How to Create SMARTER Business Goals (with Examples)
A simple framework for achieving better outcomes for your small business.
Goals are the central guideposts of any business. They help you identify your overall vision for the company and hone in on your greatest opportunities and challenges. But in order to make a positive and meaningful impact on your business, you need strategic targets and a concrete plan for achieving them. SMARTER goals can help you get there.
Learn how to create a strategic roadmap while eliminating guesswork and tracking key milestones for your business using the SMARTER goals framework.
What are SMARTER goals?
SMARTER is a mnemonic acronym that outlines a framework for setting strategic goals and objectives. The framework was originally introduced as SMART by George T. Doran in 1981 and extended to SMARTER by Graham Yemm in 2012. Each letter stands for:
1. Specific
Effective goals clearly establish a single action or outcome to be accomplished.
2. Measurable
Each goal should have a measurable outcome. Ask yourself how another person could determine if you’ve accomplished your goal.
3. Achievable
Goals must be challenging but realistic and attainable. Are you 95% confident that you can do this? Consider how realistic the goal is based on current limitations like financial resources and regulations.
4. Relevant
Goals should align with your overall vision of the business or your career. Consider the greatest opportunities and challenges for your business and reflect on whether this goal will truly make a positive impact on the future.
5. Time-bound
Hold yourself and your team accountable for what you set out to accomplish by setting a fixed deadline. Most business owners set quarterly deadlines but some may prefer semi-annual deadlines, depending on their industry.
6. Evaluated
Once you reach the predetermined deadline, take some time to review and reflect on what went well and what could be improved. If you were working with a team, be sure to have one-on-one conversations with individual team members to share feedback about the results. Encourage everyone to share their personal accomplishments and struggles. Collaborate on ideas to further improve outcomes.
7. Revised
While evaluating your progress and achievements, consider whether and how goals should be revised. Should upcoming goals stay the same or can you challenge yourself to do even better? Were any of your goals too ambitious? Have there been any significant changes to the business environment-like a global pandemic? Take advantage of everything you learn and use this knowledge to set clear expectations for the future, whether it’s to extend capacity or course correct.
How to develop SMARTER goals.
Start by free writing down a list of your goals. Ask yourself questions like: what is the goal; why is it important; who will be responsible for achieving this goal; when can you achieve the goal; and where the goal will take place (if relevant). Writing will force you to organize thoughts and clarify what you mean. Don’t worry about writing the perfect statements. Get the ideas down on paper and go back to revise it later as you work your way through the rest of the framework. Give yourself no more than 30 minutes but do this all at once though. In other words, don’t give yourself 15 minutes during lunch and get back to it later in the day when you have more time. Block out your time because this is important.
Next, review the goals that you’ve written down and try to see if you can spot any patterns between what you’ve written. Cross out anything that seems repetitive and prioritize goals that will have the biggest impact on your business. If you’re working with a team, each decision maker should vote on which goals to prioritize. Then set and commit to a deadline for reaching the goal. Everyone may have a different idea of how long it will take. Each person should estimate the number of hours they think it will take while considering any obstacles that may prevent them from achieving the goal. Depending on the size of your team, this could take a few hours to complete.
Examples
1. SMARTER Email subscription goal.
Specific: I want to increase the number of subscribers to my weekly newsletter by promoting tweets (Twitter’s version of paid advertising) that share a few findings from my newsletter.
Measurable: I want to increase the number of subscribers by 10% each month.
Achievable: My twitter followers have been historically increasing by approximately 10% each month.
Relevant: Increasing subscriptions to my newsletter will help me boost my credibility and help me identify who I can market to for paid subscriptions.
Time-bound: Three months (one quarter).
SMART Goal: Increase newsletter subscriptions by 10% each month for three months by promoting tweets with small snippets from my newsletter.
Hypothetical outcome three months later:
Evaluated: I achieved my goal but it was more expensive than I thought. When I looked at the performance of my promoted tweets, I noticed that my tweets about personal finance led to more subscriptions than my tweets about entrepreneurship.
Revised (SMARTER goal): Increase newsletter subscriptions by 10% each month for three months by promoting tweets with small snippets about personal finance from my newsletter.
2. SMARTER goal to reduce customer churn.
Specific: Survey new students two weeks after they sign up for my online course and ask them to rate the class.
Measurable: I expect a 50% response rate.
Achievable: Students generally provide positive feedback, so I expect 50% to respond to the survey which is consistent with industry reports.
Relevant: The survey will provide insights into the students’ journey and help me identify any changes that I can make before they begin losing interest in the course, thereby reducing customer churn.
Time-bound: Three months.
SMART Goal: I will survey each new student two weeks after they sign up for my online course and ask them to rate the class. Within three months, 50% should complete the survey.
Hypothetical outcome three months later:
Evaluated: I sent a survey to new students two weeks after they signed up for my course but only 20% responded to the survey. The low response rate hurt my ability to understand reasons for churn. I may need to add an incentive to encourage students to complete the survey, like a chance to win a gift card.
Revised: Survey each new student two weeks after they sign up for my online course and ask them to rate the class. Students who complete the survey will be eligible to win a $100 gift card. Three students will be randomly selected at the end of three months for the prize. I expect that the contest will help me reach a 50% response rate.
Limitations of SMARTER
While SMARTER goals can help you and your team make better strategic decisions about businesses processes, some people find think that the framework stifles creativity and innovation. For example, the strict adherence to specific goals can prevent you from seizing the opportunity to implement new and better solutions for achieving it.
The process of setting goals requires critical thinking. Don’t allow yourself to get tunnel vision. Sometimes goals require more than just a small revision to set your business on the right track. You may even find that the goal wasn’t as important for business as you initially thought. The SMARTER framework doesn’t outline a process for prioritizing goals or clearly explain what to do if you make a mistake. Also, it’s possible that you achieve your goal within the deadline but it had negative results on the business.
Lastly, delegation is an important part of managing a business but isn’t included in the SMARTER framework. You have to use an entirely different framework for collaboration and assigning tasks, which may be inefficient.
Key takeaways
The SMARTER goals framework provides a systematic formula for achieving meaningful milestones for your business. When used correctly, SMARTER goals will result in realistic and achievable targets that will have a measurable impact on your success. One of the most important aspects of this approach is that it emphasizes the importance of evaluating and revising your goals. The world is constantly evolving, which means that the process of setting business goals and strategy should be iterative to keep pace with the dynamic environment.
Originally published at https://curiositysphere.com on November 27, 2021.
