There are many variations of what SMART stands for, but the essence is this – goals should be:

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Attainable.
• Relevant.
• Time Bound.

SMART is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting….To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:

1. Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
2. Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
3. Achievable (agreed, attainable).
4. Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).

When preparing goals, be specific and realistic about your desires. For example, instead of saying you simply want to increase revenues, a good goal would state that you want to increase revenues by 10 percent. As an example, you could state that you want to increase revenues by 10 percent by the end of the quarter.

Top 10 Strategies for Success

• Start Small. Quite possibly the biggest mistake people make is pushing the accelerator too soon.
• Get It On Paper.
• Focus On Everyday Habits.
• Always See Your Goal.
• Be Consistent.
• Never Stop Learning.
• Come Out of Seclusion.
• Allow For Setbacks.

To improve students’ reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing.

This theory is based on the concept that there are five forces that determine the competitive intensity and attractiveness of a market….The five forces are:

• Supplier power.
• Buyer power.
• Competitive rivalry.
• Threat of substitution.
• Threat of new entry.

4.8 MICHAEL PORTER’S FIVE GENERIC STRATEGIES

• Type 1: Low Cost -Strategy.
• Type 2: Best Value-Strategy.
• Type 3: Differentiation.
• Type 4: Focus- Low Cost.
• Type 5: Focus –Best value.

There are three competitive strategies that you can implement across your business: Cost-leadership strategies, differentiation strategies, and focus strategies.

The two basic types of competitive advantage combined with the scope of activities for which a firm seeks to achieve them, lead to three generic strategies for achieving above average performance in an industry: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.

WHAT IS A COMPETITIVE STRATEGY? A competitive strategy may be defined as a long-term plan of action that a company devises towards achieving a competitive advantage over its competitors after examining the strengths and weaknesses of the latter and comparing them to its own.

Four generic business-level strategies emerge from these decisions: (1) cost leadership, (2) differentiation, (3) focused cost leadership, and (4) focused differentiation. In rare cases, firms are able to offer both low prices and unique features that customers find desirable.

A low-cost strategy works best when there is: vigorous price competition; the service is a commodity available from many vendors; it is difficult to achieve differentiation; the service application is standardized; switching cost is low; buyers have bargaining power; new entrants use low cost to build customer base.