Setting SMART goals is a powerful goal-setting strategy.
My version of the word SMART stands for:

•          S          Shared
•          M         Measurable
•          A          Attainable
•          R          Relevant
•          T          Time Based

Shared
Both the Manager and Employee have to feel it’s a good goal.  The goal has maximum buy-in when the subordinate sets it and both people commit to hitting it.

Measurable
The goal can be quantified or is at least tangible.  For example, ‘Move average contract size from $1,500 to $1,650.’  All goals should have a #, $ or % sign – otherwise they are too hazy.

Attainable
While it’s great to set lofty goals, you want goals to be achievable in order to build a culture of achievement.

Relevant
The goal has to be relevant and aligned with the objectives or goals the business area or company is working towards.  Otherwise, in a vacuum it may seem like a good goal, but no one really cares about it.

Time Based
Goals should be broken down into a sequence of goals based on time.  For example, ‘Ten calls per day this week.’  And those goals should be placed directly into your calendar for the exact time & day you’ll do the work.

Also, break the habit of allowing people to have all their goals due on the last day of the quarter.  It’s better to pepper the goals throughout the month/quarter/year.

How SMART are your goals for 2nd Quarter ?

The four areas that SMART Goals in your business are needed for are:

1. Revenue. Determine a solid revenue goal for the next twelve months.

2. Profit. Employees need a profit goal to guide them.

3. Customer Service. I highly recommend using the Net Promoter Score here. It’s the single easiest way to measure true satisfaction.

4. Employee Satisfaction. I also recommend using the Net Promoter Score for establishing the benchmark for employee satisfaction as well – one number from one easy question.

For each of these areas, leadership needs to determine a goal for each area. To ensure that the goals they come up with are SMART, I use these guidelines to help me (mine feature a slight variation on the popular business acronym):

S – Shared – Sharing goals with a coach, mentor or team member adds a little extra pressure to hit them.  I even share them with suppliers and clients.

M – Measurable – Put a number on each goal so you can easily say if the goals were hit or missed. Make the goals clear. Hazy goals produce hazy results.

A – Attainable – Your goal has to be remotely possible for it to be included.

R – Relevant – Ensure that all goals are worth working on.

T – Time-based – Put a date on goals if they’re due before December 31^st.

Once you have the goals set and the team is committed to hitting them, the next thing you need to do is discuss boundaries. That is to say, yes, you want to hit these goals, but to what extent? Would you work 90 hours a week to hit them, or at maximum, 45?  Would you give up equity in the company to raise money to help you hire people to hit the goals? What won’t you do?

Here are some example points that are worth discussing while you create your own list of boundaries:

· Amount of debt you’ll take on

· Number of hours you’ll work

· Number of days traveling you’re willing to put up with

· Percentage of profits you will share, 0-100%

· Percentage of equity you will give up in the company, 0-100%

· Will you complete any acquisitions? If so, how many?

· Would you fire ‘C’ or ‘B’ players? When?

It’s critical to have the discussions in advance.  Boundaries are like values–you can’t compromise them to win.

Stop saying you want to do things.  Stop saying you want to learn things.  Stop saying you want to try things.  Stop talking about your “bucket list” and start crossing things off of it.

I talked via email with a friend in Boston, David Hauser, CEO of Grasshopper. He’d just come back from a one-hour bike ride in the dead of winter with a fellow entrepreneur, Kris Kaplan. David and Kris aren’t talking about it. They’re doing it. Kris has become a maniacally focused athlete and when he’s not having fun, he’s working, and hard.  David has an annual pass to a Go Kart Race track – awesome.  Still makes me laugh. Make a commitment to stop saying you’re going to do something and go ahead and do it.

Watch these women who finally stopped saying they were going to do an IronMan and did it.  Imagine the feeling of victory they had (the next day). What are you going to DO today ?  Perhaps try Teamly to help you get it done.

I don’t need to push many Entrepreneurs to set goals.  We do that naturally.

I do, however, need to push them to see how far they’ve come.

A great way to feel good about yourself, and to relax a bit, is at the end of each week reviewing everything you got done.

