Sales and Marketing - Jen Jordan
Jen Jordan brings a wealth of life and leadership experiences to her writing. After 10 years creating a variety of content for a nonprofit, Jen decided to establish her own writing business. She specializes in creating high quality blog and website content for small businesses. When she's not writing, Jen is a competitive triathlete with a goal of completing a triathlon in all 50 states.
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How Creating SMART Goals and KPIs Can Boost Your Small Business PerformanceIf you are looking for a way to streamline your small business operations and achieve maximum success, you’ve got to have goals. Creating specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals and pairing them with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will unlock your small business’ potential. Put simply, a SMART goal is a result you want to accomplish, and a KPI reveals if you are headed in the right direction. They provide clarity, direction, and focus to help businesses reach their objectives. Staying SMART with goal setting SMART goals are designed to be measurable, achievable goals with due dates so you can track their progress. For example, a SMART goal could be to grow your email subscription list by 50 customers this month through in-store promotional sign-ups.
SMART goals can help small businesses improve organization, allocate resources, and focus on what matters. All employees can easily interpret and work toward a clearly stated goal. KPIs for data-driven decisions KPIs or Key Performance Indicators measure how well a business is achieving its objectives. They are a numerical method of tracking your small business operations. KPIs offer insight into business performance through data. With established benchmarks, there’s an opportunity to take quick action on numbers that aren’t headed the right way. For this reason, KPIs are measurements taken regularly to assess progress. Common KPI areas include website visits/conversions; cost per acquisition; email open rate; Net Promoter Score; customer retention; lead conversion rate; revenue growth, and performance-oriented indicators. SMART goals and KPIs working together Identifying areas to improve with SMART goals and KPIs is an essential step for small business success. Deciding what you want to accomplish with a well-crafted SMART goal reveals what action needs to happen and the KPIs are the measurements that offer insight into the progress along the way. Let’s revisit the SMART goal of growing email subscriptions by 50 customers in one month. First, find the KPIs that are most important for your small business to accomplish this goal. Evaluate your customer service, marketing, finance, sales, and any areas where you feel improved performance will help reach your goal. From your list of possible subject areas, choose one or two to start. Selecting just a few areas will help you remain focused as you begin tracking the metrics. It’s valuable to review previous data to identify the "norms" or baseline performance. If you’ve grown your subscription list by an average of 30 customers a month, this is the baseline metric. This metric is what things look like before implementing changes to grow your subscription list, giving you a number to work from. Your future performance in comparison to this baseline helps determine how successful your efforts have been. Key Takeaways Your goals should include everyone in the small business who has an interest in the outcome. This inclusion will generate buy-in, as employees understand why they are working toward these goals. Neither SMART goals nor KPIs are "set it and forget it" items. While SMART goals have a specified deadline and KPIs are ongoing, both require regular monitoring. It can take time for your KPIs to guide your small business. As you implement data-driven decisions, your company will learn which KPIs yield the best insights. The most effective performance indicators will help you stay focused on the key drivers for your business’s growth and success. This knowledge can prove useful when making budgeting decisions, adjustments for condition changes, and hiring predictions. Resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9VJu7ju5B4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbNdGgDAHpM https://mailchimp.com/resources/smart-goals/ https://www.bmc.com/blogs/smart-goals/ https://www.whatmatters.com/resources/difference-between-okr-kpi |
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