Tips for making and meeting business finance goals

Driving your business forward.

If you’re a brand new entrepreneur without a defined vision – or you feel like your business is stalling – then setting business goals could be the key to creating momentum. Every business needs to have goals, from a mission statement that sets out core values, to the goals for marketing reach and customer growth. As it’s the finance goals that underpin the progress of the business these are a great place to start.

What are business finance goals?

The objectives you set for your business on the finance front could be anything. However, the most common are:

• Maximising profits
• Minimising costs and expenses
• Growing market share

These three simple targets can take a business from low key and embryonic to a healthy, profitable company with a very bright future. So, how do you go about using these goals in your business and, ultimately, meeting them?

When you’re setting finance goals tailor them to your business

There is no one size fits all solution so finance goals need to be realistic for your business to enable you to meet them. Look at competitors and other businesses of a similar size to get an idea of what is within reach. The key with finance goals is to be ambitious but realistic. If your goals are too far out of reach then failing to meet them could have a detrimental impact on strategy, motivation and cashflow.

Set finance goals as onward steps

Every finance goal that you set should be a gateway to the next goal and/or part of the bigger picture. Smaller goals will pave the way for the more substantial financial objectives and those bigger targets should then enable your business to move on to greater things. When you’re creating and setting financial goals, if you can avoid doing this in isolation then you’ll have a smooth forward momentum to follow.

Finance goals aren’t always just about profit

There are many different factors that feed into meeting financial goals in a business and it’s important to remember the wider context when you’re creating these objectives. For example, ultimately, being profitable depends on establishing an awareness of your brand and that requires a lot more than just making sure the business has strong cashflow or keeping expenses low. Investing in people is a key part of driving sales, so if your finance goal is to increase profit via sales then the initial goal may need to be finding a great sales team and creating a positive environment in which they can work.

Ask for help but don’t pass the buck

If you’ve got professional support or a management team below you then it can be tempting to leave the financial element to someone else, particularly if you’re ‘not a numbers person.’ Indeed a recent survey in which business owners revealed their financial fears suggests that remaining profitable was one of the top 3 concerns of business owners. So the creative vision and the financial vision for a business need to be carefully aligned and it’s very difficult to do this if the ultimate visionary doesn’t have a good grasp of both.