What are SMART goals and how to create them

We all set ambitious goals — they help us visualise where we’d like to be and motivate us to get there. However, the objectives we’re working so hard to achieve can quickly grow into a source of frustration if they’re vague or difficult to transform into a reality.

To turn ambition into action (and results) you need a blueprint that makes it easy to follow through. That’s where the SMART framework comes in. It’s a way of creating goals that are realistic and actionable so you can work towards them with clarity and focus. 

In this guide, we’ll dive into how the SMART framework works, share some examples, and explain how you can write SMART goals to help boost your business. 

What are SMART goals?

The SMART goal acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It’s a framework that ensures every objective you set is beneficial for your business. The checklist goes like this:

Specific

Your goal needs to be clear and easily understood. For instance, instead of saying that your goal is to ‘grow your social media’, you might say you want to ‘increase your Instagram follower count by 1000 this quarter by posting five reels and four images a week’. 

Measurable

You need to have clearly defined metrics that make it easy to monitor success. Often this comes down to quantifying your objective and setting a timeframe. Instead of ‘boosting email newsletter signups’, try ‘increasing email newsletter signups by 50% in three months’. 

Achievable

Your goal should be realistic and attainable within your timeframe. Increasing your conversion rate by 300% in a month might be an exciting prospect, but if this is unrealistic for your business, it may lead to misplaced expectations and frustration. 

Relevant

Your goal should be relevant to your broader business objectives. For this, you need to answer the ‘why’ of your SMART goal. Instead of simply saying you want to ‘increase customer lifetime value’, you might say ‘increase customer lifecycle value to support our shift toward a subscription-based service and improve long-term revenue predictability’. 

Time-bound

You should set a deadline to achieve your goal – this keeps you accountable. For example, rather than saying you want to ‘increase sales by 20%’, say you want to ‘increase sales by 20% in six months’. 

How to create SMART goals

We’ve touched on the way a SMART goal works, but now let’s get more specific and look at exactly how to create one (with an example to guide you through the process). 

Example: Peter’s dessert store

Peter recently launched a new website for his popular dessert brand. He wants to grow his online presence, but progress is slow. He gathers his tech team together in a meeting and says:

“Listen up. I want to improve my new website’s traffic. Let’s get to it.” 

Peter’s team points out that this goal is too vague, meaning it’ll be difficult to achieve. Peter agrees and heads back to the drawing board. He decides to put the goal through the SMART framework. 

1. Make your goals specific

To be successful, you need to ensure your goal is specific so it’s clear and actionable. We recommend going for a classic what, who, and how approach.

• What do you want to achieve?
• Who will be responsible for achieving your goal?
• How will you achieve this specific goal? What steps do you need to take? 

These questions will provide clarity on your objective. For Peter, his specific goal might look something like this:

• “I want to increase the number of local customers that visit my product pages through blogs, local SEO, and social media posts.”

We now have a who (local customers), a what (increasing visits), and a how (blogs, local SEO, and social media posts). 

2. Make your goals measurable

Next, make your goals quantifiable so you can track your progress over time.

For instance, reducing customer churn rate is a great goal. But by how much? 10%? 25%? 100%? Without these key performance indicators (KPIs), your team won’t know what they’re aiming for. Setting a quantifiable metric keeps everyone on the same page.

Peter’s new goal is more specific, but charting success is still difficult. Here’s how he makes his goal more measurable to give his team a benchmark to achieve: 

• “I want to increase the number of local customers that visit my product pages by 300% through blogs, local SEO, and social media posts.”

3. Make your goals achievable

At this stage, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your goal and decide if it’s realistic. Can you actually achieve it with your available resources, or are your ambitious goals setting you up for disappointment? 

After performing some domain research, Peter finds that most of his direct competitors took years to increase their traffic by 300%. He decides that his goal is a bit far-fetched. He refines his objective again:

• “I want to increase the number of local customers that visit my product pages by 50% through blogs, local SEO, and social media posts.”

4. Make your goals relevant 

We’ve already considered the what, who and how. Now, think about the why. What are the benefits of this goal? How will it help you, your career, or your business? Expressing why your goal is so important will help with accountability and employee performance. 

Peter understands that getting his team on board means clearly stating the purpose of achieving the goal and why it will benefit his business. As such, he further refines his objective:

• “I want to increase the number of local customers that visit my product pages by 50% through blogs, local SEO, and social media posts so that we can increase online cupcake orders by 30% and foster customer loyalty in the local area.” 

5. Make your goals time-bound

Lastly, there’s the when. To track progress and understand whether you’re hitting your targets, set a time limit for you and your team to reach the relevant goal. You can also create individual milestones along with an action plan for different parts of your project using a Gantt chart. 

