27 Best SMART Goals Examples for Small Businesses in 2019

1. Win Six Projects Per Month

Brian Cairns, CEO, ProStrategix Consulting

We have two sets of SMART goals for the project acquisition process. One is the baseline, which is tied to our business plan and budget. The other is a stretch, which is tied to our bonus structure.

• Specific: Win six projects per month
• Measurable: The number of projects is obvious, but we know to get to six, we need to have 12 proposals, 24 pitches, and 48 warm prospects
• Attainable: Last year we averaged 5.2 projects per month, and we have been growing at 20%, so a growth rate of 15% felt very attainable
• Relevant: The number and size of the projects we win each month ties directly to our top and bottom line
• Time-bound: We measure our performance monthly―incredibly important for staffing and contingency planning

Our bonus structure is tied to set percentages above the baseline goal.

2. Pay Off $5,000 in Debt Within 30 Months

Katie Ross, Education & Development Manager, American Consumer Credit Counseling

Setting financial goals is an important step toward gaining control of your finances. One example of a SMART goal is to grow professionally in my position to increase my annual salary.

• Specific: I will earn a pay increase.
• Measurable: I will document my progress and work with management to ensure I am meeting the goals and expectations of the job throughout the year.
• Achievable: I will achieve this by working hard and becoming more valuable to the company.
• Relevant/Realistic: I will participate in development opportunities and project opportunities throughout the year to demonstrate my contributions during the year.
• Timely: I will accomplish an increase within one year of employment.

Another nonwork-related SMART goal is paying off unsecured debt.

• Specific: I will pay off $5,000 in unsecured debt.
• Measurable: I will apply at least $100 each month to that debt.
• Achievable: I can achieve this if I cut back on my cable, mobile phone service, and other discretionary spending.
• Relevant/Realistic: I need to reduce my debt to apply more money to savings and future goals.
• Timely: I will pay off this debt in 30 months.

3. Increase Search Engine Traffic by 10% in the Next Two Months

Jeff Proctor, Owner, DollarSprout

DollarSprout is a personal finance website geared toward helping millennials make smarter choices with their money. As someone who manages a small team of content creators, I use SMART goals every week to keep our business running smoothly and moving forward.

An example of a SMART goal I use regularly with our editorial team [is]:

• Specific: I want to increase our search engine traffic by 10% during the next two months.
• Measurable: We will re-optimize our five best pieces of content to make them even better and aim to secure 10 high-quality backlinks to those pieces of content.
• Attainable: If everyone on our team pitches in, this goal is very realistic and attainable.
• Relevant: Search engine traffic is the most valuable traffic source for our business. This plan is the best way for us to increase our organic traffic, so accomplishing this goal directly translates into business success.
• Time-based: We will accomplish this during the next two months and measure our performance by both our actions and the ensuing results.

During the next two months, I want to increase our search engine traffic by 10% by focusing on re-optimizing our existing content and making a concerted effort to earn 10 high-quality backlinks to that content.

4. Increase New Customer Reviews by 30% Year Over Year

Apostolis Lianos, Ecommerce Manager, Tetragono Bookstores

At Tetragono Bookstores, 74% of our sales come from a single specific price comparison site. This is our #1 growth channel. So our most important month-over-month (MoM) SMART goal is:

The number of new customer reviews we get must be 30% more than last year―on a year-over-year (YoY) basis.

S: This number is specific (+30% of the number we achieved in the same month last year)

M: It’s measurable (monthly reporting shows if we reached the target or not)

A: It’s based on last year’s performance, so it’s attainable

R: It’s 100% relevant to our number one growth channel (skroutz.gr)

T: It’s time-based (we’ve got 30 days to achieve it)

5. Receive 20 Rejections Each Week

John Munn, CEO, Global Digital Week

I set our business development manager a goal of receiving at least 20 proposal rejections each week. Potential partners and customers are usually interested in what we do, so setting the goal to receive 20 rejections each week helps ensure that our business development team contact a large number of leads each week and that they continue to push for ambitious targets.

For 20 rejections, around 100 contacts on average must be contacted. Rejections can be from initial proposals or protracted conversations, so this target also promotes active contact follow-up. The proposals are checked randomly to make sure it was a good-quality proposal that went out to a good-quality contact and wasn’t intentionally intended to be rejected.

This technique has helped us secure event partnerships with companies like Google and LEGO as well as expand our business internationally.

