← Richard Brooks

Essay · January 2023

Create SMART goals for your business

Do you feel that you’re working harder and harder but don’t seem to achieve anything?

The answer is to set goals. Goals are a predetermined target that a business or individual plans to achieve in a set period of time. Goals help us maintain focus and direction. They are an essential part of management. Goals help to motivate your teams, they give communication purpose and they’re essential if you’re going to get anything done at all.

The trouble is when you set your goals you can’t simply say something like “I want to increase sales in my company” and then expect that to happen. A goal this undefined is no more than wishful thinking. This is exactly what we want to avoid as all the good stuff associated with goal setting will be lost if the goals themselves are no good.

Setting goals is often challenging. A manager can get lost along the way and elect instead to go with the flow. Setting goals makes people accountable. Be very wary of managers who refuse to set and communicate goals.

SMART Goals

Many companies use the SMART goal setting methodology. It was made famous by my management hero Peter Drucker in his book, Management by Objectives. You may have heard of it so let’s have a look at it in more detail. Writing objectives as SMART statements is the gold standard for goal setting.

SMART is an acronym made up of the first letters of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. A Smart Goal includes all of these criteria. The theory being that if you can tick off all of these attributes in a goal it dramatically increases your chances of success.

Breaking this down in greater detail let’s look at each attribute of the Smart Goal.

Smart Goals are Specific

Goals need to be as clear as possible, there should be no room at all for confusion, they need to be specific. This part comes first because it is the most important to get right. Having a clear picture will make it much easier to achieve your goal and to motivate others to help you achieve it.

It can help if you mindmap the following questions;

If you want to increase sales in your organisation a poor example of a goal would be, “Increase sales” (which is so broad it’s useless). More specifically would need to include how we increase sales, by when, to whom and via which channels.

Smart Goals are Measurable

What gets measured gets done. Your goal needs to be measurable so you can monitor the progress of it over time. This helps you to stay on track and motivated to complete your goal.

A measurable goal could address the following questions:

Your goal of increasing sales becomes measurable when specific numbers are involved.

Smart Goals are Achievable

Sounds obvious but the goal needs to be realistic. It needs to be challenging but must be achievable. Carefully consider what competencies will be required by your organisation to complete the goal. It might be that new skills or ways of doing things will have to be developed.

An achievable goal will usually answer questions such as:

Smart Goals are Relevant

Making a goal relevant in a corporate setting means it moves the strategic objectives of your company forward. Smaller goals should be relevant to the broader goals your company and team are working towards.

Ask yourself: Is this goal worthwhile? Is this the right time? Does this match your other efforts and requirements? Is this goal applicable in the current socio-economic environment?

Smart Goals are Time Bound

Without a deadline it is very unlikely the goal will be achieved. Every goal you set will need to be time specific. To help ask yourself these questions.

The Anatomy of a Smart Goal

Now that the SMART framework has been considered we can expand on the goal of “increasing sales”. Expanding it to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound we get to something like; “increase the amount of business closed by each sales rep by 10% in the next quarter”.

So. We have ourselves a Smart goal. This will dramatically improve your chances of achieving success.

Examples of Smart goals

Here are some examples of Smart goals relating to sales, marketing. These will be different for your company as the variables that drive results in your organisation will no doubt be different. Use each question as a starting point and test each one against the five questions.

Smart Goals for Sales

Here are some examples of Smart goals in a sales context.

Smart Goals for Marketing

Here are some examples of marketing Smart Goals.

Smart Goals for HR

A company’s culture directly impacts how business is done. Make sure HR is creating value in your organisation by asking them to create Smart Goals. Here are a few examples.

Richard Brooks writes on business, value, and value AI actually delivers. He is the author of AI Strategy for Sales Teams. For work, there is my company. This essay is also available as markdown.