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Business Planning > Objectives

Objectives

Use the Objective pages to create, update, and track objectives for a business plan.

An objective is a tactical goal that you want to achieve, to attain a higher-level strategic goal in a business plan. Typically, you create an objective that is related to a business plan. While a business plan might establish an overall annual revenue goal for an account, an objective establishes a tactical goal, such as completing a number of sales calls, or attaining a certain number of new prescriptions at a medical practice. Objectives provide an intermediate level of planning, between setting high-level strategic goals with business plans, and low-level planning with activities (individual sales visits and calls) and opportunities (individual sales deals).

An objective does not have to be subsidiary to a business plan. Organizations can choose to use objectives differently. Like business plans, you can apply objectives to accounts, contacts, or products. A given objective can have multiple child objectives. You can set objectives for the short-term or long-term periods. The periods are based on company-defined planning periods, which are typically months, quarters, or years. Objectives are not as flexible as business plans. While a business plan can relate to multiple accounts and contacts, an objective can relate to only one account and one contact. In addition, while an opportunity can relate to multiple business plans, an opportunity can relate to only one objective.

NOTE: Your company administrator determines which tabs are available to you. If your job responsibility does not include tracking objectives, then the Objective tab might be excluded from your setup.