is from motivated people who want to do it. Having having said that, the future of being an employee is very limited in western countries so creating a life you are in control of as much as possible is to be encouraged but you have to want to and want to a lot as well as having the ability to do so."

In my humble opinion I don't think business is for everyone. There are many key skills that are needed to run your own business - whether you are doing something like cleaning or offering a bespoke service. When an individual has a job, they are focussed on the tasks that they are responsible for and may have absolutely no idea what it takes to run and manage the whole business whether large or small. Running your own business you have to wear many hats, cleaning, management, determination, accounting, customer service, planning, cash flow, making a profit not just turning money over, H&S ..... I could go on! There are many people who enter business and fail very quickly as they really don't understand what it actually takes to make profits and soon realise they don't possess the skills or determination. Entering or starting a business should not be taken lightly."