Effective business goal setting is, surprisingly, an often overlooked issue. We spend massive amounts of energy in trying to reach our business goals but often fail to put significant time and energy into first defining our goals.

Before you start to chase your goals, take some time to first consider what it is you truly want to achieve. Poorly thought-out business goals can set you up for failure or self sabotage, or take your business in a direction that does not fit with your needs and values.

A well formed goal is realistic and achievable and it provides direction in terms of the actions you will need to take to achieve your goals. Smart business goal setting informs your day to day business activities and choices and leads you in directions that truly build business success on your own terms.

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n order to meet your business goals it is important to choose your actions based on results.

It sounds simple. Who would waste valuable time working on projects and activities that don't get results? Actually, plenty of people do it every day. It's easy to get pulled into activities that are easy, busy work that help you to feel like you are being productive while you are, in fact, avoiding the tasks that may be more challenging, but will bring you closer to your business goals.

For example, imagine you want to convince a local retailer to carry your new product. If you've never dealt with retailers and wholesale or consignment agreements, approaching a store owner can feel pretty nerve wracking. So you avoid it. Instead, you may work on the tenth revision of your already fantastic sales brochure, telling yourself you can't go to see that retailer until your brochure is absolutely perfect.

Polishing up your already great sales brochure is a comfortable task, and it helps you to feel productive. You are working on business activities, after all. However, if your brochure is already a great reflection of your products, another revision is just a thinly veiled way to avoid the challenging task of business networking.

There are plenty of ways to reach your business goals; some are more challenging than others. Unfortunately, the easiest business building tasks are not always the most effective business building tasks. If fact, the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80 20 rule, states that 80 percent of unfocused effort typically creates only 20 percent of results. In other words, if you are not actively choosing your projects and activities based on the results they could potentially generate, you are only being truly productive and moving toward achieving your business goals 20 percent of the time. The other 80 percent of the time you're simply engaged in unproductive busy work.

Focusing on results means that you require yourself to focus on activities and projects that are likely to lead to achieving positive results and reaching your business goals. It prevents you from fooling yourself into thinking you're being productive with activity and busy work.

Challenge yourself to choose projects and tasks based on their potential to grow your business, and not based on the amount of difficulty or discomfort they may create for you. Remember, mere activity is not evidence of real progress toward your business goals.

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