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PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY, RARE AND UNEXPECTED BLACK SWAN EVENTS!

Posted on June 5, 2021 | by panconsultants

PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY, RARE
AND UNEXPECTED BLACK SWAN EVENTS!

In life and business, uncanny, rare and unexpected situations are called “black swan events.” Author Nicholas Taleb introduced black swan events in his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Penguin, 2008). In the book, he describes the profound impact of black swan events, which are often devastating to businesses, markets, investments and the overall economy.

The black swan event is a metaphor for surprise events that negatively impact life and business. Because they are ambiguous anomalies, people are often oblivious to them, dismissing the probability that these outliers could devastate and disrupt their lives. Taleb describes this phenomenon as “collective blindness,” and consequently, this is precisely what makes these outliers rather dicey.

There have been many black swan events, including World War 1, the September 11 attacks, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and other events such as droughts, floods, tornados and the recent coronavirus pandemic. Certainly, the coronavirus pandemic was a freak black swan occurrence that no one anticipated. It had a profound effect on business operations across the globe. How do we manage these unpredictable black swan events, and how do we recover from them? PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY, RARE AND UNEXPECTED BLACK SWAN EVENTS!

By their very nature, black swan events are spontaneous, so you can’t prepare for them. However, your company can have upper management implement protocols that can help navigate these outliers.

A crisis communication plan is a highly regarded tool for businesses. Through these plans, certain behaviors are practiced in expectation of those black swan events that suddenly emerge, creating an emergency. How will your employees respond? How will they tactfully interact with members of the media? A crisis communication plan clarifies who the leaders are who are responsible for following through on protocols that your employees have rehearsed in advance.

You may doubt that you can plan for black swan events because of their unpredictability. However, through vigilance and being open to happenstance, your crisis communication plan sets up contingencies for fluke events that can affect your company’s operations. Why wait? Contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing to prepare a crisis communication plan that plots out potential black swan events and helps you to circumvent a disruption to business.

HOW WILL YOU PREPARE FOR BLACK SWAN EVENTS?

Prepare your company’s SWOT analysis. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a framework that highlights your company’s competitive position helps you devise a strategic plan. SWOT analysis assesses internal and external factors, as well as current and future potential of your company. Focus intently on your company’s weaknesses and any threats to your business operations. List potential disruptors with the worst ones at the top, followed by those of lesser significance. Create “what-if” scenarios and use available strategic planning business tools that help look into the future.

The best tools for scenario planning include a SWOT analysis and Porter’s Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis, for which you can find free templates by signing up for an account here. I created a SWOT analysis from scratch by building a simple square with four quadrants in my earlier blog here: SWOT Analysis . There is a wide variety of free templates available through the organization SCORE, https://www.score.org/, which I highly recommend. SCORE’s professional mentors can also help you with your small business startup, and the organization has hundreds of online skills workshops, where you can learn about risk management and forecasting to quell possible disruptions to your operations.

Looking at the SWOT analysis from the abovementioned blog, I selected financial risk, IT cyberattacks and supply chain disruption from the threats quadrant as being terribly disruptive to my business operations and came up with a few tactics to mitigate them. All the tactics below would require a crisis communication plan so that employees know exactly what to do in response to a black swan event. PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY, RARE AND UNEXPECTED BLACK SWAN EVENTS!

Here are some tactics to prepare for Black Swan Events and avoid business risk

1. Supply Chain Interruption
  Create a crisis communication plan that includes on-call standby suppliers.
  Develop and increase partnerships with logistics companies.
  Reinforce the supply base.
  Stockpile inventory.
2. IT Phishing or Cyberattack
  
  Develop a crisis communication plan as part of your organization’s strategic response to IT security.
  Join forces with competitors that act as proxies in the event of a cyberattack.
  Educate your employees on how to recognize phishing emails.
  Organize simulation training to protect your company’s security.
  Implement regular presentations, quizzes and lessons to keep your company’s IT security in check.
3. Financial Risk
  Develop a crisis communication plan to reduce uncertainty.Manage complex business processes with dependable IT infrastructure.
  Stagger company investments over a long period.Diversify investments and have an exit strategy.
  Buy insurance.
  Build multiple revenue sources.
  Develop good leadership.

