It’s easy to make big statements. We can all say where we’d like to be in five years and what our dreams may be. But the biggest mistake many business owners make is not putting things into action. Goal setting is crucial if you want to make those dreams a reality, and for a business coach the more you can focus on this, the better value you’ll be able to offer clients.
Most business owners will have spent time brainstorming, vision planning and blue sky thinking, trying to determine just where they want their business to go. This can be a very invigorating experience, and it can lead to a lot of excitement about the future.
However, too often we’ll finish this exercise and get back to our busy lives. Before we know it, six months have passed and that brainstorm, blue sky thinking or incredible vision is gathering dust, and we’ve done nothing towards it.
This is an issue that business coaches see time and time again. And the main cause of it is simply that after the thinking was done, no plan of action was put into place to make it a reality.
If you are working with a client and you’ve managed to get them enthused about the future and the potential of where they could go, but you don’t then put in the right action plan to make it happen, your clients are going to get demotivated and frustrated. And that’s going to reflect on your service.
Goal Setting
An action plan can seem like a massive thing. Especially if the vision is huge and you know it will take 10 years to get there. The best way to keep the momentum going is to break down the vision into manageable milestones.
If it’s a 10 year vision, perhaps break it down into five year goals, one year goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and then weekly objectives. By achieving the smaller, more frequent goals, you’ll ultimately be on the pathway to achieving the larger goals. They all work hand in hand.
The further out in the future you’re looking, the less detail and the less refined your goals should be. That means that for your 10 year goals it has to be really high level, and for your one year goal it should be fairly high level, just noting everything that needs to be achieved in the next 12 months.
It’s when you get to your quarterly goals that you will need to start putting the detail in, and this needs to become more and more detailed as you focus in on time.
Breaking it down, it needs to look something like this:
- For the quarter approaching, decide what you need to achieve to stay on track to attaining your one year goal
- Then just focus on month one of the quarter and break down what activities you need to do over the space of four weeks in order to reach your quarterly goals
- Then break that down week by week, really focusing in on specific tasks
This is a very structured way of helping clients to get more motivated, more inspired and to get results. It takes their blue sky thinking and then brings it back down to the reality, putting in the detail to ensure the vision can be achieved.
You need to ensure that your clients understand the steps that need to be taken every day in order to get where they want to be, and then part of your business coaching is to help them stay on track with that plan, whether it’s nudging them or supporting them as they overcome challenges, and so on.
Lifetime Value
One of the greatest advantages of working in this way is that it will increase the lifetime value of your clients. If no action is taken, then your clients will become frustrated and they’ll start to question the value you offer. You could ultimately lose them as a client.
However, if you’ve got a client that you have worked with to create this plan, and then you’ve helped them to stay accountable, they’re going to be seeing results. Every time you have a meeting, you’re going to be checking in on them, they’re going to be ticking things off, they’re going to see progress, and they’re going to see forward movement towards that goal. That means they are going to keep you on board longer because you are actively helping them on their journey to achieve that goal.
Easy Action Plans
Action plans sit at the heart of hubbix. Using hubbix, the whole of your client session can be about building the right action plan to ensure their goals are attainable, and the plan is built proactively within the client session, meaning you don’t have to spend a lot of admin time after the meeting collating information. If you’re keen to use goal setting to increase the value that you offer to customers, then hubbix can give you an immediate structure that offers a vast amount of benefits.
If you’d like to see for yourself how easy action plans are to build, why not try hubbix for free with our 30 day, no obligation trial.