Did you know even ten minutes of goal tracking a week can help your business use its time more effectively?

Tracking goals helps pinpoint weaknesses, choose specific action steps and divide work into smaller chunks so your team makes faster progress. Start goal tracking today by following these 10 tips. 

1. Helps You Create a Mission Statement

The first step in creating a mission statement is deciding what your business’s goal is. What do you want to accomplish? Are you trying to become more efficient and profitable? Maybe it’s about gaining market share or increasing customer satisfaction.

Once you’ve answered these questions, then it’s time to think about how your goals fit into the larger picture of who your company is and what its purpose is in the world. You can use this information as the basis for writing a mission statement that will guide all of your decision-making moving forward.

Once you have established what goals matter most, consider how they relate back to each other so that they are balanced against one another rather than competing with one another. One goal might be – for example – making better use of case management software by studying recent trends. 

This might mean spending less time on other areas of the business or hiring someone specifically to investigate these trends for you. 

2. Helps You Establish Your Long-term Goals

Keeping track of your goals is a great way to stay focused on your business and make sure you’re always working towards the right things.

It can also help you establish your long-term goals, which can be difficult if you don’t have a clear idea of what they are. This will keep you from spinning your wheels or getting lost in the weeds.

For example, if one of your goals is to grow into an international brand by 2020, then it would be helpful for you to know that it takes about 10 years for most businesses to become profitable and start making money faster than they spend it (hence why there are so many business books out there!).

3. Makes You Acknowledge Your Weaknesses

Goal tracking is a powerful tool that can help you identify and fix your weaknesses. By acknowledging them, you’re able to create action plans to improve those areas of weakness and make them into strengths.

For example: if you notice that your conversion rates are low and unsubscribes are high, it’s time for a deep dive into your funnel or sales process. Looking at the numbers gives you an objective view of what’s working and what isn’t, so you can make improvements based on facts rather than assumptions or gut feelings about how things should work.

4. Allows You To See What You’re Doing Right

The second reason is to help you see what’s working and what isn’t. When you set goals and track them, you can see where your strengths and weaknesses are.

For example, if you have a lot of clients from social media but not from referrals, it might be an indicator that your website needs to be updated or optimized for search engines.

You may also want to consider if there’s something about the way you present yourself or communicate with others that could use some improvement. This is especially important if lead generation is low in general but high via social media but low via referrals.

5. Identify Areas That Need Improvement

Goal tracking is the first step to finding out where your business needs improvement. What if you don’t know what’s wrong, how can you fix it?

Goal tracking allows you to find out what exactly is holding back your business from reaching its full financial potential and provides a roadmap for making improvements.

6. Encourages Accountability

Goal tracking also helps you stay accountable to your goals. By tracking your progress, you stay motivated and make sure you don’t let yourself down. When you’re aware of what needs to be done and when it’s much easier to push through procrastination and actually make the progress you want.

In addition to helping with accountability, goal tracking can help with organizing tasks on your plate so that they don’t feel overwhelming or intimidating. The key to accountability is creating goals you can actually keep in all aspects of your life. 

7. Helps You Make Action Plans

After you’ve identified your goals, the next step is to create an action plan. An action plan is how you will achieve your goals. An effective action plan should be specific, measurable, and time-bound.

The more precise your goal, the easier it will be to achieve it. For example, instead of saying “I want to increase my sales”, say “I want to increase my sales by 50% in the next 6 months”.

Make sure that there are clear indicators or metrics associated with achieving each goal so that you can measure progress along the way. For example, instead of just saying “I want more customers,” set a specific target such as “increase customer base by 10 new customers per month”.

Finally set deadlines for when tasks have to be completed so that they aren’t left lingering indefinitely on your task list or calendar!

8. Helps Identify Resources That Could Be Better Spent Elsewhere

Goal tracking helps you identify resources that could be better spent elsewhere. If you’re going to spend money on something, you want it to be an investment with a good return. This is not always the case with marketing efforts and other activities that don’t directly affect revenue.

With goal tracking, you can see what’s working and what isn’t—and make adjustments accordingly. You’ll know if your marketing campaigns are attracting new customers or if they’re just getting clicks by people who aren’t likely to buy anything from your business in the future.

9. It’s Easy To Do

If you have goals that are too overwhelming to tackle all at once, break them down into smaller parts. For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 10%, try setting a weekly or monthly target of increasing sales by 1%.

Once you’ve set a few goals (and stuck with them), it’s time to start tracking your progress on a regular basis. You’ll want to keep track of how many times per week or month you achieve each goal and what the outcome was: did you meet or surpass the target? Were there any unexpected challenges along the way?

10. Builds Discipline

Discipline is one of the most important but often overlooked ingredients in business success. If you don’t have a disciplined approach to your work and life, you will never be able to reach your goals. The key to disciple is endurance when the going gets tough.

Goal tracking is a great way to build discipline because it makes you accountable for every single day of your business. When you know that someone is going to see how much progress you’ve made at the end of each week and/or month, it’s more likely that you’ll stay on track with your goals.

Discipline can be built over time! It doesn’t happen overnight — there are many things that can help develop this quality:

Goal Tracking Is a Must 

When it comes down to goal tracking, there’s no one-size-fits-all. It all depends on your business goals as well as your personal goals. But don’t worry—even with a limited budget or minimal time, you can still make sure that your business is moving forward and becoming more successful in the process.

For more on meeting your business goals in the health care sector, be sure to click here to download our free ebook on management software.