I was reminded this afternoon about the importance of plans -- business plans, marketing plans, and revenue plans flashed across my mind. Each are critical to a business's success. And each are living documents -- that's the part that hit my memory button.
The memory is working for a company years ago that fancied itself a technology juggernaut. We had some really cool ware, but floundered and eventually failed. There are many contributing reasons to the failure, but the shining event was failure to continually adjust to market and customer needs -- almost blindly, the company marched forward on a business, product development, and marketing plan quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year. The problem was as things changed around us, the plan remained the same.
Technologies came and went, hype turned to reality, and customer needs varied from the original idea of the founders to the evolved world of those of us who inherited the plan. We ended up selling products and services to a customer base and market that had greatly changed. Revenue shrank and things were never the same.
The problem wasn't the people who originated the idea -- their plan was pretty solid. The problem was those of us who failed to routinely validate it. This happens frequently in businesses. I've seen it a lot.
It's easier in sales -- revenue plans are routinely reviewed, measured, and adjusted to create a desired result. The same should be done to all other plans in business. Don't keep following a plan just because it's there -- test the assumptions, measure progress, and make adjustments as necessary.
Here's the post that jogged my memory -- it's a good example of how to use a business plan from people who know them well. Read the post, think about your business, and then challenge the plans you have in a constructive way.
What do you think? Do you regularly review the plans within your business? Which elements of your plan should be reviewed more often?