6. Grow Market Share by 15% by the End of the Year

Linda Pophal, Owner & Consultant, Strategic Communications, LLC

I’m the owner of Strategic Communications, LLC and the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Strategic Planning.” It’s a common misconception that goals are SMART. Objectives are SMART and are used to support goals, which are broader. So, for example, I might have a goal of increasing marketing share for my organization.

My objectives would support that goal and would be stated using SMART language in this case: “Grow market share by 15%, in the state of Wisconsin, for product line XYZ, by the end of the fiscal year.”

• It’s specific: We know the geographic area, the product line and the level of growth we’re looking for
• It’s measurable: We will be able to measure, objectively, whether or not we achieve the objectives
• It’s attainable: Or we’ll assume so in this case
• It’s relevant: Because it ties directly back to our goal
• It’s time-bound: We’ve indicated a specific endpoint by which we will achieve our objective

It’s very important to create and use SMART objectives because they provide a frame of reference for all involved. That way, at the end of some time period, someone (like the boss) isn’t upset because a department didn’t “do enough” and the department isn’t upset because, despite the fact they worked hard and achieved some market share growth, it wasn’t “enough.”

7. Implement Automation Workflow Within Six Months

Tim Thompson, Co-founder, Prettiest Parties

Within six months, I will have completed implementation of an automation workflow using APIs [application programming interfaces], virtual assistants, and autoresponder emails for Prettiest Parties, allowing me to reduce the time spent running the business to one day a week while continuing to increase leads and profit.

8. Plan Five Customer Education Webinars This Quarter

Ada Chen Rekhi, Founder & Chief Operating officer, Notejoy

Plan and execute five customer education webinars this quarter with 15-plus attendees per event and 80% or highly satisfied or very satisfied response on content.

This example is specific (five webinars), measurable (number of attendees and satisfaction rate), attainable (the resources are available), relevant (useful for the business), and time-based (within this quarter).

9. Get Three High-quality Joint Venture Partners in April

Lily Ugbaja, Founder, FindingBalance.Mom

My business reach is still quite small, so to leverage a bigger, highly targeted audience, I decided to enlist joint venture (JV) partners, but not just anyone and everyone. They had to be three (measurable and attainable) high quality (specific) JV partners (relevant), and need to be recruited by April (time-bound).”

10. Earn 50 Cents in Revenue Per Website User

Chas Cooper, CEO & Founder, Rising Star Reviews

For all of our online sales, we use a SMART goal of 50 cents in revenue per website user. We then put the T in SMART by setting monthly revenue goals based on website user traffic goals. We’ve found this metric is a great way to get everyone aligned behind the same fundamental goal of revenue growth.

11. Go to Two Technology Events Per Week

Richard Simms, Director of Client Engagement & Growth, Tyrannosaurus Tech

An important part of our culture at Tyrannosaurus Tech is being active in the Atlanta technology community, which means going to events, offering mentorship, volunteering, building new relationships in the area, and so on. The day-to-day demands of running a business can make it a challenge to remember to get out of the office and into the community.

SMART goals have been a tremendous help in holding me and others on the team accountable. A SMART goal I have, as an example, is to go to two goals, but they keep me accountable and bring a lot of value over time.

12. Reach Out to Five Influencers Per Day

Vivek Chugh, Founder & CEO, Listables

It’s great to create SMART Goals in regard to normal business indicators like revenue, clients, users, and so on. However, I think a great way to take it a step further is to create SMART goals based on the smaller day-to-day actions that are the real driving force of the business.

For example, we do a lot of influencer marketing, and our goal is to reach out to five influencers on average per day. We find when we hit these goals, we, in turn, hit our larger goals.

13. Design a Course on Presentation Skills

Tim Toterhi, ICF Certified Executive Coach & Founder, Plotline Leadership

During the next four weeks, design a soft-skill course on presentation skills that contains a pre-assessment, three hours of online coursework and a half-day face-to-face training session that features video, a post-course assessment, and coaching.

• Specific: Type of course and layout
• Measurable: Completion of the whole course and individual parts, such as assessments that can be measured
• Assignable: To direct report A (parts can be delegated)
• Realistic: Based on previous output
• Time-based: Within four weeks

14. Respond to Customer Questions Immediately

Paul Faust, Vice President of Business Development, RingBoost.com

Our business—and indeed our brand—is built on being responsive. Just as we recommend our customers use a memorable phone number to increase calls and improve response rates, we must translate that to answering customer questions promptly and efficiently.