One of the valuable lessons we’ve learned during the coronavirus pandemic is that supply and demand for products and services flatlined for most businesses globally. In hindsight, this information taught us that generic pre-planning for most of our company functions (in the short term) is highly appropriate and smart. It’s more important to be proactive than it is to be caught flatfooted without a plan; what’s more, being without a plan is irresponsible. PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY.

Even though company leaders set the strategic direction of the company, your employees have to execute the plan. There may be deep financial, strategic and ethical issues at hand, most of which can be mitigated as long as your employees accept the fact that black swans are swimming in the darkness along with the white ones. Certainly, your employees can’t prepare for every scenario. PLAN AHEAD FOR UNCANNY

However, they can provide a reasonable response to a black swan event by using the tools of strategic planning, accepting that there are catastrophic outliers present that can be dangerous to business, and rehearsing for worst-case scenarios.

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing prepares crisis communication plans for companies of all sizes. Is your company ready for an emergency? If not today, then when? Focus on the risks right now—don’t wait!

By Patti Kondel, CEO, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and MA from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing specialist, brand booster, lover of the arts, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur—the sweet variety—and for marketing consumption, Internet cookies too! Let me help you trumpet your business to the world! Contact me today!

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is available for business opportunities around the globe. We also welcome related news, contributing article submissions, and helpful blog tip posts from our kindred community. If interested in submitting compatible content, please email info@savvyswan.com.

THE CASE STUDY: 12 WAYS TO SPOTLIGHT YOUR COMPANY’S SUCCESS

Posted on May 7, 2021 | by panconsultants

The Case Study: 12 Ways to Spotlight Your Company’s Success

Many of us learned how to solve whodunit-style murder mysteries when we played the game “Clue” or perhaps we attended a three-act, whodunit-style play where we imagined ourselves as a Nancy Drew-or Sherlock Holmes-type detective. When thrust into a real-life mystery of twists, turns, suspense, and conflicts, did you secretly try to solve it?

In the same way that a whodunit-style mystery follows a plot of a three-act play, so too, does an engaging case study. Act one describes the challenges. Act two builds tension with rising action where there seems to be no resolution to the dilemma. In act three, there’s a sigh of relief as tension resolves with a resolution that clarifies the connection, the problem, investigation, and the outcome.

Case studies have long been a learning staple in universities as a highly recognized teaching tool for management students. The lessons involve learning how to solve a real-life conflict through research, analysis, and reasoning. Case studies are highly investigative and they can be lengthy and intense. In the age of shorter attention spans, a short and sweet case study in marketing and sales is far more palatable to the reader. From a business perspective, a streamlined one-pager is the way to go to promote your products and services while gaining public trust as a thought leader in your area of expertise.

What is a case study?

A case study is an informative, emotional story about your company’s value-added products or services as told through the voice of the customer. As the story unfolds, it usually depicts a turbulent situation or pain point that the customer experienced. The customer approaches your company to help with the challenge because you work with customers in the same industries that they serve. Deep research into the situation reveals the best solution, and thanks to your team of experts, you solved their nagging problem! To your credit, you should be shouting it from the rooftops, but you don’t have to─because a one-page case study does it for you!

The case study format follows a story-line format as described in our provided graphic. There’s an intriguing customer dilemma to be solved. The customer tells a laudable story. The story has a flair for being relevant today, and the main people involved (per the customer’s recount) produce the facts that educate your audience of future customers. A one-page case study is a compelling representation of your company’s successes. Chances are that the customer you helped is so enamored with you that they’re more than willing to provide personal details so you can capture it in writing or video.

A simple customer testimony can’t sufficiently satisfy the effectiveness of what a case study provides. Sharing the customer experience in a case study evokes a powerful connection to your brand. Whether in printed pictorial color, video, or by another digital means, an animated account is far superior to a lackluster, run-of-the-mill testimonial, which is absent of the finer details.

Leveraging brand awareness is very important in penetrating a crowded market. Good stories describing a customer experience have credibility. As part of your customer relationship management effort, a one-page case study is an impressive, creative way in which your marketing department can promote your brand. It’s versatile, and the feasibility for using it in multiple marketing channels makes it highly popular for promoting your firm as a thought leader in your industry.

