Strategic Planning Mistakes That New Business Owners Make

Every business, whether it’s a brand-new startup or an established company, needs goals. Without goals, there is no way to direct the business and put plans in place to move forward. However, a lot of new business owners find that they keep setting goals they fail to meet. This could be due to issues with your goal-setting process or the strategies you put in place to achieve them. Either way, you need to identify exactly what the problem is and fix things so you can push your business forward.

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Your Goals Are Unrealistic

Setting unrealistic goals is one of the biggest mistakes that new business owners make. They are passionate and excited about their business so they shoot for the stars. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious, but if you set a goal to become the biggest seller in your industry within the first six months, you’re going to fall short. You can still set goals to grow sales, but your goals should be based on realistic sales forecasts, not your dreams for the future. It’s still fine to have those long-term goals, but in the short term, set smaller goals that you can actually meet.

You Put Fires Out After They Start

Companies that are constantly playing catch-up and putting out fires after they start often struggle to meet their goals. Instead of dealing with the status quo until it becomes a problem, you should be constantly striving to improve the business and be more efficient. This concept is known as continuous improvement. You need to learn about the pillars of continuous improvement and apply them to your business if you want to start hitting your goals. In fact, businesses that take this proactive approach to problem-solving find that they go above and beyond their goals a lot of the time.

For instance, if you run a warehouse that handles a lot of different stock, you have to be on top of the way it is run from the get-go. There is no point just expecting it to work fine if you don’t have the right system in place, implement the correct stock rotation protocols, and integrate specific software that can help move things along. Being one-step ahead can make all the difference in how you operate.

You Don’t Make Your Goals Clear

It’s fine having goals, but they’re not worth much if you don’t communicate them well. Business owners often make the mistake of communicating the solutions to their team, but they don’t tell them the big picture. The thing is, if your team doesn’t really know what the overall goals of the business are, they don’t see how they fit in. This leads to a lack of direction and motivation, so make sure that you communicate your wider goals to everybody in the business so everybody is on the same page.

You Hired The Wrong People

It’s down to you to set clear goals for your business, but you rely on your team to put your plans into action. If you hire the wrong people for the job, it doesn’t matter how good your goal-setting or strategic planning is. When you are hiring a new team, always keep your goals in mind so you can hire people who fit your needs now and in the future.

A business that consistently fails to meet its goals is very likely to fail. But if you can avoid these common strategic planning mistakes that new businesses make, you stand a much better chance of succeeding.

This is a collaborative post.