short term goals in business plan

40 Short-Term Business Goals Examples to Set in 2023

• OKR - Objectives & Key Results

Short-term business goals should be a road map that shows where you want to go. Setting short-term goals for a business can get a bit trickier. As they must be very clear, practical, and easily understandable for employees. That is why we’ve compiled 40 + examples of short-term business goals and objectives in this article.

What’s more, when setting business objectives you must always keep the long game in mind. Otherwise you might stray from the really impactful daily tasks.

How to Set Business Goals with OKRs

For setting business goals, you can use the popular Objectives and Key Results ( OKR ) method. This is an increasingly flexible methodology for increasing your own and your team’s productivity and focus. In simple terms, OKR is an easy process of setting company, team, and personal goals then connecting each goal with 3-5 measurable results.

Objectives should be qualitative and describe the desired outcome. Make it inspirational and understandable to those reading and working toward it! Key Results are the quantifiable measures that help explain how from reaching your Objective you are – adding metrics to Objectives.

Set OKR Goals in Weekdone

Use the popular OKR goal management framework in a dedicated software with OKR examples to get teams on the right track from day one!

Examples of Short Term (Quarterly) OKRs

Here are some of the example business Objectives you can find also from our resource: okrexamples.co

Objective: Research and improve customer satisfaction. Key Result #1: Achieve Net Promoter Score (NPS) of over 8.0. Key Result #2: Get 1000 survey responses to annual satisfaction survey. Key Result #3: Conduct 50 phone interviews with top customers. Key Result #4: Conduct 15 phone interviews with recently churned customers. Key Result #5: Present an action plan of 10 improvements for next quarter. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

Objective: Improve internal employee engagement. Key Result #1: Conduct 3 monthly “Fun Friday” all-hands meetings with motivational speakers. Key Result #2: Interview 48 employees on their needs for improving our work culture. Key Result #3: Implement using OKRs and Weekdone software in all of our 23 teams. Key Result #4: Reach weekly employee satisfaction score of at least 4.7 points. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

Objective: Successfully launch version 3 of our main product. Key Result #1: Get over 10000 new signups. Key Result #2: Get published product reviews in over 15 publications. Key Result #3: Achieve sign-up to trial ratio of over 25%. Key Result #4: Achieve trial to paid ratio of over 50%. Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

40 Examples of Short Term Business Goals

In the next 40 examples, we’ll consider the SMART goals criteria. Meaning a suitable goal will follow the SMART formula: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed.

1. Gain X New Customers by the end of X month

Setting business goals in the short term is generally from 1-3 months time. Usually, setting a 3 month (quarterly) period is a good timeframe to satisfy the: achievable, realistic, and timed aspects of the SMART criteria. You’ll gain enough meaningful data to start making better decisions for your company as well.

With all that in mind, ask yourself, when do you want these customers? How many new customers do you want? How can teams set goals to drive this forward as well?

2. Increase Revenue by X Amount This Month

Another great short-term goal to have as a business is to increase your revenue. More revenue = more profits 💵

Set a realistic goal for the amount of revenue you believe you could make in a month.

Note: Before you set your goal, first look at what you’ve done in the past to ensure it really is realistic. If you do reach this goal, you can always make the next month’s goal more ambitious.

Related: Weekdone helps you define your ambitions when setting OKRs since you can set your Objective (goal) with a related confidence level and type! How confident are you that you’ll achieve this goal?

Moonshot: Otherwise known as “stretch goals”, are seemingly impossible to achieve. Forcing you to shoot for the moon (get it?!) and everyone contributing to the success of this goal out of their comfort zone. Aim for 70% achievement here!

Roofshot: These are your more “committed” goals. Maybe you’ve achieved this target before, but it’s been some time. You’re in your comfort zone, but still want to achieve 100%. That’s your drive!

Read more about the difference between aspirational and committed goals.

3. Successfully Host an Event

As a small business owner, a great way to market yourself is by setting business goals that center around hosting events.

While the above goal is a bit broad, you would have to take the event itself and center a more specific and actionable goal around the event.

To use an OKR example for this short term goal, we could frame it like this:

Objective: Host a successful golf tournament with at least 70% attendance Key Result #1: Distribute invitations to 100% of customers Key Result #2: Sign contracts with 12 industry partnerships/sponsors Key Result #3: Raise $50,000 for X charity associated with tournament Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

Key Results help you to break down the Objective into more “bite-sized pieces”. Within each measurable Key Result, you will have various activities that help you make progress toward achieving those targeted outcomes! Using OKRs helps you keep weekly focus on your short term and long term goals.

4. Increase Employee Retention Through the End of the Fiscal Year

If you are a business that sees many employees come and go throughout the year, it’s a good idea to make one of your goals centered around employee retention to reduce turnover.

Whether you choose to put in an incentive program or go through the ropes to find something that makes employees happier like scheduling team-building activities or something else of the sort, setting a goal to keep your employees around is a great way to help the business grow!

5. Reduce Monthly Expenses this Quarter

If you notice that you are spending a lot of money each month, a great short-term goal is to reduce monthly expenses. Review your current expenses to see what you are spending money on, but once you do that, you should be able to eliminate some of the heftier expenses that you realize aren’t needed.

Thinking outside of the box to manage monthly expenses can benefit your business.

6. Create a Budget Tracker

If your business doesn’t have a budget tracker or dedicated accountant, this is a great short term goal! This is the only way to visualize how you’re spending is going and how you can allocate resources better for the next goal term, or quarter.

There are many programs you can use for budget tracking as well as simply using Excel. Just remember to document every single expense so you have access to historic data in order to make better accounting decision in the future

7. Research Various Market Opportunities

As a business, it’s always smart to consider growth and expansion. You’ll notice that this short-term goal only covers “research” – since looking into your possibilities is a big task. Focusing here can set you up for the trial/experimental phase in the next quarter.

If you’re a service provider, are there other parts of the market that you could expand into to offer more services? If you sell products, what other products are in your niche that you could offer to customers? See what opportunities come about as you do some competitor research!

8. Implement a Hybrid Work Model

This short term goal has potential to be carried out in a quarter (3 months) if done so efficiently with the leadership team completely on board!

With so many people working from home these days, hybrid work has proved its value. Happier employees with more flexibility, and offering companies the option to downsize and save on overhead costs.

Of course, in order to do this successfully, you’ll need to find a software solution to support your business goal management and satisfies employees as to keep momentum going rather than deplete it!

Lead online with Confidence

9. create a social media content plan.

Over  4 billion people  use social media, so it shouldn’t go unnoticed as an opportunity to gain new customers or higher engagement levels!

One way to implement social media into your marketing technique is to put all of your energy and focus into one platform until you grow that one. Another way to go about this is to choose several to focus on.

To make sure you are giving social media the time of day, you could consider hiring an agency to do the work for you so you can focus on other parts of the business. Otherwise, it could be an employee’s part-time job to run the social media accounts and calendar.

Whatever you do in terms of who runs your social media, you should ensure that you are posting on your social media platforms a few times per week. The most important thing is to stay consistent. If you post once a week and it’s every Wednesday, keep doing that so customers know when to expect to hear or see something from you!

10. Improve Customer Service

When setting business goals, you have to also take into account who you are serving. This goal is specific to Customer Service Teams, if you find that your rate of engagement with customers is on a downward trend, can set the short term goal of making improvements!

When setting this goal, you have to take actionable steps within this goal to guarantee you are reaching it. How do you plan to improve customer service? What are the challenges you need to surpass in order to achieve the expected outcome?

Here are a few ideas: (if using OKR goals , these would be your Key Results )

• Increase our ratings on 10 review websites
• Create an “after purchase” email automation flow that receives a 2.5% open rate
• Complete 50 customer account checks weekly to reduce churn from 3.2% to 1.5%.

Each of these items will have various activities (or initiatives) that individual teammates work on during the timeline to drive the changes and see progress on a weekly basis!

11. Stay Up-to-Date With Marketing Trends

Since trends are constantly changing, you need to be looking out for the newer trends. Simply being behind the times can make you less successful than if you stayed on top of current trends.

So what types of trends should you be looking for?

As of 2022, marketing is trending toward short-form videos and social media. Most is digital rather than in paper form as well.

12. Develop a New Product

Is it time to create or make changes to your product to meet the demand of what people want?

For example, let’s say you make and sell soy candles. While reviewing sales from last quarter, and discussing customer requests with your Sales team, you learn that customers have been asking for a diffuser option! This is a great time to ramp up production on something new.

Having conversations with your teams is crucial to help find new areas of opportunity. The OKR goal setting methodology helps companies and teams adopt a collaborative process with goal-setting at the forefront!

Read why OKRs are so beneficial to teams

13. Create an Employee Incentive Program 

Employees love recognition. About  45% of workers  in America leave their jobs – because they don’t feel recognized by their employers. It’s so important to create some type of employee incentive and recognition program.

As a business owner, it’s important to ensure that your employees feel recognized, motivated, and fulfilled, otherwise a new opportunity awaits them and they could end up leaving your company.

Something as simple as sending a weekly email to acknowledge a job well done, or something worth supporting will go a long way.

14. Create a Blog

Content creation is a huge marketing win and opportunity for people to find you online through organic search.

On the blog, you have to guarantee that you are posting simply about your niche. If you are a lawn care service company, you most likely don’t want to post about the best going-out clothes to wear around town.

