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Casual Articles - Setting Business Goals-Use the SMART Method to Achieve Dramatic Results
If you could improve on one aspect of your business, what would you choose?Most loan officers would want to make their marketing efforts have better responses. And while marketing is critical to business success, there are other aspects of your business that are overlooked and could have much more immediate results.This article is going to show you how improving your closing ratio just a little bit can have massive effects on your earnings for the year.We are going to talk in hypotheticals for a second, so bear with me.
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The go
Publishing Guidelines: You may publish my article in your newsletter, on your website or in your print publication provided you include the resource box at the end. Notification would be appreciated but is not required.On this digital Century the business administration is radically moving for new ways, for the Next-Generation of Business Administration. For that reason, this series of articles will show some tips on that new way of doing business.What is Business Intelligence & Data Mining BI?: Optimize - At this stage, the enterpr
For many entrepreneurs, goal setting is not always the easiest endeavor. Most business owners are so focused on their daily operations that they may often confuse tasks with goals. To be clear, goals are used to directly support a strategic objective or business plan. Tasks are short-term activities that keep the business running. Finally, goals consist of a series of actionable tasks to achieve the desired results.
To help in the goal setting process, most successful businesses follow the S.M.A.R.T ("SMART") methodology. This handy acronym helps simplify the process of goal setting and ensures that objectives are defined in the most effective manner possible. When following the SMART process, all goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-limited. How does this work? Let us take a simple business example and walk through each of the SMART steps.
Sophie is an entrepreneur who owns and manages an architectural design firm. Her business is growing rapidly. She has grown from four employees to 15 in less than two years. She has a solid client base with several concurrent projects. Despite her firm's growth, her cash flow is a concern. Several of Sophie's clients rarely pay on time. This delinquency, if left unchecked, could cause a financial burden when trying to cover fixed costs such as salaries and office rent.
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The goa
Bootstrapping in the context of business start-ups refers to the use of creative financing approaches such as leveraging personal savings, credit-card debt, loans from friends and family, bartering, and other means to launch a business. Some business founders use bootstrapping because they have no other choice. Just about anyone who has approached a bank has learned that “only established businesses need apply.” Bankers typically look for cash flow, assets, an established customer base, and a successful track record on the part of the business
To help in the goal setting process, most successful businesses follow the S.M.A.R.T ("SMART") methodology. This handy acronym helps simplify the process of goal setting and ensures that objectives are defined in the most effective manner possible. When following the SMART process, all goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-limited. How does this work? Let us take a simple business example and walk through each of the SMART steps.
Sophie is an entrepreneur who owns and manages an architectural design firm. Her business is growing rapidly. She has grown from four employees to 15 in less than two years. She has a solid client base with several concurrent projects. Despite her firm's growth, her cash flow is a concern. Several of Sophie's clients rarely pay on time. This delinquency, if left unchecked, could cause a financial burden when trying to cover fixed costs such as salaries and office rent.
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The go
Are you the owner of a business that is considered to be a locally owned and operated one? If you are, what forms of local advertising do you use? If you are like most locally owned and operated business owners, there is a good chance that you use local phone books, newspapers, and the mailing of fliers. While these are nice local advertising methods, you need to think about incorporating the internet into your local advertising plan, if you haven’t already done so.When it comes to using the internet as a form of a local advertising, the
Sophie is an entrepreneur who owns and manages an architectural design firm. Her business is growing rapidly. She has grown from four employees to 15 in less than two years. She has a solid client base with several concurrent projects. Despite her firm's growth, her cash flow is a concern. Several of Sophie's clients rarely pay on time. This delinquency, if left unchecked, could cause a financial burden when trying to cover fixed costs such as salaries and office rent.
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The go
We are in the business of relationship building. How can you develop a relationship with anyone if you don’t send, speak, write or communicate with them frequently? The easiest way to start to do that is to collect e-mails addresses, physical mailing addresses and or phone numbers. Today everyone is afraid of spam, and to be blasted by offers in their e-mail or at their home or office. They are already conditioned to dismiss an uninvited person as a pest or nuisance.You have to get past their guard. One of the ways to do that is to mak
Sophie is an entrepreneur who owns and manages an architectural design firm. Her business is growing rapidly. She has grown from four employees to 15 in less than two years. She has a solid client base with several concurrent projects. Despite her firm's growth, her cash flow is a concern. Several of Sophie's clients rarely pay on time. This delinquency, if left unchecked, could cause a financial burden when trying to cover fixed costs such as salaries and office rent.
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The go
One of the most important tasks legal assistants and paralegals perform is to assist lawyers as they prepare for corporate meetings, closings, trials and hearings. Although the lawyers take ownership for the legal work, they will often delegate many tasks to legal assistants and paralegals. As a result, they continue to take on a growing range of tasks inside the nation's legal offices and perform many of tasks traditional done by lawyers.On the other hand, they are still strictly prohibited from performing any duty that is considered to be
To help improve her cash flow situation, Sophie uses the SMART methodology to assist her in defining a cash flow improvement goal.
Specific - The statement, "Improving cash flow" is not a specific goal and would not prove useful to anyone trying to accomplish this objective. The goal must include more specific and actionable language. In this instance, Sophie wants to improve cash flow by reducing the time it takes her clients to pay.
Measurable - The statement, "…reducing the time it takes her clients to pay" is not measurable. Simply stopping here would make it difficult to achieve success. What amount of time is Sophie trying to reduce? After studying industry benchmarks, she quantifies her improvement goal. She wants to reduce the average payment cycle time from the current 45 days to a goal of 35 days.
Achievable - Is this goal achievable? Can she work with her clients and somehow encourage them to pay more quickly? After doing some analysis Sophie determines that part of the payment delay is the infrequency with which she sends out invoices. She also rarely calls her clients to follow up on past-due bills. A significant portion of this goal is within her immediate control. As such, Sophie feels this goal is clearly achievable.
Realistic - How realistic is it to expect a reduction in payment cycle time by 10 days? Again, using her research and industry benchmarks, Sophie feels that this amount of time is quite realistic. Besides, the payment term included in all of her project contracts is 30 days!
Time-limited - Finally, Sophie needs to place time limitations around her goal. A goal that lingers is not useful. Expectations must be set around when the objective is to be accomplished. Establishing time limits also helps business owners prioritize and plan for goals throughout the year. In this example, Sophie decides that she wants to ac
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