The Psychology of Setting and Achieving Holiday Profit Goals

Setting goals for your business is not just a great motivator but it can also be an indicator of your performance and even a course corrector when you veer off course. Performance goals for the holidays or for ay fiscal quarter (three consecutive months of earnings for any business) should be based on numbers from the last holiday season and/or the last fiscal quarter.

If you are a new business or new to online selling you can use your competitor’s past numbers. It might be a bit tricky getting a hold of these numbers though so you might have to do with some general monetary indicators in such cases.

Setting goals for yourself no matter how big or small your venture is only going to motivate you. Setting these motivational goals realistically will help you troubleshoot your plan along the way and for the next holiday.

In order to set these performance markers you should start by assessing how you did last holiday or if you are a beginner how did others in your niche do. Setting performance goals is just not about knowing the bottom line or how much money was made because you also need to know:

1. What your best selling products were? 
2. How many units were sold of what items? Vs. what items got you the maximum profit? 
3. What sizes sold out fast (if applicable to your niche)? 
4. Where most of your traffic came from? This includes search engine traffic, blog traffic, paid traffic etc. This will help you strengthen your areas of weakness for the upcoming holiday season. 
5. What deals or specials reaped the most rewards? 
6. What time, day and/or week did you make the most sales? And why? 
7. Any customer service hiccups that put a damper on your performance and reviews? 
8. What were your production or start up costs (if applicable) 
9. What was your over – head for that particular holiday? This includes utility bills, salaries, bonuses and any other business expenses 
10. If you can sit down and get these figures in an excel sheet in front, then you should be able to realistically project sales. Thus, setting achievable performance goals, not just to improve your bottom line, but to improve your business model as a whole. Making it more competent as an assembly of moving parts. 

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