A glowing thought leadership case study, which portrays a target-specific customer in a niche market, will transport similar customers with relatable problems into the story, as it vividly unfolds from beginning to end─until the dilemma is solved. Surely, they’ll want to learn more about how your company can solve their problem too!

In the fast-moving world of business, a one-page case study is a memorable and influential piece of thought leadership that your prospective customers will appreciate. In the graphic below, I’ve laid out a simple format to follow when creating your case studies.

Why is thought leadership content in case studies,
so valuable to your company?

Thought leadership content in case studies is unique to your company because the depth and breath of your knowledge is difficult for competitors to copy. A viewpoint that few neither possess nor can express in vivid detail is a highly valuable brand asset.
Thought leadership content in case studies is a great differentiator because your expertise is rare, ubiquitous, and credible. Rare expertise that’s difficult to replicate is a valuable brand asset.
Thought leadership content in case studies bolsters your brand identity. As a notable authority in your industry, there’s a natural curiosity to ask your advice. By extension, there’s a natural inclination to learn more about your company’s products and services. As your brand creates trust in the mind of a consumer, it drives sales and creates brand loyalty. Customer retention over many years is a highly valuable asset.
Thought leadership content in case studies establishes your company as influential, pioneering, and innovative. A renowned brand reputation is a highly valuable asset.

After you’ve interviewed your satisfied customers and they’ve signed an agreement allowing use of their stories in your promotional effort, it’s time to leverage their case study stories across the most popular marketing channels where your customers gather.

Describing your customers’ buyer’s journey in succinct, swift, and riveting content removes any complexity because it’s a quick read. Masterfully created thought leadership content, finely designed and branded in exquisite color, will entice curious customers who will want to learn more about how you’ve established yourself as a brand leader.

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing can design and write fabulous case studies for video, audio, or for printed marketing and sales collateral. If you want to attract a specific type of customer from niche markets, we can help. All you have to do is contact us: info@savvyswan.com. We look forward to working with you.

You’ve finished your case study─here’s 12 ways

to promote it!

Place a one-page case study link on your home page for downloading; employ calls to action (CTAs) to generate leads.
Highlight one-page case studies on a dedicated tab as a website landing page. Be sure to employ CTAs to garner leads.
Display a link to case studies below your email signature for social media and promotional efforts.
Provide a visually appealing one-page case study as a printed piece of sales collateral, similar to a statement of work (SOW) type proposal. Each time you respond to RFIs, RFPs, or RFQs, you should include a relevant case study that matches the professional work to which you are responding.
Google bolsters pages that include video. Upload a case study video to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Utilize audio clips as a podcast in new employee onboarding, revealing a story-line of rising and falling action, and concluding with the customer dilemma resolved. For video, make sure you hire professional actors if you can’t get your customer to enact their story. Video and audio mediums are effective in dramatizing an authentic story-line as a zippy commercial-type alternative to reading. Video and audio are also fantastic for teaching new employees about your company’s brand, products, services, and real-life solutions.
Insert a one-page case study link into your blogs and marketing campaigns. Be sure to include the CTAs.
Revive and repurpose your one-page case studies from the past; make them relevant today so that they’ll go viral in your social media posts. Take case studies that occurred only in print and turn them into video, audio, or presentations. Trends are often repeated or revived, and everything old can be made new again!
Create a “patron promotion piece” in your company’s e-newsletter by highlighting a customer problem that you solved. Your customer will appreciate the extra publicity they’ve received from your extensive distribution list. Simultaneously, from the voice of the customer, it’s a subtle way to tout your company’s achievements without having to state it yourself.
Get a little extra mileage out of the company’s case study links. Ask your employees to share them in their social media channels, such as LinkedIn.
Maximize marketing reach with pop-up ads using Google and Facebook. Embed CTAs, which are important for sales.
Social media apps like Facebook Messenger and What’s App are highly influential and hugely popular of late. Customers like them because they are quick, direct ways of interacting. If your customers endorse them, you should too. Messaging apps have been trending up in popularity and have become standard in business communications. To sell more products, use messaging apps to insert your one-page case study links for customer inquiries.
Facebook Marketplace is often not thought of as a place to advertise goods and services. Many of their listings are dedicated to “used goods,” but many companies that do not engage in used goods, find the platform to be beneficial for advertising. You can brand your company’s photo or graphic advertisements for goods and services and include a link within your ad description that leads to your one-page case studies. Locally, the ad is free, and you can boost it for a fee to increase the radius of people viewing it.