Creating a blog is a great example of a short term goal for your marketing team. Here’s an OKR example to show how it would look:

Objective: Create a WordPress blog that stands out among competitors Key Result #1: Research 30 competitors in our niche and create 1 master competitor’s analysis spreadsheet Key Result #2: Create a content calendar and write 10 articles to promote Key Result #3: Research and test SEO tools, choose 1 to move forward with Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

15. Go Paperless

Going paperless is a step closer to being more environmentally friendly as a business. With more and more customers ( 78% of customers  to be exact) preferring to purchase from a green company, you will have a leg-up in the industry if you choose to go paperless.

This could mean a few different things, and doing even just one of these things to start will be working toward your goal.

• Eliminate paper checks for employees
• Eliminate flyers and mail marketing
• Change menus or services/products to online menus

This could be a goal that you set over a three-month period. From there, you could do one of these each month. Making the objective more attainable for a shorter term.

16. Make Company Meetings More Efficient

Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? So, in order to come up with innovative solutions, create products, or solve problems meetings should give everyone a voice, in an efficient way!

Setting a short term business goal like this, proves to everyone that you:

• understand there is a problem with the current process,
• value individuals’ needs and time,
• are committed to making an improvement

17. Improve Company Data Analysis

It’s always great to implement goals and techniques, but without analyzing how it works, you may be left with more questions than answers.

Make a short-term business goal to improve your collection and analysis of data. This is a very general goal, but for example you could create reports for individual teams based on what they need to measure their success on short-term team goals.

18. Prepare an Investment Portfolio

Investing in your business is crucial for growth and opportunity. If you don’t already have a portfolio for investments, this is a great short-term business goal to implement!

Set yourself a timeline of 3 months (1 quarter) to review investment opportunities, meet with investors or a financial advisor, or whatever you need to make this goal achievable and lasting.

Of course, once you achieve this goal, you could consider an annual goal surrounded by the growth you hope to see within 1 year.

Read about annual vs. quarterly goals

19. Test OKR software for Better Goal Setting

There are so many goals you can have as a business owner, as well as individual team goals. But if you’re not using software to track everyone’s progress it can be frustrating trying to keep up with others, losing momentum all around!

So, it may be time to consider using software to help you track quarterly goals company-wide! At Weekdone, we fully believe in the benefits of the OKR methodology – OKRs not only help you break down your goals into measurable outcomes, but the framework brings focus back to what’s really important.

Read our extensive list of the best OKR software . It shares details about 24 goal management tools + their supporting features that help you make positive changes with lasting results!

20. Raise Brand Awareness on Social Media

As a brand, you should always consider how to grow your audience, whether through social media, blogs, or various email campaigns. For a short-term business goal about raising brand awareness, consider choosing one outlet – social media, or even further, Instagram! This removes the ambiguity and gets you that specificity!

What is your Objective? What is motivating you to raise awareness on social media this quarter? Maybe you saw a drop in traffic from this channel and would like to see more referrals coming in. Consider the “why” and surround your focus on this!

Marketing Short Term Business Goal Example (specific to raising brand awareness using OKRs )

Objective: Increase organic traffic from Instagram and raise brand awareness Key Result #1: Solidify 10 influencer partnerships within our niche Key Result #2: Create, run, and optimize 2 paid advertisement posts to drive organic traffic Key Result #3: Improve engagement from 50% to 90% Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

Now, in order to reach your desired outcome for each Key Result, to drive your Objective forward, you’ll have to create some initiatives or larger projects to work on daily that keep you on track!

Initiative Examples connected to Key Result #3 Example #1: Prepare, Run, and Analyze results from an Instagram Giveaway Example #2: Share 50 relative accounts from ours in stories/reels Sign up to add this goal to Weekdone

Now, you have larger projects that help you stay focused on your goal! Now, set yourself some weekly plans , and daily tasks to improve focus and motivation for yourself!

21. Test various hashtag methods

On social media, you also want to focus on getting your content seen! There is a method to all of the madness that is social media, and one of them is focusing on the hashtags you use when you post.

For instance, if you are a travel agency, you may use hashtags like:

• #travelagency
• #webooktravel
• #travelmore
• #travelandexplore

Expanding your reach on social media with hashtags is a great option and you could dedicate some time (possibly even shorter than 3 months) to analyzing and testing different options!

22. Start producing video content

Videos are an upward trend for marketing campaigns. Whether you post a short-form customer testimonial video on your website or create a reel on Instagram or TikTok, these are fast moving attractors!

With short playing times, they hold people’s attention a bit longer. Sometimes they are also played quickly, so people will watch them more than once (which, on social media helps you get more reach, and more reach means more customers!).

Short-form videos are trending on websites, blogs, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and even other platforms, too!

23. Improve Customer Feedback Channels

Having a short-term business goal related to customer feedback, allows you to think further into how you receive it, measure it, and what you do with it!

You can get more feedback from your customers through: anonymous customer satisfaction surveys, rewards for reviews, check-in calls or emails! However makes sense for your business.

24. Improve Employee Morale at Work

As a company, you want to ensure your team is connected, happy, and motivated. Some initiatives that could help drive this goal forward are:

• Plan and hold X company events this quarter
• Test and implement an employee engagement tool for the company
• Hold 1:1 weekly check-ins with employees

25. Go Green

Our society is making the push to go green, so your company should also make this a goal. While this is a large goal in itself, there are ways to chunk this “go green” goal into smaller goals.

For instance, as mentioned before, you could take three months to go paperless.

One month you could make the goal to hire a green cleaning company to use healthier cleaning products and fewer paper towels. The next month you could install energy-efficient hand dryers in the workplace.

Another month you could incentivize workers to walk or carpool to work.

Every month could be a different goal toward going green, but each month you grow closer to being as green as possible! The short-term goals help to lead you to your long-term goals.

26. Formulate your Company Mission Statement

Having a  mission statement  as a company is not only helpful for customers and others to see, but it also helps make the workplace more cohesive. Everyone knows the values and goals you have as a company.

To achieve this goal, it’s important to gather the leadership team for a brainstorming session. Only after this should you include individuals, maybe you could create an anonymous worksheet to help float ideas around and understand what the company means to your workers.

27. Promote a New Version of Your Product

After creating products, you also need to promote them to make sure they sell.

Just before the launch of your new product, start planning the next quarter to be your active promotion time. During this time, Marketing team prepares promotional materials, the Product team is fixing any reported bugs to ensure proper functioning, the Design team could be working on a new landing page on the website to share feature developments!

28. Organize Business Expenses

If you don’t have a way of tracking items that you can write-off for tax purposes, you may find yourself stressed when tax season rolls around since you have to get everything in order. Instead of waiting until the last minute – have a system in place to meet the goal of not being stressed once per year.

Your goal could be to track your business expenses every Monday. This is a short-term goal is more of an individual weekly goal that will help you with your business tracking and tax filing every single year.

29. Improve Internal Organizational Structure

As your company grows, responsibilities are dispersed among teams and you can easily lose sight of whats going on in the day to day, feeling overwhelmed and confused! That’s why it is important to have a system that works and can grow with you as you scale up.

We recommend finding a way to improve this internal struggle for yourself and your employees! There are plenty of tools out there to help you save the day, however we wholeheartedly recommend the OKR framework to help you turn that chaos into confidence! Building internal processes, structure and ultimately a more positive organizational culture through goal-setting and tracking!

30. Improve Company Communication

As a business, it can be difficult to keep track of what everyone is doing! And with so many tools available, where did you make that important note? Improving company communication is a great short term goal or initiative that you should start seeing positive changes immediately!

Some ideas to help you get started here are:

• Create a digital company calendar where everyone has access
• Use a digital communication tool like Slack or MS Teams so everyone stays connected
• If you choose to improve organizational structure and communication in one quarter – test out these OKR software with Slack integrations!

31. Hire consultant for X project

Say you have a new project coming up, but your current resources and employees cant handle the workload, or it’s outside of their wheelhouse – you’ll need to hire outside of your team.

This short term goal would begin with creating a job description, finding the right platforms to list it, interviewing consultants, negotiating contracts, and whatever else you may need.

32. Increase customer retention

If you’ve noticed that your customers are less active over time, or are churning quicker than before – retention is a great place to start. Begin with your Sales team and discuss numbers and try to place where the issue started based on collected customer feedback, product issues, and more. Then start setting yourself some targets related to retention. This helpful article shares 10 customer retention metrics you may want to consider using to help you achieve your outcome!

33. Improve New Market Knowledge

By setting the short term business goal of improving your knowledge and understanding of a new market, you’ll be more active in getting to know potential customers, competitors, and value you could bring to this new market.

This is a short term goal that you could set for yourself in 1 quarter; make sure you consider putting together your research in a report and comparing it against other markets down the line. Having this data will allow you to see how quickly things change and what you’ll need to do to adapt if you want to grow.

34. Participate in X Community Events

This short term marketing goal could be a part of a broader Company Objective to expand community outreach. However, with your Marketing Team aligned with that Objective you’ll be able to move things forward with actionable outcomes.

How many events can you realistically participate in during a 3 month period? Consider choosing, planning, and preparing – given your current available budget and resources.

35. Test New Messaging on X

If your business is going through a transition phase, this is a great short term goal to try out some new messaging. Before you change elements across all of your platforms, it’s important to see what sort of engagement and people this new message drives to your product.

