We are on day four of our business planning session. You can check out the last post on boosting your bottom line to get caught up.
In this article, I want to share the thought process for setting smart business goals. The trick is to work backward from a financial goal and break it into requirements which can be further broken down into daily to-do lists.
Here’s how that works.
How To Work Backwards To Set Your Business Goals
It always starts with a money goal. It helps if that goal has a meaning beyond the dollar figure. Get out and refresh that vision board!
For example, let’s say that I want to buy a new car. The payment should be around $400 for what I need. To account for things like insurance and just to be safe, I’ll bump the goal up to $600.
In other words, I need to add an extra $600 (or more… more is always better) to my monthly bottom line. Once that’s done and I am seeing that level of income on a regular basis, I can start to look for my new car.
Now that I know how much money I have to make, I can start to think about different ways to build that additional income.
How to build the income
I could find more customers for one or several of my existing products. For example, if I have a $10 eBook, I would have to make an extra 60 sales per month on a regular basis. From there I can work backward.
If I know that on average one out of 10 email subscribers buy the ebook within the first month of following me or working with me, I will need to add 600 new subscribers to my list, which in turn takes 4,000 new visitors to my site.
If that’s my plan, I know that my daily to-do list needs to include plenty of action steps to ramp up my traffic by an extra 4,000 people per month.
Have multiple options
I could also create another information product or eBook each month and sell it to both my existing and new subscribers.
I could also create a higher-priced item so I need to make a lot fewer monthly sales to reach my $600 goal. For example, if I create a nice $100 product, it would only take 6 sales per month to pay for the car.
Since the car payment will be an ongoing thing, I can also make sure that my consulting calendar is opened up so I can increase my current work by 3 to 4 business owners per month. Maybe add a group coaching zoom option once or twice a month.
Now I know some options, I can start the daily steps to build and promote these choices.
Think outside the box
By thinking outside the box and putting in some time and effort initially, it won’t take long to get the clients or ebook sales that pay for that new car payment. Because I really want that new car, I’m going to be motivated to get it done and grow my business by those extra $600 per month.
In fact, chances are great that I’ll overshoot the goal by several hundred dollars and it’s something I can continue to grow month after month.
Work backward step by step
As you can see, it is something you can do with your goals for your business too. Start with your big goal and how much you need, then work backward to develop the steps to get there!
I hope this helps you!
Tomorrow we will be discussing writing down your goals and why it is effective. See you then! Be sure to sign up for my email list so you don’t miss the next article.
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