Personalization and value-driven content is a top trend in 2021. What is more personalized than a true-to-life case study that integrates emotional resonance into a story as captured through the customer’s eyes? What better way to showcase the personal care you provided to a customer, than by alleviating their pain point with a good solution?

People are in a hurry. They are looking for snackable, value-driven content, not a full-course meal. A skim-and-scan case study or, alternatively, pithy video and audio, are value-driven content that are germane to our current world, which moves like the speed of light.

Your customers are your influencers. A compelling, bona fide customer account of how you solved their dilemma will bolster your brand and prove that your products or services are worth exploring.

If you’re interested in learning more about case study preparation, feel free to contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing.

SWOT Analysis: See Potentiality To Catalyze Your Competitive Advantage

Posted on March 25, 2021 | by panconsultants

SWOT Analysis: See Potentiality To Catalyze Your Competitive Advantage

Underscoring your company’s mission and vision are its core values, which are intrinsic to shaping your important decisions and the catalyst for ethical behavior. Endorsing your core values and mission are excellent employees, whom you’ve hired to move your company in its strategic direction and achieve the company’s goals.

Your personal activities are organized; you usually don’t meander through life aimlessly. Similarly, as company CEO, you’ll plan for successful business growth that is carefully thought out, not impulsive. How will you determine the path of least resistance to lead your company to success? Will you franchise your business? Are you considering buying a competitor? To discern the best path for your company’s future success, you’ll begin by reviewing your company’s past performance, which will help you manage future risks to protect your stakeholders’ interests. A strategic action plan will provide your company with key insights so that when a pandemic or other unforeseen circumstance develops, you’ll be nimble and able to respond instantaneously, thereby minimizing risks.

A helpful strategic technique that you can use to navigate obstacles is the strategic plan hierarchy triangle and the SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) that I’ve created. The SWOT analysis is not a panacea, but a great facilitative tool that provides a realistic view of your company or organization in the industries in which you operate. Companies can use the SWOT analysis in brainstorming sessions in which your employees discuss core competencies and weaknesses, and provide input about unmet opportunities. Additionally, it’s important strategically to foster awareness about competitors who work in the same industries in order to differentiate yourself from them. For threats lurking in the industries in which you participate, the SWOT analysis can help you mitigate them by alerting you to potential hurdles and company weaknesses. Internal weaknesses become threats if not carefully tempered. In identifying them, you’re able to prepare for threats that can unexpectedly ambush your distribution network, supply chain, skill set, products, or services.

You’ve invested much time, money, and creativity in starting this company, and you shouldn’t ad-lib on its strategic direction. You’ll want to navigate your daily operations determinedly by setting realistic goals through the strategic planning process. By fleshing out a strategic action plan that coasts and vacillates with the changing marketing landscape, you’ll be better prepared for unexpected challenges.

Ultimately, your company’s purpose is to create value for your stakeholders: customers, suppliers, investors, and mass media. You create value with financial investments or with cost-cutting measures, but you can also do so by tapping into the talent of employees from all levels of the organization, by innovating, or by diversifying your company’s products or services, among other value-creating measures.

The strategic planning hierarchy triangle (R) is a planning tool blueprint to help your company or organization move from stalemate to success. In last month’s blog, I covered the relatedness of the mission, vision, and core values. Remaining in the bottom blue section of the triangle (not covered in last month’s blog post) are the core competencies and market opportunities, which are my focus for this post. I have also produced a SWOT analysis (below) to help you discern your company’s strengths or core competencies and identify potential market opportunities that you can utilize. Your company creates a competitive advantage and establishes a sustained position, if brief, by seizing on your strengths and applying them to market opportunities.

Some core competencies emerge from blending primary capabilities in which your company excels with other less developed competencies. A combination of competencies creates specialized expertise that is difficult for competitive firms to copy. Combined competencies come from a variety of possibilities, some of which are not obvious—like velocity and agility. Velocity and agility, which lead to the ability to adapt to change quickly, are dynamic capabilities, and these competencies are difficult for competitors to replicate.