The Marketing team could test and optimize the message, while your Sales Team analyzes the quality of those new leads. A collaborative short team goal that can provide valuable insights into the next quarter.

36. Improve the SEO on Your Website

Assuming you have a website and are creating content for your users, you need to go through and  improve the SEO  throughout.

There are plenty of ways to do this, but to get started:

• Ensure your website is mobile friendly (check Google Search Console )
• Sign up for a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to help analyze keywords and current positioning.
• Learn some SEO best practices and implement them, examples: strategic internal linking, best page structure, and optimizing images for search.

It’s important to note that SEO is a long term game, most results will show in 3-6 months time, but tracking and keeping up with it will improve your organic reach to bring in new customers!

37. Facilitate More Employee 1:1s

As a business owner or manager, it is crucial to have one-on-one time with employees to make sure they feel valued. This is also a time for them to voice their concerns as well.

Having a monthly meeting to check in with individuals’ progress, challenges, and general thoughts on their role and responsibilities helps employees improve in addition to you as a manager. Ask and give feedback regularly – make it your goal to be a better leader.

38. Complete a Course on X

Learning opportunities are always a great short term business goal to set. You should allow and encourage your employees to do the same. Whether you give them a quarterly stipend to enroll in a certification program, or take a course together as a team/company, you won’t regret it.

39. Encourage Monthly Self Care

To avoid burnout, you need to take care of yourself, and you also need to take care of your staff. But it’s not enough to tell everyone to take care of themselves! 

You have to encourage it in the short and long-term.

Here are a few ways to encourage self-care in the workplace:

• Allow employees the flexibility to work from home
• Give employees one half-day on a Friday each month
• Give a gym stipend to employees every month
• Create a contest that centers around self-care

40. Change Up the Office Space to Be More Trendy

Another goal of yours as a business owner could be to change up the office space. This could be to make it a space that people like to be in or to simply stay up with the times of more collaborative office spaces.

Instead of having individual offices, you could have an open space with tables, couches, and chairs for employees to hang out in and work.

Start with a budget and go from there.

Ready to Set Awesome Business Goals?

Without short term goals for your business, you’ll be overwhelmed by the long-term agenda.

There are so many examples of short-term goals to choose from that it can be easy to get distracted. Ultimately, you’ll want to use these examples as inspiration. In the end, remember the SMART formula for effective goal setting – S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R ealistic, and T imed.

If you found our OKR examples interesting, read more about how to write and set good OKRs .

Try Weekdone to help you set more strategic goals with Objectives and Key Results and lead your company with confidence

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Short-term vs. long-term business goals: comparison + examples

Not unlike the recipe for your mum’s famous chocolate cake, the recipe for business success calls for various ingredients and steps plus time and patience. It requires short-term work (baking) to yield long-term results (happy tummies). 

In business, short- and long-term goals are used tactically to help a business move forward. But what are they? And how are they set? We’ll define and compare short-term and long-term goals and show you 15 examples of what they look like in business.

What is a long-term business goal?

It’s all in the name — long-term outcomes are what your company wants to achieve in the long term. They’re high-level goals or strategies you want to accomplish in the coming years, driving you closer to your vision. Good long-term goals should be adaptable to technological, political and other environmental changes.

No exact period defines long-term goals, but most organisations think of them as goals you aim to achieve in the next one to ten years. While ambitious, they inform short-term goals and day-to-day business flow and vice versa. Knowing a general direction is essential, but keeping a bottom-up approach that supports adaptability, creativity and more input into decision-making is still crucial.

What is a short-term business goal?

The term ‘short’ is key in describing short-term goals. They define business goals you want to achieve in the near future, which can span from a week to a year, depending on the project and organisational preferences. They focus on the present, promoting productivity and good time management.

Short-term goals are clear, easily actionable and geared toward individual or team efforts rather than overall strategy. That being said, short-term goals should still be set with long-term strategy in mind — to set short-term goals, you need to know generally where your business is heading. In simpler terms, short-term goals are the steps you need to take to get where you want to be and a tool to check you’re heading in the right direction.

Short-term vs long-term goals

Short-term and long-term goals may differ, but it’s not quite David and Goliath. Below we’ve listed three key factors that set short- and long-term goals apart.

The biggest difference between short-term goals and long-term goals is their purpose. Long-term goals are strategic — they’re a plan for the future of the business. Short-term goals contribute to business success but have more to do with your current performance.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to defining what’s considered short-term or long-term, but generally speaking, short-term goals are more likely to be measured by weeks or months and long-term goals by years. Long-term business strategies require many short-term goals to meet.

Flexibility

Short-term goals and long-term organisational goals are also different in adaptability. Short-term goals are typically more clearly defined and actionable, whereas long-term goals are flexible to changes in strategy.

Examples of both short- and long-term goals in business

Looking for some real-world examples to help you write business goals? Using the SMART methodology — which requires goals to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound — we’ve compiled some examples of long- and short-term business goals that are easily adaptable.

Short-term vs long-term marketing goal examples

A long-term marketing goal might sound like this:

• Drive more traffic to the shop tab on the website

And the short-term goals that support this long-term strategy might look like this:

• Develop a social media strategy that boosts posting from 3 times a week to daily
• Plan an email campaign that achieves an average click rate of 10% before new product launch 

Short-term vs long-term finance goal examples

The following might be a long-term finance goal:

•  Reduce operating costs 

And to support the long-term strategy, short-term finance goals may look like this:

• Automate 50% of payroll duties by adopting accounting software by June 30
• Reduce cost of goods sold (COGS) expenses by 20% this quarter

Short-term vs long-term HR goal examples

Long-term HR goals would include:

• Improve employee retention rate

Whereas the short-term HR goals for the long-term strategy may look like this:

• Allocate 10% of HR budget to personal development training
• Implement one feedback form a month for more visibility across company issues

Short-term vs long-term sales goal examples

A typical goal for long-term sales growth may look like this:

• Increase total sales revenue 

In contrast, the short-term goals for sales might be as follows:

• Generate 50% of sales from clients X and Y by the end of June
• Make $30,000 in new deals by the end of the quarter

Short-term vs long-term customer service goal examples

An example of a long-term customer service goal might be:

• Increase customer satisfaction

Whereas customer service short-term goals are more likely to be specific:

• Increase the first-contact resolution rate by 10% by the end of quarter
• Improve first reply time by 5% overall by the end of the month

How to set short- and long-term goals with OKRs

Whether you’re 20 years into trading or in the early stages of business, getting past the ‘vision’ part of goal setting is not always easy. You may know where you want to be, but getting there is the hard part.

A goal-setting framework like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) bridges the gap between vision and strategy. It uses short-term targets to support medium- and long-term goals. 

If your long-term vision is to grow revenue, your quarterly OKRs may look like this:

Objective: Improve monthly sales revenue

• KR1: Increase number of cold calls from 10 to 20 a day
• KR2: Increase average purchase amount from $300 to $500 per person
• KR3: Reduce customer churn from 40% to 15%

The process to turn goals into OKRs is simple:

• Write down your goal
• Pick up the best metrics and/or KPIs that have a high correlation to success
• Set a target for improvements

Of course, there's a bit more subtleties to master, but there are some guides that can help you turn a vision into a simple set of OKRs .

How to track short and long term goals

Benefits of tracking your goals

Setting goals is only the first step you take to achieve success. Without goals, it's difficult to determine what you want to accomplish and how to reach your destination.

But, tracking your progress towards your goals is equally important. This is what helps you stay focused and motivated. By tracking your short-term and long-term goals, you can keep yourself accountable and on track towards achieving your objectives.

Short-term goals help you maintain a sense of urgency and motivation while working towards a larger long-term objective. Long-term goals, on the other hand, help you maintain a clear vision and a sense of direction. Tracking both short and long-term goals helps you maintain a healthy balance between the two.

Limitations of spreadsheets for goal-tracking

Using spreadsheets to track progress can be limiting, as they do not provide a comprehensive view of your progress. Spreadsheets are static and require manual updating, making them prone to human error. It can also be difficult to extract meaningful insights from spreadsheets as they don't provide data visualization tools that can help you identify trends and patterns. Spreadsheets also have limited functionality, which makes them unsuitable for complex tracking needs.

Why should use a proper goal-tracking software

A good goal-tracking platform provide a more structured and organized approach to setting and tracking goals. It allows users to define specific objectives and key results, assign ownership, and track progress against each goal. This structured approach ensures that goals are aligned with business priorities and that progress is measured against specific metrics.

A good platform will allows users to track progress against key results, see trends and patterns, and get real-time updates on progress. This level of visibility enables users to make informed decisions and take corrective action when needed. This, in turn, can help organizations improve performance, foster a culture of transparency and accountability, and achieve their business objectives.

Simplify goal setting with Tability

Set, share and track goals without a hitch using user-friendly software like Tability . Tability's easy-to-use tools and check-in emails support team buy-in, making it easy for your business to adopt it. Give it a go with a free trial today.

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Content Writer and Editor

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Examples of Long- & Short-Term Goals for a Business

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Growing a business requires setting short- and long-term goals. Often the short-term goals are the steps necessary to achieve the longer-term goals. You can choose related areas such as advertising and revenue, and base short- and long-term goals within these categories.

