Suppose you are the marketing director of a health care product company, you may not know the exact total sales of calcium supplement products in China market last year; Even if you have a 100% understanding of the current situation, you may not be prepared for 100%. In other words, marketers may never work out a "perfect" marketing plan.
"Marketers often want to make a perfect marketing plan, but this is impossible. Too harsh requirements will bring trouble to the company's operations. "
On August 5th, Sun Yiming, lecturer of Cambridge International Course and regional development director of Macquarie International Asia-Pacific Headquarters, emphasized in the course of Cambridge University Senior Management President sponsored by Peking University Manager Training Network and China Certification Center of Cambridge Vocational/Professional Qualification Certificate.
Sun Yiming pointed out that the essence of making marketing strategy is to analyze the current situation and make predictions and plans for the future. In this process, marketers can flexibly use SWOT analysis, a classic management tool, to understand the current environment and future competition of enterprises, so as to formulate a set of enterprise marketing strategies that can adapt to environmental changes.
The case of Crown Company
SWOT analysis, that is, situation analysis, was put forward by Professor Warwick of the University of San Francisco in the early 1980s, and is often used in enterprise strategy formulation, competitor analysis and other occasions.
SWOT analysis belongs to the internal analysis method of enterprises, that is, through the investigation of the internal situation of enterprises, four factors, such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, are listed, and then arranged in a matrix manner, and then the system theory is used to comprehensively analyze various factors and draw a conclusion.
Sun Yiming believes that when applying SWOT analysis, enterprises should systematically analyze the external environment and internal resources, and then formulate correct marketing strategies.
Then, he introduced an enterprise case, asking students to design a tactical action plan for it within six months according to the current situation of the company analyzed by SWOT analysis.
Crown Company is a Sino-US joint venture, mainly engaged in assembling and selling small and medium-sized compressors and refrigeration units. The company has about 60 employees, among whom the general manager is Australian and has lived in China for 8 years. The marketing department consists of 1 director, 2 regional managers, 5 sales engineers and 2 technical engineers. Crown's customers are mainly OEMs and distributors, and every salesperson has to deal with direct users and distributors.
Due to the rapid business development, Crown Company has a good development momentum in the future. The competitors are mainly two companies in Germany and Italy; Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province Province and local manufacturers are growing gradually, which poses a certain threat to their future market share.
To this end, the management of Crown Company will hold a management meeting soon to discuss the next work focus.
Timetable and work objectives are indispensable.
After the case discussion, the first group of students spoke first. They take the organizational structure and execution of the team as the main consideration, and think that the main problem of the company lies in human resources: due to the inexperience of management, unclear responsibilities of employees in the department, weak sense of responsibility and weak fighting will, strengthening the organizational construction of employees should be the primary task.
Therefore, they put forward that Crown Company should first increase the manpower of human resources department and strengthen the management of sales team strategically. The second is to establish a strong after-sales service team and respond in time after receiving customer feedback; The third is to strengthen distribution channels. Tactically, the company needs to strengthen spare parts inventory management, let the management hold shares and strengthen the incentive mechanism.
For the first group's speech, some students said: "Their analysis is not detailed enough, there is no time plan, and there is no specific responsibility goal." Sun Yiming agreed: "Yes, when conducting SWOT analysis, we should make a detailed personal action plan and determine the objectives, executors and operating procedures."
The speeches of the second group of students emphasized the necessity of maintaining brand advantage. They made corresponding tactics from three aspects: market, management and competition. First, they spent three months training personnel and forming a team. Secondly, we will open offices in major cities, and the office staff will mainly be trained internally, and then it will take one month to formulate the dealer management plan; Finally, it took two months to investigate competitors and set up a technical support team specifically for the central and western regions.
Sun Yiming commented: "It's good that you have a specific timetable when making strategies and tactics. But you have to remember that the development of a company is inseparable from the support of dealers, so it is necessary to improve and innovate the traditional dealer management model, grow up with them and cooperate more, instead of trying to control them. "
Pay attention to me, me, mine, mine, mine, myself.
Strengths (Strengths) The overall goal and strategy of the company are clear; The product line is 95% completed; High product quality and high market recognition; The price strategy is accepted by the market; The inventory is complete.
Weakness (weakness) lacks the implementation strategy of managers; Managers lack experience and ability; There are no managers, technical engineers and distributors in the Shanghai office. Poor team spirit and lack of communication; Unclear responsibilities, each passing the buck; Incomplete spare parts, affecting after-sales service; Business network and customer network are scattered; Less publicity and promotion and poor market operation; Salespeople are not motivated and do not work seriously.
Opportunities have great market potential; The domestic economic situation is good; Seller's market.
Threaten competitors to have a complete distribution network and ideal sales; Competitors have great marketing efforts and often hold product lectures and exhibitions; The sales and service teams of competitors are proactive; The company's Guangzhou market slowed down.
The speech of the third group pointed out that there were serious omissions in the plans of the first two groups "The first two groups ignored the construction of corporate culture when summing up the problems, including the sense of belonging of employees and the influence of efficient employees." They also suggested that Crown can take advantage of the seller's market conditions, give full play to its product advantages, change OEM acquisition into its own brand, and establish the image of a leader in the middle and high-end market.
Sun Yiming fully affirmed the supplement of this group, and gave an example: "Humanized management is the basic requirement for enterprises to achieve long-term development. There are five special friends in a person's life-me, me, mine, mine and myself, which can be translated as me, myself, mine and myself respectively. It can be seen that everyone pays high attention to themselves, so enterprises should build a people-oriented cultural atmosphere and let employees realize their self-worth. "
Next, Sun Yiming published his own reference answer. He and the students have similar ideas on strategic planning. They all advocate the establishment of marketing team, the development of marketing manager, the determination of job responsibilities, the designation of sales management system to manage customers and distributors, and the establishment of customer service system.
In terms of tactical formulation in the next six months, his views are slightly different from those of the trainees. He believes that Crown will first hold large-scale product launches in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, hire a sales engineer in Hangzhou and Guangzhou, and hire a technical engineer and a sales manager in Shanghai. Then develop 10 dealers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and then develop 8 to 10 large-scale main engine plants.
Finally, Sun Yiming concluded: "As an analytical tool, SWOT itself has no practical value. Its value comes from the results of SWOT analysis and also from the follow-up solutions to the right medicine."