Write down a list of the TOP 5 things you accomplished and let it sink in.  Allow yourself to feel good about what you got done before you set next week’s tasks.

If you’re always focused on the horizon you’ll never relax.  When was the last time you got to the horizon? It keeps moving.  Just like you keep setting new goals.

Look in the rear view mirror to see how far you’ve come.  Then celebrate.  Then & only then, should you set your new goals.

Before committing to complete a project or set something up as a goal, ensure you spend some time thinking about what the potential return on investment is. That is, what is the return on your investment of time, money or resources in doing this project going to be?  Is it really worth it?

It’s often not about picking which projects to do, but rather it’s about picking which projects NOT to do that will set you up for success.  Recently I had a debate with a woman on Twitter.  She was telling people to spend one hour a day on Twitter, and I said, “Really? Really? Do you really want people spending one out of eight hours every day Tweeting?  Why?” What’s the ROI they are looking for from it?  If you were going to spend 12.5% of your time on one activity such as using Twitter, then in my mind, you’d damn well better have a goal or ROI in mind before starting out.

Every year, about three to four months before the start of the New Year, I mentor CEOs on how to have an Annual Planning Retreat to come up with the top three to five goals for the company. They’ll decide on goals tied to revenue, profit, customer service, employee satisfaction and perhaps something on systems. These annual goals provide the framework for setting quarterly goals going forward.

Every quarter, each business area and each person in your company should be setting up the top three to five goals they will achieve during the quarter to drive the company’s yearly goals.  Imagine the focus your company would have if you knew what each of the top three to five goals each person in your company was achieving every quarter.  Imagine how focused and aligned everyone would become.

High-performing people set goals religiously, track them religiously, they obsess about whether they’re hitting or missing, and why.  Otherwise life just passes by.

When you’re hiring people, ensure you hire people who already set goals in their personal and business lives. Then it won’t be such a stretch to have them setting clear goals in the business each quarter, month and week.

Life isn’t just about goals for your business, though. My goals also include the amount of free time I want in my life.  I set goals for the amount of “Free Days” I’ll have.  A “Free Day” for me is a twenty-four hour period with no email, no business journals, business magazines, newspapers, not a single phone call–it’s just a twenty-four hour period of free time to spend time on the fun stuff in life with people I love.

In 2009, my goal was to have one hundred twenty Free Days.  I had more than one hundred fifty Free Days in the end, however, I got a bit sloppy and checked email randomly from my darn iPhone. I took close to ninety Saturdays and Sundays off, not working at all.  I also took twenty-one perfect Free Days at our cottage in the summer and physically left my iPhone and laptop in Vancouver.  I’m doing it again this summer for sure.

Simply working hard isn’t what it’s all about. As a business coach and mentor, I believe that having the discipline to even take Free Days is the kind of focus you need to give yourself real work life balance, too.   What goals are you setting?

World Cup Soccer Balls

What’s a Goal?

Seriously.

I coach and mentor CEOs to help them grow their revenues, profits, customer satisfaction & employee engagement.

In my coaching role I look at the goals the CEOs set every two weeks.  And often I’m astounded at what I see.  For starters, it’s no wonder that so many companies set hazy goals.  The CEOs are pretty much setting hazy goals too.  And to be fair they also set some awesome ones too.

What’s a SMART Goal though?

In my world of business which started with College Pro Painters back in 1986, we had our own version of SMART Goals.

• Shared – Sharing them with a team member, spouse, coach, boss etc. all make goals stick.
• Measurable – There has to be a number.  We need to know if you Hit or Missed.  Numbers tell us that.
• Attainable – Make them a stretch.  But make sure you can hit them.
• Relevant – Why are you even doing it? Will it drive your Monthly or Quarterly Goals?
• Time Based – When in your calendar will you do it? Not when will it be done by. When will you do it?

Recently, I’ve uncovered one test that really takes Measurable to the perfect level.  The goal MUST have either a # sign, $ sign, or % sign.

So, what are the TOP 5 Goals you’re committing to this week.  Share them with us in the comments.  Let’s see if they are SMART.