An example of a short-term goal is to increase your advertising budget each month for the next three months. An example of a long-term business goal that the short-term goal helps achieve is to double business revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

Revenue Goals and Supporting Goals

If your long-term revenue goal is to double revenue by the end of the current fiscal year, another example of a supporting short-term goal is to contract an advertising consultant for one month to help you analyze and capitalize on your customer's buying trends. Another short-term goal example is to spend the next month learning your primary competition and brainstorming on what you offer that they don't. You can us this research and design a new advertising campaign that highlights the unique points about your business or products.

Customer Service Goals

One long-term goal for customer service would be achieving at least 95 percent positive customer feedback. An example of a supporting short-term goal is to redesign the customer service research process to include new questionnaires and incentives, such as monthly drawings for free products or discounts on future purchases for customers who take the time to respond.

Employee Appreciation Goals

Some businesses establish a long-term employee appreciation goal of awarding an employee of the year award to the employee who provides the most creative input during the year in terms of practical ideas to improve the company. Supporting short-term goals are to award employee of the month designations each month throughout the year to mark the progression of creative input, and to include more employees in the reward process than is possible with a single annual award.

Community Outreach Goals

Building the company's name recognition within the community through community outreach projects is a popular long-term goal for businesses. Examples of short-term supporting goals are to reward employees who volunteer with designated community programs with additional time off, bonuses or gift cards. Another short-term supporting goal is to choose one or two high-profile annual charity events to sponsor.

Website Traffic Goals

A long-term goal regarding web traffic is to increase traffic to your company's site by at least 50 percent by the end of the current fiscal year. Supporting short-term goals are to research and purchase web traffic analysis software to better pinpoint current traffic trends, to hire a web consultant for one month to propose and implement programming changes to make the site appeal to a broader audience than your traffic trend research suggests currently exist.

Another example of a short-term goal is to select a medium for advertising your site other than the Web, such as a bus campaign where you advertise your site address on the side of city buses for one month, or billboards, where you lease a billboard in a conspicuous place in town for one month.

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An attorney for more than 18 years, Jennifer Williams has served the Florida Judiciary as supervising attorney for research and drafting, and as appointed special master. Williams has a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Jacksonville University, law degree from NSU's Shepard-Broad Law Center and certificates in environmental law and Native American rights from Tulsa University Law.

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8 Short-Term Business Goals Examples

Have you set any short-term goals lately? If you’re like most entrepreneurs and business leaders, you have a long to-do list. But, it’s important to stop and think about the bigger picture.

Short-term business goals you set for yourself and your business that you hope to accomplish within a short period. This could be as short as a few weeks or up to a year. The reasons why short-term goals are important are many. These types of goals provide quick wins. This means that while you are seeking to accomplish your long-term and medium-term business goals , you have shorter goals that provide small victories along the way. 

Short-term goals can also serve as milestones toward your larger goals. If you have big ambitious goals for your business, you can take steps towards them by lining up smaller, shorter-term goals to accomplish.

Over the next few weeks, months, or even the next year, what do you hope to accomplish? If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few short-term business goals examples to think about.

Improve Operational Processes

Although it may seem that improving operational processes is a non-financial business goal , the way a business operates directly impacts its ability to make money. Especially when it comes to being profitable. Your operation process is how you and your business get stuff done. This means how you manage your website, develop your product, find leads, manage inventory, as well as many other things.

You may have an in-demand product or service, but if the way you operate the business behind the scenes is antiquated and disorganized, you could be wasting time and material resources.

A good short-term goal would be to improve operational processes this week, month, quarter, or year. You can start with the little things. For example, improve the way that you improve your product fulfillment process this week. Ask yourself “How long does it take to fulfill orders?” Then, seek a way to shorten that time.

Look for small improvements over the course of the year and you will eventually develop a smoother operational process that will help the business become more streamlined.

Increase Sales Revenue for This Quarter

Planning for your business to be profitable must be intentional. So, begin now by creating the goal of increasing sales revenue for this quarter. 

If you’re not sure how you will meet this goal, think about these questions:

• What products are customers buying now ? 
• What products aren’t they buying? 
• Are there seasonal trends impacting the business? 
• What are our competitors doing better than we are?

There are many other ways to increase revenue as well. You can increase the prices of your most popular offerings. You can also increase your advertising and marketing budget to drive revenue. Setting a short-term revenue goal will allow you to see the hidden potential your business has. Seeing what it takes to hit short-term financial goals will help you understand what is needed to help your business scale.

Hire “X” Amount of Employees This Year

Committing to hiring the right number of employees may help you achieve other goals for your business. Not having enough employees on board will only keep you from achieving your other business goals.

For example, if your goal is to sell X number of units – but you’re understaffed – your business will miss its production goal. Or, you will pay more to your current employees in overtime costs.

Ensure you’re placing the right person in each role. These new hires can be pivotal for creating a great culture , and ultimately, cultivating a great reputation for your company. Creating a referral program for your current employees to refer their friends is one easy way of finding great talent.

Expanding your team is a key startup business goal . However, every business that wants to have the right employees on staff should set short-term hiring goals.

Improve Customer Retention

It costs more to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. The effort and time poured into marketing and other efforts make it costly. Smart companies know that they must not take their current customer base for granted.

How can you improve customer retention? Here are some strategies:

• Marketing Through a Customer Loyalty Program – Reward customers for repeat purchases.
• Discounts and Promo Codes- While many companies have done away with coupons, some customers still use them and would be enticed by a coupon or promo code to use on a future purchase.
• Outstanding Customer Service- When employees are rude to customers or they do not seem to care, a business will easily lose customers. Not every customer will complain. Some will just leave your business and never return. After all, there is plenty of competition ready to meet their wants and needs. 

Expand Online Presence by “X”

How would you describe your online strategy? Due to the importance and competitiveness of online marketing, expanding your online presence is an important first-year goal for any business .

If you’ve been doing it all yourself- then it might be time to hire an online expert. It may be time to make it a goal to expand your online presence.

Why should you make this a priority? There are several reasons. Expanding your online presence will allow you to target more customers, show more people who you are, and gain more sales.

This online presence will enhance your credibility. A basic level of trust, credibility, or familiarity must be established before many people will even purchase from you. After all, you wouldn’t just hand your money over to a stranger, would you? Customers need to know that they can trust your company. They want to know:

• Will I get what I ordered? 
• Are they just going to steal my credit card information? 
• If there’s a problem with my order, will they resolve it?

There are more reasons to enhance your online presence, such as:

• Reaching your target customers
• Making people aware that you’re hiring
• Reminding existing customers to come back and purchase from you again
• Converting ads to sales

Increase Employee Productivity This Month

Increasing employee productivity is another short-term goal you may set at some point. However, to ensure success in this area, make sure your employees have what they need to be successful at their jobs. Be sure your employees are familiar with any safety regulations that apply to their industry. Confirm that everyone has the tools needed to do their jobs.

Test New Product Idea the Year

Testing a new product idea is another short-term goal. If this goal is successful, it could eventually lead to the launching of a new product that could increase sales. You’ll want to test your idea thoroughly before launching it to the public.

You’ll want to think about the products you’re selling that have already been successful. What do customers already love? What similar products could you launch that would be similar? Are there products that you make – or that are made by a vendor/supplier – that could be sold as a pair to what you sell now?

Think about coffeemakers. The Keurig coffee maker has become extremely popular. But, in order to use it, you need the pods. The pods contain coffee. Is there anything you can sell that would be thought of as a pair? Think about ways that you can solve a problem or make life easier for your customers. If you can, then chances are, you may be able to create a new product that will be successful.

Diversify Revenue for the Year

If you’ve already increased your quarterly revenue, another goal to consider is diversifying that revenue. Diversifying revenue means that you are earning income from different sources. This can be done without launching a new product, however. Although that is certainly one way to do it. But what this truly means is diversifying how you make your money and where the money comes from.

One way to diversify is to simply find other places to generate money. If you have an ecommerce store you can diversify the revenue sources by also selling on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. You can also offer products within your niche. For example, if you have a clothing brand, you can also sell accessories to complement your line.

Diversifying revenue is important for all businesses. From restaurants to tech companies. Every entrepreneur should understand that one revenue source puts a business at risk of failure if that source is cut off. As a short-term goal, finding other sources can help minimize future financial risks.

Short-term business goals help entrepreneurs increase their chances of success. By setting short-term goals , leaders will envision what they want the near future to look like, and plan accordingly.

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Team Writer: Erin Shelby is a writer and blogger based in Ohio. Follow her on Twitter @ByErinShelby

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5 Examples of Short-Term Business Goals to Set Now

Best short-term goals for a new business or old.

Let’s talk about short-term goals for business today. Because I have 5 examples of short-term business goals you must have for your company right now.

We will also review how to set your business goals. And how to measure the daily activities leading to the achievement of those goals.

That is what we are going to cover. So, let’s not delay. And get on with short-term goals for your business today…

Disclosure: At no cost to you, I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Examples Of Short-Term Business Goals

Here are my 5 best short-term goals for businesses:

• Define your value proposition
• Analyze your target market
• Develop a business plan
• Increase profits this year
• Make smart investments for future years

First, this group represents great short-term goals for a new business. Or, an old business you are trying to revitalize.

And be sure to understand that this…

Your short-term business goals should be achieved in the next 12 months. While medium-term business goals are 1-5 years out. And, long-term goals span more than 5 years .

