The fourth eBook in the Foundations category. It takes the one-page plan from eBook 3 and turns the marketing half into a 90-day go-to-market plan a small business owner can actually run - with a small set of priorities, a clear channel set and milestones that mean something.
Members ebook·5 chapters· 20 minute read
Chapter 4
Setting Goals and Milestones
Three or four monthly milestones that make a 90-day plan measurable without becoming bureaucratic.
A plan without milestones is a wish. A plan with too many milestones is a dashboard nobody opens. The right number for a 90-day small business GTM plan is three or four - one revenue milestone, one customer milestone and one or two channel-specific milestones. That's enough to know whether the quarter is working without turning the plan into a spreadsheet.
Milestones should be set at month one, month two and month three. They should be visible. They should be honest. And they should be linked to one of the channels or moves on the plan, so when a milestone is missed, the conversation is about what to change rather than how to feel.
This chapter walks the milestone-setting carefully. By the end you'll have three or four milestones written on the page, each one specific enough to land on or miss cleanly.
The full chapter has the milestone-setting framework, the three milestone types every plan needs and the rules for setting numbers that aren't fantasy.
The three milestone types
Type one: a revenue or customer-count milestone. The big one. "Twelve new maintenance contracts by end of quarter." "Ten new patients booked into the package by end of quarter." "Two hundred spring collection orders by end of quarter." One number, easy to read, hard to fudge.
Type two: a channel milestone. Tied to one of the chosen channels. "Thirty new Google reviews." "Twelve LinkedIn posts published, one a week." "Six pop-up market enquiries from the spring stall." Channel milestones tell you whether the channel work is being done, regardless of how the revenue is landing.
Type three: a system milestone. The smallest one, often the most valuable in the long run. "Discovery call script rewritten and tested ten times." "Email list software set up and the first newsletter sent." "Customer follow-up sequence drafted." These don't earn this quarter's revenue. They earn next year's.
Setting numbers that aren't fantasy
The temptation is to set ambitious numbers and look strong. The cost is that ambitious numbers often demoralise the owner by week six and the plan stops being opened. Better targets are honest stretch numbers - 10 to 25 percent above the recent average, not 200 percent above it. If your current Google review pace is one a month, a quarter target of 30 is a fantasy. A quarter target of six is a stretch you can hit.
If you're launching a new offer or channel and have no recent average to base the number on, set a milestone you'd be content to hit and another you'd be delighted to hit. Aim for the second, plan for the first.
The month checkpoint
At the end of each month in the quarter, look at where you are against the milestones. Three honest categories: ahead, on track, behind. Write the answer down. The act of writing it down once a month is more useful than any longer-form review.
The monthly checkpoint questions
Which milestones are ahead, on track or behind?
What's the one move that would put the behind milestones back on track?
Is any channel quietly leaking time without producing results?
Is any new opportunity worth bumping to next quarter's plan?
When to revise the plan mid-quarter
Almost never. Plans get changed mid-quarter for two reasons: a milestone is wildly off because something genuinely changed in the world (a referral partner closed, a lockdown happened, a supplier failed) or a milestone is being missed because of a fixable execution problem. The first justifies a revision. The second justifies an action - not a new plan. Most owners revise when they should act.
What to do this week
Write three milestones on the GTM plan page. One revenue or customer-count milestone. One channel milestone. One system milestone. Put a number on each. Pin the page where you'll see it every working day. Set the first monthly checkpoint in your diary.
The recurring principle this chapter sits on is review results and improve the system. Milestones are the artefact that makes review meaningful. The next chapter, Building a 90-Day GTM Plan, brings the customer, channels and milestones together into the page itself.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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