Understanding why sales professionals, need to conduct a SWOT Analysis? Copy

A SWOT analysis is a written exercise, which will help you as a sales professional, to take an informed look at your markets, customers, competitors and yourself, so that you can make effective sales decisions, regarding how you will approach your markets and customers. 

The information you will glean by doing this exercise will allow you to:

• Identify opportunities in your markets or at your existing customers 
• See potential new opportunities with new or different prospects
•  Leverage all your strengths as an organisation or as an individual, so that you can optimise your sales performance and results
• Identify any weaknesses you or your organisation may have, so that you can:
  • Eliminate them
  • Mitigate them
  • Find a workable solution that you can work with
• Create an awareness of any threats in your external environment, which may be standing in the way of you achieving your sales target.

Please invest some quality time into compiling your personal SWOT analysis. Invest the time to think deeply and provide, as much detail as you can – about your own skills, your customers expectations and possible opportunities or threats, which could support or hinder your ability as a sales professional. 

Use the insights you gain from this exercise, to increase your own personal sales effectiveness and to support you to create sales strategies, which will help you, make the most of your markets, existing customers and potential prospects going forward.

For example:

Once you have identified your strengths, you can better use them to determine which sales opportunities to pursue and to help reduce your vulnerability to potential threats.

Keep the analysis simple and to the point. Don’t over analyze and don’t immediately take the results as gospel. Remember this is only a tool.