Finally, you might be surprised. That long-term thinking is required. When setting these 5 short-term business goals examples .

Here is what I mean. Starting with short-term business goal #1…

Short-Term Business Goal Example #1: Define Your Value Proposition

Clearly define your value proposition. Because if you don’t identify your customers. And deliver value to them.

You don’t have a business.

So, think long and hard about who your customers are. And what they desire from your product or service. In addition to the customer service level they require.

Furthermore, your value proposition should be closely tied to your business strategy. And you should know there are 3 generic business strategies…

1. Cost leadership strategy.

This strategy relies on being a low-cost producer . It is usually best for a commodity-type product or service. But it can be of benefit to other types of businesses too.

2. Differentiation-focused strategy.

Where delivering a unique product to your customer is valued over all else.

Branding, design, and innovation. They are several elements that make this strategy a success.

3. Niche strategy.

Here, both cost and differentiation take a back seat. To a narrow focus on a target market or target customer. And their highly specific needs.

Maybe you have heard the expression. “The riches are in the niches”.

Finally, one of these 3 strategies should be dominant. Because it is very difficult to be good at more than 1.

So take a step back. And do some deep thinking about goals at an early stage in your business. And, the right business strategy to deliver on those goals.

Ask yourself. What value do you want your business to offer? And how does that value relate to the business strategy you want to adopt.

Because a business value proposition. And business strategy should be tightly linked.

And, they should be supported by our second short-term business goal example…

Short-Term Goals For A Business Example #2: Analyze The Market

There is no sense in defining your value proposition. And determining your business strategy. Without knowledge of the market. That your business pursues.

Market analysis involves, at a minimum, knowing the market opportunity. Or, the revenue potential.

Allow me to give you an absurd example to drive home the point…

Let’s say you are going to start a niche retail clothing store in Southern Florida. The store’s focus will be selling heavy winter coats.

Well, I doubt there is much of a market for the products from a store like this in Southern Florida. So, I predict this business will fail.

In theory, the business may have a great value proposition. And a sound strategy.

But, it won’t be successful in Florida. I suggest relocating the business to a city like Minneapolis.

So, complete enough research to suggest that if successful. The market opportunity will support your business.

In addition, there are many other important aspects to market analysis. Beyond market size. For example, pricing and competition are also important things to understand.

What if the market size, pricing, and level of competition do not support your value proposition and business strategy?

Then go back to short-term business goal #1. And reassess.

Once, you have short-term objectives examples for business numbers 1 and 2 working together. It’s time for our 3 rd example of short-term business goals every successful company must have…

Business Short-Term Goals Example #3: Develop A Business Plan

After you have a value proposition. Linked with a business strategy. And supported by a market assessment.

Then you are on your way to having a business plan. But, I suggest you make your business plan more comprehensive.

Because every business should have a plan . No matter how big or small the business happens to be.

Think about and document how you intend to market and sell your product…

Will you use advertising? Develop a social media strategy? Sell through a website? Or have a salesforce?

How will you produce your product or service? Do it yourself out of your home? Secure a facility and hire employees? Or, contract out the production process to a 3 rd party?

Finally, you should complete a financial planning exercise.  Specifically, prepare budgeted financial statements.

Do this to project the financial success of your business. And any outside funding it will require.

If you need help. Outsource your financial management.

Then put all of these pieces together. With an executive summary at the beginning.

And you have the makings of a business plan short-term goal to complete. Get it done in the next six months. Or, twelve months at the very latest.

Because a business plan is your road map.

A perfect tool for pitching your business to partners and investors. It is a key ingredient for setting additional short-term goals for a small business owner .

Okay. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect.

Reflecting On Short Term Business Goals #1-#3:

The first 3 short-term business goals examples must be done immediately. Certainly in the first 12 months of starting a new business. Or, trying to pump new life into an old one.

They require long-term planning and thinking. Even though they are the short-term goals of a business.

So, think long-term. But get these goals done in the short term.

Because your business is more than the side hustle you were running. To improve your finances in your 20s .

Then you are ready for the 4 th short-term business goal…

Short-Term Business Goals Example #4: Increase Profits

Profits, and the cash flow they generate, are the lifeblood of your business. So set a short-term goal to increase your business profits in the next 12 months.

This is one of many standard financial business goals . That every company should have.

There are 3 ways to go about increasing business profits in the short term.

3 Examples Of Short-Term Business Goals For Improving Financial Performance

1. Raise prices.

Increasing prices can be the fastest way to boost profit. Because price increases fall right to the bottom line profits of a business.

But make sure your pricing strategy aligns with your business strategy.

For example, if you sell a commodity.  Raising prices may not be one of the best financial goals .

Because your customers will switch to a lower-cost supplier. Since there are other products like yours in the market.

On the other hand, a differentiation-focused business strategy. Is usually better suited for price increases.

2. Sell more.

As long as your product or service is profitable. Increase market share by selling more.

So, put some sales and marketing muscle behind your business. And sell more to make more money.

3. Reduce costs.

Finally, and especially for executing a cost leadership strategy. Look for ways to reduce expenses.

Go through every expense line on your income statement. Look for ways to reduce costs. And become more productive. To benefit from higher cash flows .

Here’s another suggestion to reduce costs. ..

Do you make purchases online? Then save money on everything you buy with Rakuten. 

Rakuten offers electronic cash rebates for buying things you need anyway!  So, it is money in your business’s pocket!

You can learn about Rakuten here . And it works fine for any personal purchases you make too.

Okay. It’s time for our 5 th and final short-term business goal example. And we are going back to long-term thinking again…

Short-Term Goals For Business Example #5: Make Smart Investments For The Future

Identify investments to make in your business . During the next 12 months.

That will increase profits. Not only in the following year. But for many years in the future.

Only you can decide what is a smart investment for your business. Some examples include:

• Outsourcing a business process
• Adding a new employee
• Buying a new piece of machinery
• Implementing business software
• Expanding facilities
• Developing a new product
• Moving to a business-friendly state

The possible investments come down to a simple formula. Will the money spent today bring more money back in profits in the future?

Once again. It takes long-term thinking. To set short-term goals in a business.

And remember. Your business investments must support your value proposition and business strategy. And they should be included in the cash flow of your business plan .

Finally, making an investment for the future is much easier. When your business makes money today. So, don’t forget about short-term business goal #4: increase profits.

However, some investments will require outside funds. So, you may need financing.

Consider a small business loan. Look for a lender who is easy to work with. And offers very competitive rates.

I hope you are starting to see it. Specifically, how these short-term goals for business inter-relate. And need to fit within your business strategy.

Okay. It’s transition time as I promised at the beginning of this article. To discuss business goal setting…

Make Your Short-Term Goals For Business SMART

You can learn much more about setting SMART goals . But allow me to give you a brief overview.

SMART goals have 5 main ingredients. They are…

Define precisely what you want to accomplish. Because a goal is the desired outcome.

Document your short-term business goals. And include as many details as possible.

Next, determine how you will measure your success. Success is when the desired outcome is achieved.

Each of the 5 short-term business goals examples we discussed today is easy to measure. For example, take the goal “increase business profits this year”.

The goal should state exactly how much profit increases. Will meet the desired outcome.

It’s okay to set aggressive business goals . But, make them achievable.

Is increasing profits by $100,000 this year your goal?. Well, it may sound like a good goal. But perhaps only $50,000 is achievable.

Business goals must be realistic too. This is closely related to achievability. But, slightly different.

For example, increasing revenue by $200,000 may be achievable. Especially if you have done your market research. And fine-tuned your value proposition.

But if it requires 5 new people on the sales team. And you haven’t hired 1 yet. Perhaps this is not a realistic goal in the next 12 months.

A better goal might be hiring and training the 5 salespeople. Then setting a medium-term goal to increase revenue by $200,000.

Finally, give yourself a date to accomplish the goal. We are talking about short-term goals for business today. So the completion date must fall within the next 12 months.

Okay. One more topic. And then I will wrap up.

You now have 5 examples of short-term goals for a business. They represent both financial goals. And non-financial business goals too.

Furthermore, you know the characteristics of SMART short-term goals for a small business. Or, a larger business you are trying to refocus and revitalize.

Then here is our final topic. That is measuring the daily activities required. To achieve the business goals you have set forth.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) To Support Each Of These Short-Term Business Goals Examples

KPIs are daily, weekly, and monthly performance indicators. They measure the activities required to achieve your business’s short-term goals.

Underlying them are the employee activities that drive business outcomes you desire. So companies set and measure KPIs. To achieve their business goals.

Thus, a KPI is a measurable activity. That drives the result. That result is the achievement of a business goal.

For example, let’s say the short-term business goal is to increase revenue by $200,000. And you feel you have the resources in place to do just that.

Then what is the activity that will drive the achievement of the goal? That’s for you to decide depending on the type of business you are in.

But let’s say you determine increasing sales by $200,000 is realistic and achievable. But only if each salesperson calls on 5 potential new accounts each week.

Then there is your KPI. 5 new sales calls by each salesperson each week. Because you believe this activity will result in achieving the increased sales goal.

This assumes the products or services your sales staff is promoting. Are tightly aligned with your business strategy and value proposition.

Finally, as your business meets with more success. I think it is wise to keep your personal finances separate from the finances of your business.

