It's All About Sales SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of It's All About Sales
Whether they know it or not, every person is a salesperson. Too often, individuals neglect this covert reality and suffer because of it. This article stresses the importance of putting your best face, and foot, forward in order to "sell".
Swot Analysis of "It's All About Sales" written by Catherine M. Dalton includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Covert Neglect facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in It's All About Sales case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Hiring, Presentations, Sales and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the It's All About Sales casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing,
increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of It's All About Sales
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in It's All About Sales case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Covert Neglect, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Covert Neglect operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of It's All About Sales can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in It's All About Sales case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Covert Neglect
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Covert Neglect
Strengths It's All About Sales | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Covert Neglect in It's All About Sales Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Covert Neglect is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in It's All About Sales case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Strong track record of project management
– Covert Neglect is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Covert Neglect is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Catherine M. Dalton can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Covert Neglect has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Covert Neglect is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Covert Neglect in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Covert Neglect has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Covert Neglect has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Covert Neglect in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Covert Neglect in the sector have low bargaining power. It's All About Sales has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Covert Neglect to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Covert Neglect are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Training and development
– Covert Neglect has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in It's All About Sales Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– It's All About Sales firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Covert Neglect to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Covert Neglect to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Covert Neglect is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Covert Neglect is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in It's All About Sales Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses It's All About Sales | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of It's All About Sales are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Covert Neglect is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study It's All About Sales can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Covert Neglect has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study It's All About Sales, it seems that the employees of Covert Neglect don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study It's All About Sales, in the dynamic environment Covert Neglect has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Covert Neglect has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study It's All About Sales, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the It's All About Sales HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Covert Neglect has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Covert Neglect, firm in the HBR case study It's All About Sales needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Covert Neglect supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - It's All About Sales, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Covert Neglect vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Covert Neglect has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Covert Neglect even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Covert Neglect has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Covert Neglect has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities It's All About Sales | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study It's All About Sales are -
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Covert Neglect can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Covert Neglect can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Covert Neglect has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Covert Neglect to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the It's All About Sales case study. Covert Neglect can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Covert Neglect has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Covert Neglect in the consumer business. Now Covert Neglect can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Covert Neglect is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. It's All About Sales case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Covert Neglect can develop new processes and procedures in Sales & Marketing industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Covert Neglect to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Covert Neglect in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Sales & Marketing segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Covert Neglect can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Covert Neglect can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Covert Neglect can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Sales & Marketing segment.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Covert Neglect can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Covert Neglect can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats It's All About Sales External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study It's All About Sales are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Covert Neglect has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Covert Neglect needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Increasing wage structure of Covert Neglect
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Covert Neglect.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Covert Neglect can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study It's All About Sales .
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Covert Neglect needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Covert Neglect is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study It's All About Sales, Covert Neglect may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
Environmental challenges
– Covert Neglect needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Covert Neglect can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Covert Neglect in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Covert Neglect needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Covert Neglect.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Covert Neglect demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of It's All About Sales Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study It's All About Sales needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study It's All About Sales is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study It's All About Sales is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of It's All About Sales is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Covert Neglect needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
