Setting Goals
Keeping your goals in sight
You’ve updated your business plan and come up with a brilliant strategy to lead your company through the next year. Your targets are manageable and you’re working with a great team. The next step is to make sure you stick to those goals.
Work with advisors to plan your exit strategy
It’s never too early to start planning for the sale of your business. But, it can be too late.
Make retirement planning easier
Business owners enjoy many career benefits including freedom, control and the chance to pursue a passion. Unfortunately, a guaranteed pension is not one of them.
Turning sales targets into reality
In December we talked about getting a head start on 2011 by using your holiday downtime to plan your sales and marketing campaigns. So how was your first quarter? Are you hitting your sales targets? If not, take action now to get back on track. Based on our experience, here are some suggestions to fine-tune your sales targets and strategies
Setting Personal and Business Goals
When it comes right down to it, you likely started your business to help you achieve your personal goals.
These goals reflect what’s important to you. Personal goals may be financial in nature, such as to become financially independent, or they may be tied to a sense of social responsibility, such as improving our environment. Or you may even have lifestyle goals that you hope to achieve as a result of owning a business, such as flexible working hours.
To identify your goals, you simply need to ask yourself how you measure personal success. When your business goals also reflect your personal goals, your enterprise has
the added benefit of an incremental level of clarity of purpose.
4 Key Ways to Grow Your Business
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Strategy Implementation Worksheet
Business Goal Identification Worksheet
There are many competing priorities on a day to day basis, and making decisions about how you will use your limited time and resources is all about making choices. Clear goals will help you make those choices effectively and keep you focused on driving business results.
Competitive Advantage Worksheet
Doing a realistic evaluation of your competitive advantages requires you to step back from your business and take a big picture view of your strengths, from a customers’ perspective. Then compare against your competitor’s strengths. The worksheet will help guide you through this analysis.
Personal Goal Identification Worksheet
While many of us have some general ideas about what our personal priorities are, few have set aside time to deliberately think about and document our specific goals. This worksheet is designed to encourage you to identify those big picture priorities most important to you. With a clear understanding of your personal priorities it becomes easier to identify what personal success looks like for you, and establish goals that help guide you as you make choices on a day to day basis.
Strategy Alternative Worksheet
Determining alternative strategies requires you to keep your goal in mind, while you document any idea that might contribute to your objective, no matter how far fetched.
Is there an easy way to write a business plan
There is no substitute for doing the market research, scoping out suppliers, and making sure your vision is articulated in a compelling way. But the good news is that once you've done all this work, the actual creation of your plan is now easier than you think. The Scotia Plan Writer for businessTM is an innovative, online tool that guides your through each step of the process - from researching your idea, to developing financial projections and printing a final document. There is no need to wade your way through complicated business books to write your plan.
The Vision Statement
Do you have a vision of what you want your business to become? Have you put that idea down on paper — perhaps as part of your business plan? If so, you have a vision statement.
A vision statement outlines what you want your business to be in the future. It gives shape and direction to your long-term business goals. Your vision is something for you (and your employees) to strive for, and is a snapshot of how you want to be seen 10 years out.
