SurePayroll Study Provides Insights on Small Business Goal Setting

SurePayroll offers simple tips for effective small business New Year's resolutions

CHICAGO — December 14, 2006 — One-quarter of American small businesses (25 percent) will start the New Year without having defined their 2007 business goals, according to a recent national survey by SurePayroll.

Reflecting back on 2006 accomplishments, nearly three-quarters of business owners were not satisfied with how their businesses fared against business objectives.

Just in time for New Year, SurePayroll surveyed hundreds of randomly selected U.S. small business owners about how they set business goals. Key findings include:

Personal Goal Setting Encouraged
When it comes to defining goals, business owners are not just setting goals for themselves. The vast majority of business owners (84 percent) indicated that they are actively encouraging their employees to set goals for the upcoming year.

Who Needs Goals?
Surprisingly, some business owners never define business goals for the year. Many surveyed small business owners (13 percent) say they operate without formal goals.

Get the Pen and Paper Out!
Research suggests that writing down your goals is an important first step towards achieving them. Small business owners appear to agree wholeheartedly, with 86 percent noting that recording a goal in writing increases the likelihood that it will be achieved.

Biggest Headache for 2007? Health Care Costs
The "Cost of Health Care" topped the list of business concerns for 2007. "Fair Competition" and "Tax Relief" took second place, and third place went to the "War in Iraq."

Business Plans — Not Just for the Big Guys
Some people may believe that business plans are only for large companies, but the SurePayroll survey disproves that myth. A surprising 60 percent of respondents who define business goals have formally-written business plans in place. The remainder either write plans down informally (25 percent) or simply think about their goals but don't write them down (15 percent).

"Our counsel to small business owners is that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail," said Michael Alter, president of SurePayroll. "To assist America’s entrepreneurs, SurePayroll has created some simple suggestions to help business owners plan for the upcoming year."

SurePayroll's tips for small business goal setting include the following:

• Don't set goals for the entire year. Instead, set goals for the first three months of the year. In March, define your goals for the next three months and continue this process through the end of the year.
• Define metrics to measure your success — for all goals. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Figure out where you are now, define metric goals and reevaluate your strategy in three months.
• Post goals on posters in the office. Goals that are sitting in a business plan on a hard drive or in a filing cabinet are rarely achieved. Post goals in a public place and remind employees about the top-priority business goals as often as possible.
• Set 3 different goals and reward for above-average growth. Don't set yourself up for failure by setting unachievable goals, but don't sell your business short, either. To ensure you can feel good about achieving base-line goals while shooting for the gold, define three goals — one that, if achieved, indicates expected growth, one that indicates the business did very well and a stretch goal that indicates the business did phenomenally. Attach rewards for all employees to each.
• Put in place a plan of action to achieve your goals. In business, many things conform to the old expression "hard by the yard, cinch by the inch." To achieve a business goal, you must envision success and then work backwards to determine what must happen to ensure success. By breaking a large task into smaller component objectives, you can greatly increase your chance of success.
• Don't forget to resolve to simplify business administration. This time of year is the perfect time to plan to increase efficiency. If you've been thinking about outsourcing payroll, for example, it's best to do it now. If you wait until the middle of the year, you'll need to deal with more paperwork. Take the time now to plan on outsourcing things that are not critical to your business success in 2007; that will free up your time to achieve the goals that are truly important to you.

About SurePayroll:

SurePayroll is the online alternative to ADP® and Paychex®. SurePayroll's service and team members are dedicated to providing an easy, convenient online payroll service at a price small business owners can afford. Tens of thousands of customers rely on SurePayroll to process payroll wherever they want in as few as two minutes.

In addition, SurePayroll offers small businesses solutions for managing 401(k) plans, health insurance, workers' compensation, HR compliance and employee screening. For accountants and banking partners, SurePayroll provides private-label services that enable them to offer payroll processing to their small business clients.

Over the last decade, SurePayroll has received numerous prestigious awards for its innovative technology and outstanding customer service, including recognition from PC Magazine, Inc. 500, Accounting Today, the Stevie Awards and many others.

For more information, you can visit http://www.surepayroll.com, call 877.954.7873 or follow us on http://twitter.com/SurePayroll.

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