That broad objective can be translated into the following SMART goal:

• Specific: We will respond to all customer questions immediately and resolve issues within 24 hours of receipt.
• Measurable: Calls will be answered within three rings of the line. Support tickets will be closed within 24 hours of being opened by a service rep.
• Attainable: We will have sufficient service team members on hand to meet the response and resolution metrics.
• Relevant: Improving response rates and connecting with customers is the core of our brand; therefore, we must exemplify that quality to all customers.
• Time-based: Response and resolution metrics will be reviewed every month for compliance. If targets are not achieved, we will implement improvement measures that will restore service levels before the next monthly review.

15. Reduce Churn by 25% by the End of 2019

Samuel Johns, Hiring Manager, Resume Genius

We’ve recently introduced the objectives and key results (OKRs) concept company-wide. We’ve set our company goals to be SMART (this is an intrinsic element of the OKR system). What we’ve landed on is the following: reduce churn by 25% and hire 10 new developers and five new marketers by the end of 2019.

These goals are specific because they are clear and provide a direction; measurable since we can compare 2019’s churn and hiring numbers with 2018’s; attainable, as they are meant to build steadily on what we’ve accomplished in the past; relevant; and time-bound, since they apply to 2019.

16. Increase Website Traffic 25% by December

Leo Friedman, Founder & CEO, iPromo

iPromo sells a wide variety of promotional marketing materials both nationally and internationally and, thus, we rely heavily on our website. So, one major SMART goal we have is to increase overall traffic to our site by 25% by the end of the fourth quarter (December 2019). We will do this by regularly creating new quality content on our blog to establish ourselves as an industry expert, increase our ad spend on Google Ads, and continue our efforts to optimize our website.

17. Get 10% More Feedback From New Customers This Year

Andrei Vasilescu, CEO & Digital Marketing, DontPayFull

Our smart goal of our business is to gain 10% more feedback from new customers each year. This smart goal is set to reach a specific target for our coupon platform by, and it is precisely measurable through our customer relationship management [CRM] tools.

This target is quite attainable because we set a master plan to deploy our combined efforts for the goal, and it’s quite relevant because you need to get at least 20% more customers to get 10% new feedback every year. Setting this smart goal makes all our team members dedicated to pour their time-bound efforts in unison.

18. Reach 300,000 New Unique Site Visitors Per Month Within 90 Days

Melanie Balke, Growth Strategist, BAMF Media

We use SMART goals for working with our clients daily. A great example is when clients try to drive new eyeballs to their website by increasing their website traffic. We would formulate the SMART goal for this objective the following way:

S – Specific: The goal defines both what needs to be attained and by when.

M – Measurable: The goal is measurable within Google Analytics.

A – Attainable: The goal is a 20% increase of their current site visits, which containing their additional budget ramp up and the three-month time frame is realistic while still being ambitious.

R – Relevant: The goal is to get new eyeballs to the site. We could falsely be measuring sessions or overall site visitors, but we would be measuring how many old visitors come back to the site like that as well. Therefore, we want to choose new unique site visitors to single out every new single visitor.

T – Time-bound: We set a period of three months to attain this goal.

19. Add €15,000 in Billed Revenue by the Second Quarter

Ahlem Mahroua, Founder, beeHYPE Marketing

I’m a former sales manager at Google and now founder of a digital marketing agency based in Barcelona. I manage a team of four, and we use SMART goals on a quarterly basis (I copied the practice from my time at Google).

Here is an example of a SMART goal for a business:

We will add €15,000 (approximately $18,000 in United States dollars) in billed revenue to our business in the second quarter by acquiring five new clients. To acquire five new clients, we will talk to 50 new leads by attending two networking events per week in Barcelona during April, May, and June.

20. Learn Two New Insights or Skills Each Week

Margaret Williamson, Owner, Leaf+Petal

While my industry may be artistic, my day-to-day work is just as much about numbers as it is creating visuals. I set the SMART goal of learning two new insights and skills each week: one creative and one technical. Two is an achievable number, allowing me to focus on the day to day tasks of maintaining my business while still progressing my skill sets. I pin what I’ve learned on the office board at the end of each week.

21. Speaking Engagements One Time Per Month

Melissa Dumaz, MS, LMFT, U Help You

I am a business owner and licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in California. I use SMART goals daily with my business and with my clients.

Here is one of my SMART goals for my business:

I will increase my marketing efforts in doing speaking engagements from two times per year to one time per month during the year.

Jared Weitz, CEO & Founder, United Capital Source Inc

With a mission to grow our audience across the web and increase prospect conversion, we have a SMART goal of receiving 50 to 60 new reviews each month on different websites. This goal is all things measurable, relevant, and time-bound, and we made it hover along the lines of attainable. Creating something to reach for, in a means that can be trended, helps our team see tangible results and understand how the work they do translates into positive impact.