I use Personal Capital to pull all of my non-business expenses and investments together in one place. And keep them separate from my business.

Best of all, Personal Capital is free to sign up and use. You can learn more about Personal Capital here .

Let’s summarize to wrap this article up…

Summary: Short-Term Goals For A Business

First of all, understand that long-term thinking is required. When setting and achieving short-term goals .

Then we have the goals…

Short-Term Goals Examples For Business

List of short-term goals for business examples:

Short-Term Goals Of A Business Should Be SMART

Furthermore, make your business goals SMART. Whether they are short-term, medium-term business goals , or long-term business goals.

SMART is an acronym that stands for:

Short-Term Goals Business KPIs

Finally, set key performance indicators (KPIs). They are the daily activities required. To meet each of these short-term business goals examples we have discussed today.

That’s all for now. Good luck to the small business owners in the audience. And the big business owners too.

Now it’s time to get to work on the 5 examples of short-term goals for businesses.

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Excellent Resources To Jump-Start Your Business Goals

I mentioned several resources throughout the article. They are useful for attaining both your individual financial goals. And your business goals.

Here is a summary…

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• Manage all your money with Personal Capital

Author Bio, Disclosure, & Disclaimer: Please join me (Tom) as I try to achieve my goals, find my next place to live, and make the most of my money. However, I am not a licensed investment adviser, financial counselor, real estate agent, or tax professional. Instead, I’m a 50-something-year-old, early retired CPA, finance professional, and business school teacher with 40+ years of DIY dividend investing experience. I’m here only to share my thoughts about essential topics for success. As a result, nothing published on this site should be considered individual investment, financial, tax, or real estate advice. This site’s only purpose is general information & entertainment. Thus, neither I nor Dividends Diversify can be held liable for losses suffered by any party because of the information published on this website. Finally, all written content is the property of Dividends Diversify LLC. Unauthorized publication elsewhere is strictly prohibited.

Short-Term Goals For Business

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Short-Term Goals vs. Long-Term Goals & How They Work Together

FAQ | Goal Setting Guide

• 1.  What Is Goal Setting in Business?
• 2.  Goal Setting Theory and Frameworks
• 3.  How to Track and Measure Goals
• 4.  SMART Goals: An Ultimate Guide With Examples
• 5.  OKRs: The Ultimate Guide to Objectives and Key Results
• 6.  What Is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)?
• 7.  What Is Management by Objectives (MBO)?
• 8.  Goal Setting Templates
• 9.  How to Achieve Goals and Ensure Success
• 10.  Organizational Objectives: How to Set Them
• 11.  Department Objectives: How to Set Them
• 12.  How to Choose the Right Goal Setting Software
• 13.  FAQ

Short-Term Goals vs. Long-Term Goals

The thought of switching careers, building a new business, or managing a team through a pivot can seem daunting and nearly impossible to achieve. Yet big, audacious stretch goals are essential to moving forward in our personal and professional lives.

When we hope to achieve something new, we typically start with a broad idea of what we want — for example, becoming a better leader or improving personal productivity. Goal-setting transforms these initial ambiguous ideas into concrete plans and actionable tasks you can tackle to achieve success over time. 

Long-term and short-term goals help visualize and shape the future — for yourself, your teams, and your business. They break down big ideas and aspirations to help you channel your focus and resources into what you can do now to achieve your desired outcome. 

This article shares all you need to know about long-term and short-term goals for individuals, teams, and businesses. We'll answer the following questions: 

What is a short-term goal?

• What is a long-term goal? 

When should you use a short-term or long-term goal?

How can you set goals with your team.

Finally, we'll share examples of short-term and long-term goals and discuss how to use them to design a purposeful and successful life and career/business.

Before we begin, you can already unlock a free trial with Wrike to empower your short-term and long-term goal setting processes.

A short-term goal is a goal you hope to accomplish soon, typically within a year. It may be a part of a larger, long-term goal or a complete goal on its own. 

For example, a creative consultant with a long-term goal to triple her company revenue in five years may break it into short-term goals, like: 

• Rebrand, clarify, and differentiate product and service offerings in the first quarter
• Automate repetitive tasks and optimize workflows to save time and increase output by 20% within six months
• Test and launch new services and digital products for a high-end market in the first two years
• Boost productivity by hiring and onboarding expert subcontractors
• Launch an annual charity-driven  marketing campaign  to attract socially conscious clients and give back

Each of these short-term goals is directed toward achieving the long-term goal of tripling the company revenue in five years. 

The consultant may also have other short-term goals, such as earning a hobby-related certificate or learning to drive. These are complete short-term goals by themselves, not a part of a larger plan to achieve something. 

Short-term goals inspire action in our personal and work lives. They motivate us and align our daily tasks and activities with our big-picture plans. 

In organizations, leaders and project managers can use short-term goals to prioritize projects,  create monthly schedules , and guide teams to focus on what’s most impactful. Short-term goals create a sense of urgency that is usually missing in long-term goals.

What is a long-term goal?

A long-term goal is a goal that shapes the future. It's an intentional quest or outcome you want in your personal life, career, or business. Long-term goals take more than a year to accomplish. They typically range from three to ten years. 

Long-term goals provide purpose and direction. They take you from playing a passive role in how life pans out to an active one where you conceive and work towards what you want. 

These goals should be revisited and revised regularly to ensure they stay relevant and incorporate changes in your environment. For example, a business's long-term goal at the start of 2020 may have included opening new offices in countries across the world but is now adjusted to having only two offices located in their most active cities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Setting long-term goals helps combat short-term thinking in your work and personal life. These goals provide a guide for what you, your team, or your company are working toward.

Setting both short-term and long-term goals is beneficial for individuals and businesses. They are powerful when used together to determine daily tasks and focus and expectations of the future. 

When to use long-term goals

Long-term goals clarify what we want and are willing to work on over a long period. Use them when envisioning an extended timeframe in your life, career, or business. 

Think about what you want to achieve in three, five, or ten years and how you would like your life and business to evolve. Will you create new products and services? Change career paths? Move to a new city? Expand and cross into new industries? 

Long-term goals provide purpose and direction. Things may happen differently than you plan them, but you gain more control and confidence in your decision-making when you set long-term goals. Use them to shape your evolution over time. 

When to use short-term goals

When you've established your long-term goals, break them into smaller, short-term goals you can achieve in short time frames. Use these goals to advance toward your long-term goals and ideal life.

Make your short-term goals  SMART  — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound — so you're more likely to accomplish them and increase confidence in your abilities. Short-term goals are motivating. They can spark creativity and resourcefulness, causing steady progress.

Use short-term goals to stay active and assess your alignment with your long-term goals. You will know when things feel off and if you need to revise them. Short-term goals keep you focused and enrich your daily life with meaning and variety.

Setting goals with your team can be a powerful way to build connection and commitment to the organization's goals. 

It generates a wider pool of goal ideas and fosters a sense of ownership of the work. This helps create alignment between employees and the company. Team members are more likely to contribute their best and work toward a goal when they're involved from the start. 

Follow these steps to set goals with your team:

• Schedule a time to brainstorm goal ideas
• Set the stage by sharing the company's current position and potential opportunities and options for the future
• Collect suggestions from the team using a simple method, e.g., raising hands to speak or completing a feedback form
• Sort and order the goal ideas from the team
• Pick 1-3 primary goals
• Communicate them to everyone

Examples of short-term goals

Below, we have curated lists of ten short-term goal examples for individuals, teams, and businesses. 

Examples of short-term goals for individuals

Ten short-term goal examples for individuals: 

• Learn and practice a new language:  Learning a new language opens you up creatively and culturally. Enrich your interactions with others by learning and practicing their language.
• Read three professional development books:  No matter what field you're in, there are always new developments you can study. Learn more about growing and excelling in your field, and make professional development a habit. 
• Volunteer weekly in your community:  Volunteering is an excellent way to help others, give back to your community, and immerse yourself in new experiences. 
• Attend several networking events:  Working in a vacuum is not only lonely, but it can also stifle or slow down your professional development. Setting a goal to attend a few quality events in your industry is a start to growing your network intentionally. 
• Schedule weekly catch-up calls with friends:  In the tension between work-life balance, checking on friends can sometimes be on the back burner. Setting a goal to meet once a week is a great way to prioritize and nurture friendships.
• Organize your home workspace:  Your workspace can significantly impact productivity and output. Look at simple workspace setup ideas online and choose the best ones to improve your workspace. 
• Test a new business idea online:  Building multiple sources of income is top of many people's goals. Social media and no-code software tools make it easy to set up and test different business ideas online. 
• Learn basic self-defense skills:  Learning to defend yourself and protect others increases your confidence and ability to handle dangerous situations. You also reap the health benefits of regular exercise.
• Learn to cook three meals:  Learning to cook is a skill that can come in handy in many situations. Set a goal to cook three meals with basic ingredients you can find in any country.
• Finish an online course unrelated to your day job:  Increase your knowledge of topics unrelated to your education or day job. You can learn about your hobbies or pick a subject you have always wondered about. 

