The new year is right around the quarter, which means there’s a fresh opportunity to establish new goals for your small business. With the busiest time of year for fitness studios coming up fast, there’s no better time to get clear on your quarterly goals for the next few months. You’ll want to set goals that feel ambitious, but still achievable for your business. And of course, you’ll need to set you and your team up with a plan to get there.
To help guide your game plan for the new year, we asked a few experts in the space for their tips for evaluating your business needs and getting it all done.
MANAGE SEASONAL PROJECTIONS
People’s motivations for working out changes with the season. Spring time brings in a flood of new customers looking to get beach ready, and January signals a fresh opportunity for people to start (and stick to) a workout regimen in 2017. Shaun Chambers, owner of BODYROC Fit Lab says that anticipating these seasonal trends is key to setting quarterly business goals.
“As seasons change, so do people’s priorities and engagement with their healthy practices,” he says. “Taking those things into account makes setting quarterly goals a bit easier. For example, as new year’s resolutions send people racing to their nearest fitness studio, you can estimate that with the right promotions, campaigns, and customer engagement that sales will show a significant increase in the first quarter.”
Given this timing and trend, Chambers recommends setting an aggressive quarterly goal for Q1. “Challenge your team to meet a sales quota of 25% higher than that of the fourth quarter,” he says. “The traffic will be there and so should the engagement. Use the change in client activity associated with the new year’s resolutions rush to rally the troops around an increase in sales and boost your fitness studio’s profits!”
TRY A TIERED APPROACH
Instead of setting just one goal per quarter, Sacha Ferrandi, founder of Source Capital Funding, Inc., recommends implementing a tiered approach to your quarterly goals, which will add incentive for your employees to hit them.
“Have a tiered approach with basic goals at the bottom, reach goals in the middle, and ‘party’ goals at the top,” she explains. “This way, there is incentive to go beyond a regular goal while still keeping a feeling of success if the basic goals are hit. If you create a three-tiered system for each quarter and one for the year, there are a lot of boxes to be checked and a lot of opportunity to cultivate a team mentality.”
Plus, a tiered approach with a goal that involves a party is great for your company morale. “I love the ‘party’ goal mentality, where if the goal is hit, the company throws a party for the employees,” Ferrandi says. “This tactic does a great job of keeping employees engaged throughout the year, and also encourages collaboration as everyone tries to reach the party goal together.”
COMMUNICATE YOUR GOALS EFFECTIVELY
Once you have your quarterly goals in place, it’s essential to make sure that your employees are aware of the goals you’ve set, and know how to get there. “To clearly communicate these goals to your team, be sure to send out a copy of your business’s goals and then hold a meeting to discuss them and ask for feedback,” suggests Alice Williams, communications specialist at Frontier Business Edge. “Keep an open door policy so that employees feel comfortable discussing the business’s goals with you.”
Continue to communicate with staff throughout the quarter to provide mid-way check-ins on how your business is progressing on the goals. That way, if you find you’re halfway through the quarter and still have a ways to go, you can rally with your team to collaborate around ideas on how to get there.
