What’s up advocates!

How are your business goals looking? Are you close to hitting your goals this year? Or did you realize you took too big a bite?

Listen up! There is a proper way to look at business objectives. There is a way to set them and reach them consistently. And that’s what you will learn from this blog post. More specifically, you will learn how to:

👉 Be specific when setting goals.

👉 Have a detailed and realistic plan.

👉 Commit to your plan and focus on reaching your goals.

👉 Track your progress.

Those were the takeaways, now let us get into the thick of it and teach you how to effectively set and reach your business goals and grow your public adjusting firm into a juggernaut.

Business goals are objectives that you want to achieve with your public adjusting business. They can be short or long-term goals, for example, increasing profit this year by 10% or improving customer service.

The problem with business goals is that most owners do not know how to set them correctly. Public adjusters or mitigation contractors running their businesses might set too broad goals that are impossible to track.

And tracking your progress is an essential step to reaching your business objectives.

But let us take a step back and look at successful goal setting first.

First, you should determine the goals that will push your business forward. You want to focus on goals that are achievable and worth pursuing. 

Setting a huge goal like reaching $100 million in revenue is great, but you have a lot of ground to cover if you have not even hit your first million yet. Try to set a realistic goal that you can break down into actionable steps and track your progress.

Increasing your revenue by 20% this year is an excellent example of a realistic goal. You can easily calculate how many more claims you need and compare that with your averages. Now you know how much harder you have to work.

You could also focus on improving your networking skills or learning more about public adjusting and optimizing your claims workflow.

On a different note, you also shouldn’t forget about your personal life. All that hard work will not be worth much if you don’t remember to enjoy the fruits of your labor. 

Therefore, you should separate your goals into three categories, relationship, business, and personal.

The only way to reach business goals is to be as specific as possible when setting them. Set precise dollar amounts or percentages. Write down exactly how many more claims you need and how you will find the clients to get them.

The more specific you are, the better chances you have of reaching your objectives.

To give you a visual example, you could set a quarterly networking goal:

• Attend one large networking event for public adjusters in Q1
• Attend two networking events for everyone in the insurance claims industry in Q2
• Attend three networking events focusing on meeting new clients in Q3
• Attend four networking events in Q4

Even with this simple example, you could attend ten networking events in one year and meet god-knows-how-many potential clients and business opportunities.

Setting one specific business goal allows you to break that goal down into multiple smaller goals and action steps. Break it down into such small steps that you could act on them tomorrow.

If you are not sure where to start with that, best-self journals can help you. In a best-self journal, you break each goal into three smaller goals and then write down three actionable steps for each of the goals!

You know the drill, there is no gain without effort. It is the same in business. You can be writing down your goals all day, but you will not see any improvement if you do not stick to them.

So set your goals, stick to them, keep yourself motivated and remember to track your progress and enjoy the process.

Accountability might be the most important step in this blog post. Holding yourself accountable is absolutely essential if you want to reach your business objectives. 

So how do you do that? How do you ensure you hit your goals every day, week, month, and year?

Firstly, you can keep a weekly scorecard and note how many claims you signed, books sold, or clients met. This step comes naturally if you break your goals into smaller steps and track weekly progress.

Secondly, you should hold weekly meetings with your team and discuss your progress. Check where everyone stands and whether your weekly projections are realistic.

Finally, you can ask somebody (usually your spouse or partner) to be your partner in accountability. Some people prefer to post their goals on social media as proof of their dedication, but I am not a fan of that.

I prefer asking my wife to keep me in check on whether I am holding to my game plan. I would suggest you do the same!

Setting goals, breaking them down, and reaching them is a never-ending process, especially in business. You will always have a new objective to increase revenue, optimize processes, hire new experts, etc.

You will have a grueling time reaching your goals if you don’t take a moment to enjoy them. Otherwise, you will be in a vicious cycle of setting and achieving goals without ever taking a moment to enjoy your achievements.

So give yourself a gift if you reached a personal goal, and celebrate your achievements with your family and friends. And especially in business, create an opportunity to celebrate your objectives with your employees!