What Are SMART Goals?

In the ambitious world that we live today, goals are what separates a successful from the ordinary.  Be it a successful businessperson or a high-achieving athlete, they all have specific goals that serve as guiding posts for them.  However, not all kinds of plans are equal.  How you identify and set your goals influences whether you can achieve them or not.  This is where SMART goals come in.  

What are SMART Goals?  

If you are creating SMART goals, you have built a plan to achieve them simultaneously.  That is because SMART goals are made in a way that provides structure and guidelines while defining success and tracing its measurability.  These are necessary for business management as creating them will not only organize your projects, but you will also find a way to measure success and get an idea of what your projects need and which steps would be best. 

Let us dig deep and find out what smart goals stand for exactly.      

S - Specific 

Being specific helps us in creating goals that are not ambiguous.  As our project moves forward, there may be goals that can change and distract us from what we originally planned to accomplish.  To create a specific goal, we must consider the following questions:  

• What is required? 
• What do you hope to accomplish? 
• How long will it take? 
• What steps to take? 
• Which obstacles do you need to overcome? 
• What is the purpose behind the goal? 

For example, if someone wants to learn about email marketing, she must be clear about why she wants to learn it. She must have a clear picture of what she wishes to learn and how, and what she plans to do with that learning. After this, it becomes much easier to research and find out where to learn such courses and all other necessary details. Therefore, it is essential to have specific goals that will give you clarity of perception.  

M - Measurable 

One way you can determine if you have achieved success is by measuring it.  Therefore, you must identify metrics that can be used to measure progress.  For example, when a marketing team wants to improve the quality of leads that it hands down to sales, its team members must identify those metrics that will not only help them in measuring the quality of overall leads but also in comparing the quality of the leads.  Hence you must set measurable goals to help keep track of your progress. 

A - Achievable 

It will not make any sense if your goals seem unattainable.  While an achievable goal motivates people, an unachievable one demotivates them.  You must make sure that your goals are attainable by taking your skills, resources, timeframe, and tools that are currently at your disposal into consideration.   

For example, if your goal is concerned with the number of client deals closed each quarter, you must keep in mind the tenure of your sales team, their networks’ quality, the condition of the current market, and any kind of seasonality that may affect your business and/or the industry.  You must set such goals throughout the year that stretch their abilities on the one hand but seem possible to attain on the other. 

However, let us say you wish to set goals beyond what seems achievable now.  In that case, you must start slow and allocate heavier goals in the later quarters along with proper guidelines regarding how your team can boost their efforts to get there.  

Read Also: How To Set, Track and Accomplish Your Goals In 6 Months

R - Relevant 

An intelligent goal must be relevant because an irrelevant goal is not worth accomplishing.  You must ensure that your goals are aligned with the overall goal.  If you find that a plan is not aligned with the larger business objectives, you can either modify it or scrap it.  

For example, If the main objective of your business is to improve profitability, it may not seem relevant to open new branches or generate new customers to increase sales.  Instead, you must focus on retaining your customers and improving account penetration.  Therefore, being relevant is a crucial aspect of any kind of goal.  

T - Time-bound  

Finally, you must create a realistic timeline, including a deadline, to stimulate the ongoing process and motivate your team members to keep going.  You must set deadlines if you want to keep your projects on track and avoid confusion.  

For example, if you want your assistant to organize and prioritize your email inbox so that you do not have to spend time sifting through spam and low-priority emails before finding important client emails, you need to give the persona a particular deadline to complete the job.  Hence you must create time-bound goals as this will help save time and push your employees to give their best.  

By creating specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals, you are all set to travel on the path of success as SMART goals will provide you with a sense of direction, push you further, and help you organize and reach your target.