Tweak Your Business Plan Every 90 Days

• By AllBusiness.com
• On 8:00 am EDT, Wednesday June 17, 2009

Chances are when you opened your business you created a detailed business plan, complete with marketing and advertising goals, and used that as the blueprint to run your business. And chances are you haven't looked at that business plan since. Many marketing and advertising experts think that's not the right way to manage your business. If fact, they say you should reexamine your business plan, especially your advertising and marketing, every 90 days.

That schedule might be a little intimidating, but it can really pay off in the end. The idea of a good business plan is to get the business off the ground and then keep it running smoothly. So dusting off your business plan regularly gives you an idea of how much time you're really spending on tasks and objectives and how to better utilize that time. Situations change, and so do customers. Taking a look at your plan, including your advertising and marketing plans, just makes good sense.

Essentially, reviewing your advertising and marketing plan every 90 days helps you get a better idea of what strategies are working and which ones aren't. You can look at sales and inventory trends, compare them to marketing campaigns, and get a quick idea of the campaigns that pulled in the most results. Then you can choose what to use again, and what to revise.

You can work on new ideas to replace strategies that didn't work and implement them so that sales don't slack off. Sales and marketing trends can change in an instant, so monitoring your plans on a regular basis can keep you from falling behind and losing out on sales.

How do you find the time to monitor your business plan every 90 days? Set aside a few minutes every day to jot down information on the previous day's sales, advertising, inventory, and costs. You don't have to be an accountant, but you can keep the information in a spreadsheet that will instantly give you trends and analysis. Keep notes about your activities during the day, too, such as visits to vendors, purchasing, and observations of what is keeping you busy.

At the beginning of every week, check the trends and analysis from the previous week, and save the information for your planning session at the end of 90 days. Armed with this information, working on your new business plan won't take much time at all. Analyze the data with the next 90 days in mind, have your goals and objectives in clear focus, and it shouldn't take you very much time to adjust your plan and move along to other tasks.

If you stay on top of this, at the end of 90 days you'll have a "diary" of your business and its successes, and you can get a much better idea of how to plan the next 90 days. If you keep good notes, reshaping your plan to meet your new objectives and goals, such as new advertising and marketing techniques, you'll see where to tweak your plan for the most profit and effective use of your time.

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