Short-Term Goals for Business: Charting the Path to Long-Term Success

In the entrepreneur world we hear a lot about long and short term goals for businesses, but that doesn’t always include an actual explanation of what those are or why each one is important. Obviously, your business should have goals. Most people start off with “I want to start a business that ______,” and then go to “I’d like my business to survive” and perhaps even reach “I’d like to grow my business to ____.” But how do you get there? And what do these goals actually look like in practice? 

This is where we start hearing words like SMART goals, business strategy, measurable goals, long term ambitions, etc. and our eyes start to blur as the headache comes on. Don’t worry! Learning to set short term business goals is the first step on this adventure, and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. We’ll go through the basics and some practical tips together so you can feel confident about sending your business in the right direction.

The Interplay of Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

First, it’s important to know the difference between short term and long term goals. 

As you might’ve guessed from the name, long term goals take a long time whereas short term goals can be achieved in the foreseeable future, but there’s a bit more to it than that.

The Bigger Picture

So if long term goals are the bigger picture, short term goals are the individual brush strokes that get us to the final product. Examples could include increasing sales by 10% by the end of Q1, decreasing production time for a product by 20%, or making enough revenue to cover operation costs and pay yourself a decent wage during the year. You use short term milestones to build up to the ultimate long term goal. 

Prioritizing Immediate Needs

There are some exceptions to this rule. Sometimes, short term goals will be less about reaching a long term goal and more about addressing an immediate need. For example, if you need a project management tool to run your business but the one you’ve been using has gotten too expensive, a short term goal is to find an affordable software (probably by the end of the month). 

Your business’ needs might change suddenly depending on external circumstances, which means sometimes you’ll have to prioritize an immediate need by making it a short term goal in your business plan even if it doesn’t lead into a future ambition two or three years down the road. After all, you’ve got to make it through this quarter to make it to next year. At the same time, try not to completely ignore those short term goals you worked so hard to map out so you’ll end up where you wanted in a few years; the trick is to strike a balance between putting out the daily fires of running a business and working towards your future vision. Otherwise that future vision will never come to fruition. 

Steps to Setting Effective Short Term Goals

There are a couple of steps to setting effective short term goals – after all, if you set an impossible goal it won’t end up being much use at all for you in the long run. Unrealistic goals are more likely to overwhelm you and stress you out than they are to grow your business. 

SMART Goals Framework

If you’ve ever taken a business class you’ve probably heard the term “SMART goals” thrown around at least once (they even popped up in one of my sister’s engineering courses!). It is equally as probable that your professor didn’t actually explain what they are, which is a tragedy considering how useful this acronym is.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You may have noticed that most of the examples of long and short term goals given above mentioned a specific change in the business, a timeframe, and were goals that would be practical improvements for a business’ operations. The biggest exception would be wanting to make sure your business is in a comfortable place in four years – not that this is a bad goal, but it could use some improvements to really make it SMART. Let’s make this example goal a better goal together by looking through the SMART standard:

S – specific: This goal is currently too vague. What exactly do you mean by a “comfortable place”? Let’s get specific; instead of saying we want our business to be in a comfortable place, let’s say that we want enough average monthly revenue to cover operations & maintenance and to pay yourself a monthly wage of $4,000, that we want enough in savings to cover 6 months of business expenses, and that we want 1 full-time employee so that taking a vacation doesn’t mean production completely stops. Which, really, is three different long term goals!

M – measurable: Now that we’ve gotten more specific we’re closer, but for these goals to truly be measurable you’ll need some actual numbers. How much are operations & maintenance costs and are they expected to increase? That’ll impact how much you need to put in savings each month and how much monthly revenue you’ll need to make. What will that employee’s salary be, including benefits, and how long will they be working before they begin to lead to growth for the business? These answers will depend on the individual business, but for this example we’ll say operations & maintenance costs are $4,500 a month (not including your salary), and you plan to hire someone and pay them $3,000 a month at some point, with an expected 6 months to make an ROI. That means that before the employee, monthly costs are $8,500 and after hiring someone monthly costs are $11,500. This is just the monthly expenses, so your revenue goal would need to be higher than this in order to provide a profit and account for any unexpected expenses. 

A – achievable: This too will depend on the individual business, but the main question to ask here is: is it feasible for me to consistently make above $11,500 monthly in 3.5 years (so we can afford to hire someone)? If the answer is no, you might want to extend the time frame and/or look for a way to cut costs. For example, let’s say that 4 years is too short a time frame for these goals, but 5 years is reasonable.