Peter’s goal is excellent, but he still needs to set a timeframe. After some more research, he lands on his final objective. 

• “I want to increase the number of local customers that visit my product pages by 50% within 12 months through blogs, local SEO, and social media posts so that we can increase online cupcake orders by 30% and foster customer loyalty in the local area.“

You can see how, by putting an objective through each of the stages individually, you can begin to refine an achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal to make an actionable objective for your team.

What are the benefits of SMART goals? 

To reiterate why achievable SMART goals are important, let’s break down four key benefits. 

• Increased motivation and focus: SMART objectives are specific and measurable, meaning they give you clarity. They show you exactly what you need to do when it comes to achieving your goal within a given timeframe. 
• Improved productivity and efficiency: As SMART goals provide clarity, they’re a great motivator. They will help you and your team work toward specific benchmarks more efficiently. 
• Enhanced decision-making: SMART goals lay out a roadmap for achieving your objective. This makes it easier to prioritise tasks and make more informed decisions. They can also help with resource management. 
• Greater accountability and responsibility: Rather than aimlessly wandering towards a broad goal, SMART goals set out metrics and a timeframe, creating a sense of urgency and accountability. 

In short, SMART goals help you set better objectives that increase the likelihood of achieving your goal and finding success. 

Best practices for creating effective SMART goals

Here are some of the best practices you should keep in mind as you set SMART objectives to improve your project management and business efficiency. 

1. Involve others in the goal-setting process

When you set your goals, it’s worth getting input from others – especially when setting time frames and making the goal achievable. Your frontline sales and marketing teams will often have more insights into what’s a realistic goal. 

In addition, involving others in your goals creates accountability, which can help to motivate your team to commit themselves to the objective. 

2. Break down large goals into smaller, manageable goals

If you have a complex team goal, break it down into smaller tasks and tactics. For instance, if your goal specifies improving organic traffic with social media content, you’ll want to break that down further to avoid vagueness. 

What types of social media content will you post? When and where will you upload it? Who needs to be involved? The more specific you can be with your tactics, the more your team will understand their roles and responsibilities. This will give them a strategic plan that they can follow to achieve the objective. 

3. Celebrate your accomplishments

As you work towards your SMART goalsetting, celebrate the big and small wins. If you achieve a milestone in the timeframe, reward your team. If you’re ahead of schedule, let them know. 

Reaching an achievable goal is all about motivation. The more you celebrate your success, the more energy you’ll have to keep pushing forward. 

In short

When you set smarter goals, you can define a clear objective and take action steps to achieve it. If you’re running a business, they’re one of the most effective ways to align your team on a core objective. In your personal life, they can help you hold yourself accountable and stay motivated. 

Need help with project planning? Salesforce Service Cloud, paired with powerful Gantt chart integrations, lets you manage tasks and timelines efficiently, keeping your team in sync and projects on track.

FAQs

Are there any alternatives to the SMART goal system?

The V2MOM framework is an effective alternative for goal-setting action planning. It stands for Vision, Value, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures. Let’s break that down:

• Vision: What do you want to achieve with your goal? 
• Values: Why is this goal important? 
• Methods: How will you achieve this goal? 
• Objectives: What is preventing you from success? 
• Measures: What will you use to measure success?

As with the SMART goal template, V2MOM is an excellent way to align your team on a specific objective and work towards attaining goals. We particularly like that this framework ties in with a business’s broader vision and values. However, it can be more complex and lacks a time-bound focus, so isn’t for everyone. 

What is a professional SMART goal example? 

Let’s take a goal like ‘making more sales in the coming year’. When we use SMART criteria to refine this business goal, we might end up with something like:

“Our goal is to increase sales by 25% in the next 12 months. To do this, our sales and digital marketing team will create five personalised marketing campaigns, optimise our website’s product pages, host monthly webinars, and launch a social media strategy to engage customers and drive them down our sales funnel. This will ultimately help our business boost revenue.” 

Can you make personal goals SMART? 

Of course. A common personal goal is to ‘lose weight’, but this is very vague. How much weight do you want to lose? How will you do it? Let’s apply the SMART acronym to this goal. 

“I want to lose half a kilogram per week for the next six months by eating a calorie deficit of 500 calories and jogging for 30 minutes three times a week. By the end of the six months, my goal is to be able to fit into those jeans I bought last summer”. 

How can setting SMART goals benefit my personal life? 

We all have dreams, but they can often seem too big to achieve. Setting specific SMART goals will bring clarity and focus to your aspirations by helping you break down your goals into smaller, more actionable steps. In essence, you’re creating a strategic plan for growth and self-discipline. This can build your confidence and even support mental health.