You should never develop a business plan that doesn’t have a scheduled review and today, it’s more important than ever. In fact, it has become very important to do this review earlier and more frequently.

There is no point in wasting your time worrying about things like your executive summary or the language you used in your marketing analysis if you haven’t taken the time to do the most important thing to actually make your business plan work. What’s important is the actual planning for the future and being ready to adapt and change as needed along the way.

Your business plan is a great way to get all of your ideas and thoughts for your business onto paper in a manner that’s streamlined and easy to understand.  However, this one time collection of ideas and information is nothing compared to the process of your ongoing planning and it will change and morph as you move along with your business. What you believed would work may be exception or it may be a complete flop and you will need to be able to think on your feet and adapt. Your business plan can help you achieve this if you have created a review schedule that is designed to make any necessary changes.

For example, maybe the last Friday of every month is the time you will evaluate your business, your traffic flow, you customer conversion rate and your competitors. By creating a schedule there will not be the worry that you have waited too long to address any concerns or problems that have arisen.

From the very beginning at the most basic level, you must define what your business goals are. What will you be selling, where does it fit in the market, how does your price compare to your competitors? How do you plan to make money. If your site doesn’t sell an actual product, you will need to define what your income source will be. For example, affiliates.

By clearly defining these areas of your business it will make it much easier during your reviews to compare how you are doing, what’s working and what you should consider changing.

The online market can change quickly and having a plan in place to review your business frequently is smart business sense. Waiting just a couple of weeks too long before you do your review can be the difference between success and failure.