SWOT Analysis

By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group

It’s worth taking the time annually or bi-annually to conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) of your business as it grows and changes. The purpose of this analysis is to help you define what you uniquely offer to the market and how to reposition your company to take advantage of what lies in front of you. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

Set Yourself Apart From the Herd

Strengths

When evaluating what you’re good at think, consider the following:

• Have you created any IP for your customers that you can resell?
• Why do clients buy from you and not from your competitors?
• Do you have a loyal base of customers who could refer on your behalf?
• Segment your database and determine where you have the most customers – is it manufacturing, retail, or nonprofit?

Weaknesses

Where you do consistently fail?

• Is it marketing execution?
• You have pipeline but not enough skilled sales people?
• A poor website that doesn’t clearly and quickly articulate what you do?
• Are you too reliant on a few key individuals to make sales happen?

Opportunities

The good news is that there is ALWAYS opportunity as long as you are willing to invest and take some risk.  Consider the following:

• Additional publishers to address gaps in your business, for example, hosted solutions, additional ERP or CRM products.
• Add-on sales. Consider the logical next steps with customers – do they need mobile offerings, do they need CRM, would they be interested in ecommerce?
• ISV relationships are often overlooked, and many ISVs offer revenue share or are willing to co-market with you.

Threats

What prevents you from succeeding? Could it be…

• The economy as prospects have little budget to spend?
• Stiff competition in your market place?
• Other publishers (how would you compete against them if your prospects are considering multiple offerings?)

Cheryl Strege recently presented on this topic. Review her presentation to find out how to fix The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Your ERP Marketing Plan.