Examples of short-term goals for teams

Ten short-term goal examples for teams: 

• Organize an industry meetup:  Teams can expand their network by organizing industry events and sharing their learnings, experiences, and space with professionals from similar companies.
• Develop a streamlined workflow for completing recurring tasks:  Many teams can significantly improve efficiency and save a lot of time by automating simple, repetitive tasks and plugging in good  project management  software. 
• Create an internal business solution using no-code software:   No-code software  makes it easy for business users to create apps and solutions. A design team can, for example, create a dynamic form with a user-friendly interface to collect design requests from other departments in the organization.
• Sort and archive old records and media assets:  Many teams have old records, documents, and media assets scattered across abandoned apps and obsolete business software. Sorting and organizing these is a worthwhile short-term goal for creative teams and professional service providers.
• Prepare and present a solution to top management:  Teams may sometimes have a product or welfare request for the top management. They may set a short-term goal to prepare to present their case and hopefully get a positive response. 
• Increase output by a fixed percentage:  Any team can set a short-term goal to increase their output by a percentage by a set date. This helps to spark new creative ideas and enhance collaboration between members. In the best cases, they also achieve their goal, moving their organization forward. 
• Gather customer feedback:  Knowing what customers need is vital for a team and organization to provide it. There's no better way to get in their heads and understand their needs than talking to them about their requirements and preferences. Product teams should set goals to know their customers better. 
• Run internal surveys:  Companies that value their employees find ways to ensure the employees are heard and supported. 
• Split test web pages and mobile user interfaces:  Marketing starts with good branding and user experience. Split-test your website, store, and social media content to find what works and yields the most rewards.
• Create an employee appreciation program:  Few things boost employee engagement and commitment more than knowing their work is appreciated and valued. Creating an employee appreciation program is a great short-term goal for teams. 

Examples of short-term goals for businesses

Ten short-term goal examples for businesses: 

• Increase sales by a specific percentage:  A business may set a goal to increase sales in a specific month. This may be tied to a longer-term goal or a one-off effort to leverage a unique situation. 
• Organize an employee upskilling workshop:  Companies can always gain from upskilling employees, whether it's in business communication, customer support, or project and  task management . 
• Hire consultants to solve a unique problem:  A business may finally decide to tackle an issue they've kept on the back burner for a while. This may be a culture, organizational, or data management problem. Employing consultants for the short term can bring fresh perspectives and strategies to tackle the issue. 
• Increase website traffic through inbound marketing:  Marketing teams can continuously improve on previous performance and set short-term goals to track and increase website traffic and conversions through day-to-day engagement and direct marketing campaigns. 
• Organize a community outreach and engagement event:  Customers and investors are just some of the stakeholders that businesses should focus on. Engaging with the community it operates in is a great short-term goal to build trust, goodwill, and a positive work environment.
• Launch a social media marketing campaign:  Today's market trends show that people are increasingly shopping and working online. Growing the company's digital brand presence is ongoing work that can be broken into many pieces.
• Organize a company retreat:  A company retreat is a great way to get the team together to recharge and share ideas in a new environment — maybe a different country. Organizing a company retreat shows the organization appreciates its employees and improves  company culture .  
• Hire new employees over the next six months:  When scaling, hiring the right talent becomes a crucial goal. Setting up systems, reaching out to networks for recommendations, and announcing new job roles on social media and niche job boards are great ways to get the word out and begin the hiring process. 
• Launch and test a minimum viable product (MVP):  Shipping new features and products the market needs is essential for a company to maintain a strong position in its space. Testing MVPs with small subsets of the market is a quick and valuable short-term goal in product development. 
• Study market trends and develop a timely strategy: Trends and tastes change over time. Great businesses stay a step ahead by studying the trends and developing timely strategies to keep up with the changes.

Examples of long-term goals

Below, we have curated a list of ten long-term goal examples for individuals, teams, and businesses.

Examples of long-term goals for individuals

Ten long-term goal examples for individuals: 

• Switch career paths:  Many professionals want to try new paths and chase new interests at work. Set a goal if you're looking to switch paths and look for non-risky ways to try your hand at the new discipline before jumping all in. 
• Become an expert in a new field:  It's easier to gain surface knowledge of many things than to drill deeper into a particular field. Committing to learning everything about a new field can help you make connections others can't see, improving performance in your work and other areas. 
• Focus on fitness:  Taking control of your fitness by making efforts to lose or gain weight, tone muscles, or increase strength pays off many dividends. From looking better to feeling better, focusing on health is a great long-term goal all around. 
• Save for a house:  Many people would like to live in their own houses and escape the rent-paying hamster wheel. Establishing this as one of your long-term goals can make you more disciplined with how you spend and invest money. 
• Work toward a promotion:  A promotion can allow you to earn a higher salary, contribute more value to your industry, and attain status and a sense of accomplishment. Pay attention to what others who are promoted do to get noticed and showcase your best skills at every opportunity. 
• Build and scale a business:  Building a business of your own can teach you things no business school or employed position can teach. It is also a way to build equity and bet on yourself. Take it step-by-step and begin where you are if building a business is one of your long-term goals. 
• Get a Ph.D.:  Getting called a "doctor" is just one of the perks of getting a Ph.D. For many, a Ph.D. allows them to make a real contribution to their field and continue learning and exploring a field of interest. 
• Save enough to retire:  Having enough to live on for an extended period is a long-term goal for many. First, determine how much you need to afford a suitable lifestyle and make concrete plans to put aside an amount each month to reach your retirement goals.
• Clear all debts:  Financial freedom starts with clearing all your debts and getting to a financially stable place. Setting a goal and making and automating a payment plan to clear your debts is an excellent long-term goal idea. 
• Learn to code:  Learning to code enables you to build software solutions from scratch. It can be a step into a new career or a way to express your creativity, contribute to open-source projects, and create helpful software solutions the world needs. 

Examples of long-term goals for teams

Ten long-term goal examples for teams: 

• Build a reputation as one of the best:  Teams can set a goal to become the best at what they do. These teams place a premium on quality service and delivery, listen to user and customer feedback, and track their progress to become better on every new job and project. 
• Create a collaborative thought leadership platform:  Teams with lots of experience doing what they do may decide to share their learnings and best practices with the world through a company blog and other content. This builds both the company's and employees’ personal brands. For example, a longtime remote working team may publish content teaching others to get better at remote working. 
• Publish annual "deep-dive" reports:  A team may set a goal to collect data and publish an in-depth annual report on the state of the industry and the work they do. 
• Identify and eliminate operational inefficiencies:  Improving productivity and eliminating friction and inefficiencies is an ongoing goal for fast-moving teams. 
• Invent a better way to approach a business problem:  The best teams allow members to share ideas, take careful risks, and contribute solutions to improve how things are done. A team may set a long-term goal to create a better solution to a persistent business problem. 
• Conduct in-depth research into exciting business angles:  Every business has a unique angle, position, and relationship to the industry. This allows them to gather unique insights they can share and build trust and reputation over time.
• Expand combined network:  Teams can network and create meaningful connections with others in the profession and industry by organizing team events and supporting each other's professional growth and initiatives. 
• Create an ongoing mentorship program:  Mentorship programs help accelerate the growth of junior employees and foster a supportive work environment. Teams can set up long-term initiatives and programs to ensure new recruits are paired with experienced mentors to guide them through their careers in the company. 
• Improve diversity:  Improving diversity in a company takes time. Teams can commit to working with a wider pool of talent and create policies that support diversity in hiring and promoting employees without systemic or unintentional bias. 
• Patent a new product:  A team may work toward perfecting and patenting their signature product.

Examples of long-term goals for businesses

Ten long-term goal examples for businesses: 

• Build industry leadership:  Companies can set goals to build thought leadership by publishing books, sharing practices and success stories, and leading research and development programs to expand the market. 
• Build trust and form strategic partnerships:  Building trust happens over time. Companies can set a goal to invest in trust-building programs and initiatives and form strategic partnerships within their communities.
• Expand into new markets and regions:  Growth is an important metric for many businesses. Expanding into new markets and regions is a long-term goal focused on making this happen. It's crucial to research new target markets thoroughly before entry; what succeeds in a similar market may fail in a new one. 
• Increase total company revenue by a specific percentage:  Increasing company revenue is a positive signal that a business is on the right path. Setting revenue goal targets puts employees in a proactive mindset to keep aiming for higher targets.  
• Reduce production expenses by a specific percentage:  A business may set a goal to develop new technologies and processes to reduce expenses and increase overall profitability and longevity.
• Grow digital presence, engagement, and brand awareness:  Engaging with customers and building a strong digital presence allows businesses to build trust, learn more about customers, and save a ton on PR and advertising. This goal can exponentially improve the reach and potential of any company. 
• Go green and eco-friendly:  Taking care of the environment has never been more important. Companies can set up green initiatives and commit to zero-emission and eco-friendly practices. 
• Capture increasing market share:  In a fair and healthy market, companies set goals to improve their product and service offerings and capture more loyal customers over time. 
• Create an employee development program:  Businesses that invest in their employees reap improved productivity and employee loyalty. They also attract top talent and foster good culture.
• Develop and launch new products and services:  Improving products and services along with customer satisfaction is another top goal for customer-focused companies. Find out what they want by listening and delivering the solutions they need. 

How Wrike can help your team plan and achieve long-term and short-term goals

Wrike makes it easy to connect long-term goals to day-to-day work through  project planning  and  task management .

Our collaborative workspace and project management platform enables team brainstorming, ideation, and project management with functionalities such as personalized dashboards , @mentions, automated reminders, and views, including lists, spreadsheets,  Kanban boards , and Gantt charts . 