R – relevant: This goal was already relevant, so no changes needed here!

T – time-bound: This goal was already time-bound as well, so no additions here either!

So, our final SMART goal is actually 3 goals: In five years we want an average monthly revenue of $16,000 (assuming a 40% profit margin above our regular expenses), $70,000 in savings, and 1 full-time employee who has been working for at least 6 months. The next step would be to plan out a series of SMART short term goals over the course of the next five years to reach all three long-term goals.

Aligning with Business Objectives

One thing the SMART business strategy doesn’t cover is aligning your goals with the larger vision of your business. The vision you have for your business and what it looks like is unique. It sets your company apart from everyone else and gives it a special touch that your clients can’t get anywhere else. It’s a reflection of your values and mission. The heart of the whole operation, so to speak. Which means it’s important to make sure that your goals line up with the business you want to create and keep the big picture you had when you first started in mind. The main characteristic that sets small businesses apart from big corporations is that special touch of humanity that keeps you from being another cookie-cutter corporation that feels robotic and heartless. So if you want, add an H on to that acronym for Heart (even though SMARTH doesn’t sound nearly as catchy).

Examples of Short Term Business Goals

Okay, we’ve talked a lot about the big picture and how to set goals, but not much about what short term goals actually look like! There’s a wide range of what can fall under the umbrella of  “short term goal,” so this is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a starting point that you can build on as you get more comfortable planning your business strategy.

Boosting Brand Awareness

If you’re hoping to grow your revenue, boosting brand awareness is a great place to start! This helps you to market to your target audience, get a clearer picture of your businesses “image”, and reach a broader group of potential clients. Examples of short-term goals to boost brand awareness in the SMART framework include going to at least two networking events in the next 6 months, or gathering data on your website’s search rankings and setting the task to write one blog focused on SEO improvement every week for all of Q2. A lot of these measures won’t increase sales immediately, but they’ll help bring in clients in the long term!

Enhancing Customer Satisfaction

If you’re wanting to build a strong referral program or have return customers, enhancing customer satisfaction is step 1. You’ll probably gain more business from the personal referrals of happy customers and repeat clients than you could ever hope to find through social media, which means creating happy customers is crucial. Examples of short-term goals to enhance customer satisfaction include gathering feedback from at least 3 clients every month or optimizing your client project processes to be more efficient within the next 6 months.

Financial and Sales Objectives

Financial and sales objectives may be the most common examples of short term goals, but it’s important to remember that these aren’t just increasing revenue for the sake of it. When you hope to make $16,000 monthly in 5 years but currently only make $5,000 monthly, you make up that gap by increasing sales gradually over time. So making SMART short term goals like raising revenue by 20% by the end of the year are the stepping stones that get you to those big long term financial goals. These objectives should be realistic and sustainable, but also a little challenging. Stretch your capacity to find that sweet spot between growth and burn out while being honest with yourself about how much your team can handle.

The Role of Team Members in Goal Achievement

No man is an island, especially when it comes to running a small business. Achieving goals isn’t your responsibility alone – your team members will help you get your business where it needs to go.

Collaborative Goal Setting

The first step to involving your team members in achieving goals for your business is including them in the conversation about setting goals. Your team members can give you valuable insight into what is realistic, creative ideas on potential goals and ways to achieve them, and they might even have goals just for themselves within their roles. It’s good to encourage your team to have personal goals at work in addition to the goals you set for the business as a whole. This also gives you the chance to work towards creating an empowered team through clear and open communication and building trust between your team and yourself, which is a great goal in and of itself.

Performance Measurement and KPIs

It’s important to remember that your team members will have an impact on how quickly you can achieve your goals. Keeping track of their performance and team-wide KPIs (key performance indicators) will help you to know how to time goals and how the different capacity of each team member impacts the day-to-day functions of your business. By adjusting your strategies based on your team’s strengths and weaknesses you’ll be able to optimize your business to work like a well-oiled machine, as opposed to a squeaky shopping cart with a wobbly wheel (functional, but inefficient).

Final Thoughts

As you set short term goals and plan out your progress over time, make sure to update your short term goals regularly to reflect how your business has progressed, what you’ve learned about your team’s capacity limits, and what is realistically achievable, whether that’s increasing or lowering your goals, speeding them up or spacing them out. 

Wherever you are in your goal setting journey, Upwell has resources that can make the process simpler, from our Team Capacity Planning Masterclass to the Client Capacity & Revenue Planner. Check out our digital shop, The Visionary Vault,  to find a treasure trove of resources for all your business needs!