23. Increase Our Employee Headcount by 500 This Year

James Lloyd-Townshend, Chairman & CEO, Nelson Frank

We have an ambitious global expansion strategy, so at the beginning of the year, we set ourselves the goal of increasing our employee headcount from 1,500 to 2,000. We wanted to set a target that would help us to deliver the increasing demand for our services better, and that our employees would also see the impact of first-hand.

Our employee headcount is one of the key metrics we use to measure our progress as it goes hand in hand with increased revenue. Fast-forward six months, and we now employ 1,900 people and expect to hit that target by summer, along with a rise in performance metrics across the board.

24. Tie Employee SMART Goals to Growth

Jared Bauman, CEO & Co-founder, 201 Creative, Inc

Rather than having SMART goals only be tied to projects, we also tie it to an employee’s growth opportunities at the company. Task benchmarks, timeframes, and expectations are created, and employees who exceed one or more than one of the SMART criteria are given additional responsibility and accolades. In a practical sense, if you can complete projects with higher relevance (specific), better metrics (measurable), simpler (attainable and relevant), and faster (time), you are rated higher.

25. Get One Journal Article Ready for Submission This Year

Dr. George Taylor, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, Co-founder, Entrepreneur, Educator & Personal Coach, Serent Properties LLC-ENTORGCORP, LLC

I use SMART holistically as both a performance management framework for the organization and individual efforts. The element of SMART that I am particularly sensitive to in both approaches is the notion of measurement.

Being specific, ensuring goals are attainable, relevant, and timely is not too difficult even when working to ensure a line-of-sight between the organization and individual performance. Yet, measures are where, in my experience, there’s a tendency to be too broad or nonspecific. This is also an area that I believe that being acutely aware of the results of performance when a measure is achieved requires attention. For example, if the goal was to improve quality-of-hire by 10%, what does that mean and, if we achieved it, what was the specific impact on the organization?

Leadership SMART Goal I use:

By December 31, my company will improve sales conversion rates by 20% for HRIS [human resource management system] implementation efforts within the public sector, city, and federal.

This leadership SMART goal example works because it lends itself to alignment and developing specific actions by a supervisor within my company. It’s specific enough to galvanize efforts yet also phrased and structured where specific actions can be developed and cascaded down to the supervisor and employee.

This is a company goal that can be shaped by each key lead in my company and lead to specific, tangible actions that include segmentation, targeting, and presentation to contract.

Coach SMART goal I use on clients:

By June 30, you will have one journal article ready for review and submission for your career development plan set forth by your employer.

This one works because it meets the criteria of SMART while also ensuring that the client maintains responsibility for the goal and its achievement. SMART goals work very well when supplemented by PM frameworks that lend to coordination and collaboration. SMART facilitates alignment yet in itself may not be enough—yet combined with broader performance management frameworks can serve as a performance enhancement tool.

26. Break Into the MarTech Space Increasing Annual Revenue to 50%

Frankie Russo, CEO & President, Potenza Inc.

I want to break into the marketing software or MarTech space. I will measure our progress by how quickly we can develop, in-house, our own software program and by how much that effort grows our revenue. Our goals are to increase annual revenue by 50 percent. I will turn to more experienced mentors and advisers on how and where to start, I will learn what skills are most valuable in developers to help attain our goals, and I will chart our course and monitor progress with what we call our “two-week sprints” and mini-goals.

Adding custom-made marketing software to our service will help gain new clients, retain existing ones, and grow our revenue. I had no experience in the software space, so I was kind of winging it, but I wanted to have a minimum viable product (MVP) within four months, and we did just that.

All of our SMART goals come from real issues, either correcting a negative or pursuing new opportunities to serve our clients better or to grow our business, and they all start with something very specific, is measured easily and attainable within our timeframe. Ultimately, the goal is for our employees and our work culture to be evolving constantly.

27. Increase Website Traffic From 500 to 10,000 Visitors Per Day Within One Month

Stacy Caprio, Marketing, SmartBooks Corp, Inc or Accelerated Growth Marketing

My SMART goal for improving one of my website’s traffic is:

Increasing website traffic from 500 to 10,000 visitors per day in one month.

This goal works well for the website I am applying it to because that website’s income is based on ad revenue and increasing the traffic and page views leads to increased revenue. Taking the site visitors from 500 to 10,000 will likely mean a 20 times increase in revenue, which will put my website in the place I want it to be.