To begin, clarify your team’s long-term goals and create folders for each one, for example:

• Growth and expansion 
• Industry leadership 
• Employee productivity

Include a detailed summary of each goal in its description field so that everyone involved can find important details about the goal and what's expected of them. Use custom fields to add notes like budgets, research data, and customer lists. Information entered in custom fields is restricted to specific users and groups in your organization.

Inside your primary goal folders, create sub-folders and break down your long-term goal into short-term goals and projects:

• New product features rollout
• Omni-channel digital marketing
• Events and partnerships
• Employee training and development
• People and culture

Now assign leaders or project managers to each folder or sub-folder. They will be in charge of breaking these short-term goals into projects and tasks with clear deadlines and assignments. You can also create and set your personal goals in Wrike by creating a private folder only you can access.

Are you ready to create a purposeful life and career/business? Start with our  business goals template  and begin planning your long-term and short-term goals with a two-week free trial of Wrike.

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The importance of setting short-term goals (with examples)

Goals help you take action on larger ideas or visions. Short-term goals specifically help you to plan and take action on tasks that can be completed in the near future. In this article, get two strategies to help you create short-term goals more effectively. Then, check out some examples of short-term goals, plus how to track and use them so they have the highest impact.

Whether it’s launching a new product with your team, building your dream house, or achieving your big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs) , it's easy to feel overwhelmed when your goal is a large, ambiguous idea. Setting short-term goals can help you reach larger objectives and make progress towards your desired outcome.

What is a short-term goal?

A short-term goal is a goal that you want to complete in the near future, such as within the next week or the next month. These are often stepping stones towards larger goals, though not always. You can also use short-term goals to take action on smaller projects or ideas. As a result, short-term goals tend to be easier to achieve. 

20 examples of short-term goals

10 short-term professional goals examples:

Manage the next quarterly project from start to finish in Q3.

Get certified in a project management tool by EOY.

Increase net promoter score by five points this quarter.

Build social reach with five LinkedIn posts a day for the next 30 days.

Schedule three networking lunches this month.

Call 50 new prospects this quarter.

Log off at 6:00 PM every day this week.

Reduce creative requests backlog by 10% in Q1.

Publish six new blog posts in the next 60 days.

Update portfolio with new designs by end of next month.

10 personal short-term goals examples:

Put 5% of your monthly income into a savings account starting next month.

Eat meat-free dinners one day a week starting today.

Read two books this month.

Reduce screen time daily average by 15 minutes this week.

Track spending for 30 days.

Call a friend every Saturday morning this month.

Walk for 15 minutes every day starting next week.

Practice daily deep breathing for the next 60 days.

Journal for 20 minutes every Sunday starting next month.

Play with your kids for 30 minutes every night starting today.

Notice that ‌these goals all have a specific time frame assigned to them. This makes your goal more actionable by connecting those actions to a specific amount of time.

What are the benefits of setting short term goals?

Short-term goals can be used to break down larger, more general goals. They don’t replace these big, overarching goals, but rather give you a path to achieve them.

Setting and working on short-term goals helps you:

Realize what you can accomplish today and take action

Get quick feedback

Get started faster

Define deadlines

Manage and prioritize tasks 

The difference between short-term goals and long-term goals

A long-term goal is your North Star. It’s the bigger objective that you want to achieve. Short-term goals are different. They focus on a smaller portion of work in a shorter time frame. By breaking a larger, long-term goal into many short-term goals, you can prevent procrastination and stay focused on the task at hand. 

Let's look at an example of a long-term goal that has smaller short-term goals built into the action plan .

Long term goal: A sales team is looking to close $500,000 in new sales in the next year. 

Short term goal: The small- and medium-sized sales team wants to close $50,000 in new sales in Q1.

You could then break the short-term goal down into even smaller, more specific goals assigned to each sales representative. For example, Areej will aim to close $8,000 in new sales during each month of the quarter.

Strategies for setting short-term goals

Being strategic about how you set your goals can help focus them—which will ultimately make it more likely that your goals pay off. Try these strategies to get more specific, actionable short-term goals:

SMART Goals

SMART goals are a common goal setting technique. SMART is an acronym that stands for:

Ensuring that your goals contain every facet of a SMART goal can help you get clear on what you want to accomplish, how you’re going to do it, and when it needs to be done.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

When setting short-term goals, it's important to connect specific actions to your goals. By creating actionable stepping stones, you can set up a strong roadmap towards achieving your goals—both short-term and long-term ones.

You can see this approach in action with OKRs, or objectives and key results . The objective is the goal you want to achieve. The key results are the metrics by which you'll measure progress towards those goals.

Goals can be used in conjunction with OKRs to help you make progress on key results. Think about what actions you need to take to achieve the desired key results and use those to set your goals. 

Example of how to set short-term goals

Let’s say your social media team's OKR is to increase your social media following by 400% this fiscal year. 

There's no clear plan for how to get to that 400%, so the team gets together to brainstorm actionable steps they can take to increase their social media following. One team member suggests hosting giveaways twice a quarter to increase follower counts. Another team member suggests using paid ads to increase awareness. Another suggests working with different influencers every week to promote their brand. 

All three of these ideas are good options, and all of them can be set as short-term goals to achieve the main OKR. Here's what those three goals would look like written out:

Host a giveaway two times a quarter.

Gain 250 followers through paid advertisements every quarter.

Promote each account through an influencer channel once a week.

Each of these shorter goals focuses specifically on a task that contributes to a longer-term company goal. Aligning tasks with smaller team goals, and bigger company objectives is a central aspect of building a pyramid of clarity. With the pyramid of clarity, you can connect your day-to-day work to your short-term goals. That way, your entire team is working towards the same objective, bringing your organization closer to achieving it.

Tracking goal progress

Whether it’s a long-term career goal or a short-term personal one, goal tracking is essential to ensure that you’re making progress. 

According to a recent survey by Asana , only 26% of knowledge workers have a very clear understanding of how their work contributes to company goals. If your team members don’t know what goals they're contributing to, they might not be producing work that impacts those big picture company goals.

Goal tracking helps you see if the work your team is doing contributes towards a bigger goal. But how do you ensure that your team is regularly working towards those goals? Here are a few strategies:

Communicate progress clearly: When everybody sees how work is progressing, there's no confusion as to whether or not the work is contributing to the goal. 

Create (and celebrate!) project milestones : As your team progresses, it's important to celebrate incremental progress so they don't get discouraged halfway through or lose focus.

Manage goals with software: Connect your team's work with your company's goals all in one place. By using work management software like Asana , your team will have one source of truth for all work. 

One of the major benefits of goal tracking is that it gives you visibility into whether your strategies are working. If you're actively monitoring your key results and not seeing the desired outcomes, you can dig further to discover what’s missing. Does one of your team members have too much on their plate? Is one of your strategies not as effective as you thought it would be?

Monitoring your goals gives you the opportunity to pivot your strategy when things aren’t going according to plan. 

Using short-term goals for professional development

You might not be able to control everything about your professional life, but setting goals helps you take advantage of those you can control. Whether it’s prepping for a review six months away, taking an online course, or a complete career change, these short-term goals will help you zero in on how to move the needle in your professional life.

Managing team goals to become an effective manager

As a manager, it could be challenging to create your own personal goals without first looking at your team’s individual goals. Great managers help unblock contributors so that goal-achieving tasks can get done. 

Before setting personal goals as a manager, look at your team’s goals. Base your goals on the work your team is contributing to so that everyone is aligned and making progress. 

Monitoring personal professional development with short-term goals

In addition to using short-term career goals to monitor your team’s or company's progress, you can monitor short-term goals to track your own—or a team member’s—personal development. If you’re developing new skills or taking on new responsibilities, track how those skills are helping you achieve your goals. 

Let’s look at an example.

Taylor is a sales development representative at a SaaS company. They don’t particularly enjoy spending time on sales calls, but they’ve found several tools to help them create an automated email flow to reach out to their prospects. 

Taylor’s manager notices that they are not making the recommended number of sales calls, but they’re still hitting their sales goals because of how well their prospect emails convert.

Taylor’s manager sees this as an opportunity for growth, and asks Taylor if they would like to transition to a role that allows them to further create email marketing opportunities for other SDRs on the team. By monitoring how Taylor was progressing towards their goals, Taylor’s manager was able to create an opportunity for them to grow into a position that was a strong fit for their skillset. 

Setting goals for your own personal development

Goals can be used to help your personal development as well. If you have long-term life goals, you can set up short-term personal goals as you would professional ones. Set measurable goals to serve as small stepping stones for your progress. 

You can use short-term personal goals for a variety of different aspirations. For example, you can set up short-term financial goals to hit a bigger goal of reducing credit card debt. Or, maybe you use weekly goals to develop a fitness or morning routine. These shorter, targeted goals can have a big impact on your daily life.

Here’s an example of how you can break down a personal goal:

Long-term personal goal: Run a half marathon within 6 months 

Short-term goals :

Be able to run a mile without stopping by end of week 2

Run a 5K by the end of month 1 in under 35 minutes

Run a 10K by the end of month 2 in under an hour

As you can see, the short-term goals are incremental, but they all work together to achieve the big goal at the end—running a marathon.

Track short-term goals more effectively

Looking for a way to effectively track your goals, both short-term and long-term? Tracking your goals using work management software like Asana can help you break your goals into actionable tasks.

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