Business goals: Examples & how to set them

To grow your company and improve performance, you might consider setting business goals that you can stick to and revisit regularly. This can set your company up for long-term success, as creating business goals can provide defined targets and priorities while motivating your team.

The goals you set for your business can vary depending on the outcome you’re trying to achieve. But whatever the type of goal you’re setting, it’s important to ensure that it’s attainable and realistic.

Learn more about business goals and how to set and define them.

What you’ll learn:

• Business goals are set outcomes and results you want your company to attain in a given period of time. 
• Setting business goals can provide company-wide alignment and help you measure your business’s success and better define the outcomes you want to achieve.
• Business goals may be financial, customer-focused, process-related or centered around learning and growth. 
• Setting and defining business goals that are specific and measurable increase the chances of achieving desired outcomes.

Business goals are targets or accomplishments you want your company to achieve in a set period of time. The goals you set for your business can vary depending on the desired outcome. 

For example, business goals could be short-term, such as hiring a set number of employees within the next few months. Or they could be focused on long-term results, like cutting production costs by a given margin over the next few years.

Business goals can provide direction and alignment and are important for future growth for a number of reasons, such as:

• Defining your company’s desired outcomes

• Providing a way to measure your business’s success

• Learning to identify and manage risk

• Improving employee support and performance

• Helping to execute strategy

Whether you’re starting a small business or managing a large corporation, here are some tips to help you set and define organizational goals:

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that can assess your company’s success. It’s important for business goals to correspond with KPIs as they serve as benchmarks to measure progress and justify the importance of achieving these goals.

A business strategy map is a visual tool that provides a framework for your organizational objectives. A strategy map should reflect how your business will generate results and carry out ideas through a roadmap that can be referred to again and again. Creating a strategy map—and revisiting it regularly—can help when it’s time to action your business goals.

When you’re setting business goals, consider the economic value of your endgame to better execute your strategy. Examples of financial goals could be growing your business’s revenue, cutting costs or better managing cash flow.

Consider how customer satisfaction fits into your company’s long-term success when creating business goals. Focusing on retention, client feedback, and improving reviews and testimonials can add value and impact KPIs.

Reviewing your business’s internal processes can also factor into your overall strategy. While internal processes aren’t directly related to profit, focusing on creating efficiencies throughout your organization can provide a positive return on investment. Some areas to consider when creating process-related goals are operations and customer management, social channels or regulatory operations

When setting business goals and objectives, another component is to consider your team’s growth and learning opportunities. Fostering a company culture that prioritizes growth can increase employee retention and engagement—which can improve productivity.

It’s important to ensure the goals you’re setting are SMART—an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound—to improve the chances of achieving your desired outcome. Sticking to these parameters when creating business goals can help create attainable targets and set your business up for long-term success.

Here are some examples of different types of business goals and how they can fit into your overall business plan:

You might set business goals based on a numerical benchmark you’re trying to achieve. For example, you may try to increase your company’s revenue by a certain amount in a set period of time.

As opposed to quantitative goals, qualitative goals focus on improvements in experiences, relationships and processes rather than on measurable figures. Some examples of qualitative goals are improving company culture or enhancing the way consumers interact with your business’s website.

This type of business goal is measured using specific production-based metrics that employees are expected to achieve. Performance-based goals set clear expectations, such as increasing sales or improving customer retention.

Short-term goals are typically set to be achieved in an immediate timeframe—typically within a year or less. Here are some examples of short-term goals:

• Hire a certain number of employees within the next three months.
• Increase traffic to your company’s product page by a set percentage over the next five months.
• Increase the number of daily social media postings over the next month.
• Create a charitable donation fund within the quarter.

Your company can focus on long-term goals over an extended period of time—typically ranging from one to five years, sometimes even up to 10 years. These can be broken down into short-term metrics to help you achieve your broader long-term goal over time. Examples of long-term goals could be increasing your company’s revenue by 30% over the next five years or creating new products over the next three years.

You can set goals based on a monetary value you’re trying to achieve, such as expanding your business’s profitability by a given date or using business credit card rewards to offset company expenses.

Some sample business customer-focused goals could be implementing customer satisfaction surveys to better understand client expectations. Or you could create valuable content to address customer needs, ultimately driving more traffic to your company’s blog.

Some examples of process-related goals could be automating certain procedures like employee time tracking or finding ways to expand into new markets.

To improve learning and growth opportunities within your company, you might focus on upskilling employees or implementing IT systems that increase efficiency.

Setting business goals can provide alignment within your company by creating defined targets you want to achieve within a given time period. When you’re setting goals for your business, it’s important to ensure they’re attainable in order to set your company up for long-term success. Learn how partnering with Capital One can fit into your overall business strategy by comparing business credit cards from Capital One.