I was asked recently how I set such concrete revenue goals with confidence.  A few people asked me to show them how I ‘forecast’ to which I replied I don’t really forecast at all.  What I do is more like ‘reverse engineer’ a target that I feel like I can and want to hit.  Then I spend the rest of the year maniacally focused on hitting it.

So – here is how I set my Revenue Goal this year – and how I intend to hit it.  And why I know a 150% increase from 2009 will happen:

1) I first list out all the types of revenue I can generate from my business in its current state.  For me these include:

• Speaking Events
• Coaching/Mentoring Clients
• Strategic Planning
• DVD Sales

2) Then I list out all the types of new revenues I can generate from Projects I 100% know I’ll launch this year if I focus.  They include:

• CD Sales
• Online Webinar deployed learning
• Strategic Alliances/Others Selling my DVDs

3) Then I look at what I can charge for each in 2010…

• Speaking Events – I’ve decided to keep my fees the same for 2010 – $10,000 for Out of Town, $7,500 for Vancouver events, $6,000 for EO or YPO Chapters
• Coaching/Mentoring – I’ve raised my rates for all new clients to $4,200/Mth from $3,500/Mth (20% increase).  I’ve done this because I’m currently close to my self imposed cap on how many clients I’ll work with at the same time.
• Strategic Planning – This will stay the same as in 2009 – $10,000/Day
• DVD Sales – I’m going to raise my rates on these in 2010 – from the current $197 each – to either $297 ea. or $597 ea. (seems crazy & arbitrary – but I’m told there is SO much value in them for Entrepreneurial companies and their employees that I should charge more.  I’ll be doing some online testing with pricing – and doubt it will make a difference.
• CD Sales – This is a product that’s  being asked for and will sell for the same price as the DVDs (it’s the same content – just another way to learn it)
• Online Webinar – I know I’ll launch it this year – but there is so much to do here still that I’m not forecasting any revenue from it at all (it will be a lift for 2011 though)
• Strategic Alliances – This is where I plan to get the biggest lift this year – and have the plans already in place – I need 10 solid companies or people with strong lists promoting my DVDs to their lists – and I’ll share a strong % with them from all revenues.  This will scale…

4) Leading Indicators
I worked hard in 2009 to set up a solid base for 2010 so I’d have strong revenue predictability:

• I’m speaking at the EO GLC in Hong Kong & New Orleans (both will drive speaking events for 2010 & 2011).
• I have 2 strong Canadian Speakers Bureaus – and in December landed 2 very strong USA Speakers Bureaus.
• I’m speaking at the American Society Of Association Executives two conferences
• And have a couple of other strong platforms that will drive speaking for 2010 & 2011
• Speaking is predictable revenues
• At Events I also sell DVDs & CDs
• At Events I meet potential coaching/mentoring clients
• I have 10 solid companies that I am mentoring – 12 is my cap – so I will easily stay at my cap all year (and I’ve budgeted on 10 average – and in 2009 I only averaged 5 as it was a new model)
• Strategic Planning went really well last year with the companies I helped.  I’m not the cheapest but I deliver huge impact while doing these sessions.  Some clients have already said they’ll bring me back.  Some already have me booked.  And my speaking events will put me in front of hundreds of other companies who could use me as well.
• I have a few commitments from major online gurus like Yanik Silver who will be marketing my DVDs to tens of thousands of companies.

5) I know what my bandwidth issues are – and opportunities (i.e. 100% Net Margin DVDs) etc.  So I’m using those to leverage revenues.  And I also know there are brilliant people out there I can pay as a percentage of revenues (thanks Jack Daly for that lesson) and I’ll leverage that too.  Intro’s have already happened.

etc…..

From this rough plan that you’re reading – I already have tight action plans in place for how I’ll hit each one.  I know the exact dollar amount I’m targeting from each category.  I know what I need to do when.  I’ve spent two years building my FaceBook & Twitter followers who are already helping me.  So as you can see.  I’m not just picking an arbitrary goal.  I’m putting tight plans in place to hit it.  And I will.  As do the companies I coach & mentor.

Hopefully you have tight plans in place to hit your goals for 2010 too.  If you don’t, then your goals are merely dreams…