Breaking news that occurred during the pandemic exposed shortages in ventilators, face shields, and other PPE. Some companies were able to retool their existing technologies and reposition themselves rapidly to respond to these emerging market needs. Dr. David Teece, cited author, professor, and scholar in the combined field of business and management, asserts that the capability to change depends on the ability to scan the environment, evaluate markets, and quickly accomplish reconfiguration and transformation ahead of the competition. Perceptive employees, if they can imagine a hidden market, can help you beat the competition by getting out ahead of them; and for a short time, you can enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage.

Distinguishing yourself from competitors with unique activities that are difficult for competitors to imitate is the essence of strategic planning. The SWOT analysis reveals areas in which talents and opportunities converge to fulfill customer needs and in doing so, provides an economic boon for the company. Expertise in continuous improvement, idea generation, synergy, IT integration, technology, processes, knowledge absorption, R&D, and superior performance, for example, are strengths that your staff is cognizant of and can readily leverage. The knowledge of employees and expertise in multiple technologies is infinitely more valuable than leveraging products, which become obsolete.

Consider the company, Apple. The company has merged many capabilities and created numerous products in many markets. Its core product innovations come from a combination of several core competencies. What is notable is that the company structure encourages employees to contribute their knowledge and talents freely, not only in their respective business units, but also across the organization.

In addition to Apple’s innovations, its customer relationships are a significant competency for Apple. Apple’s cult-like following is not coincidental. Apple woos customers. The company is proficient at relationship-building. Its store retail staff members have hundreds of conversations with customers every day. They’re trained to listen intently. That simple competency, listening, is at the core of Apple’s business processes. The company is certainly excellent at marketing, but there are no aggressive selling tactics; rather, it’s about appealing to customers’ senses through exploitation of Apple’s superior products. How does the company do this? That too, is incredibly creative.

Apple dropped the name “store” from its branding to promote an aesthetically pleasing, village-square surround. Customers are delighted with the immersive tactile experience of testing the products and interacting with Apple specialists, who listen to their questions and offer product solutions to mull over. The seductive quality of Apple’s products is overwhelming, the compulsion to buy, immense. Apple capitalizes on customer emotion.

In forging such a broad fan base with its retail and online presence, Apple has created a sustainable competitive advantage that few companies in the same sphere can duplicate. The customer relationship imbued into Apple’s products is a big differentiator that results in another core competency: loyalty. As Apple churns out new products and their complements emerge, loyalists wait expectantly, and the cycle continues.

After Completing Your SWOT Analysis, What’s Next?

Once your employees identify your strengths and weaknesses, which are internal to your company, consider the externalities. Be inspired by the opportunities and remain vigilant about the threats. Ask employees to review your strengths in the strengths quadrant. Rank them (from 1–10, with 10 being best) according to ease of enhancement or implementation.

Apply the same ranking to the opportunities quadrant, emphasizing the tasks that can be tackled swiftly. Being first to market often brings a competitive advantage for a short time until others enter to grab some of the market share. Velocity and agility reign.

To build a winning dynamic capability, see whether one or two strengths from the SWOT analysis can integrate well with an opportunity. For example, brand identity in the strengths quadrant is a marketing strategy. Global expansion in the opportunities quadrant is a sales strategy. Combining a new brand identity package (marketing strategy) with entering new global markets (sales strategy) are two complementary strategies that form a powerful strategic barrier that is difficult for competitors to penetrate and replicate.

“Enthusiasm” in your strengths quadrant is a skill that you’ve instilled as part of your HR department’s workforce training for the customer engagement and sales departments. Clearly, these employees are your strongest brand ambassadors. You’ve successfully sprinkled enthusiasm as a core value into your brand identity. Enthusiasm, when effectively infused at all touch points in the customer journey, helps nurture relationships. Enthusiasm spawns loyalists, referrals, advertising partners, the best suppliers, and repeated sales. Maybe you hadn’t thought about enthusiasm as a strength, but we’ve seen it used effectively by Apple through the tactile, emotional high that customers get simply from bonding with Apple’s products.

We’ve also noted that Apple has displayed dynamic capabilities with its ability to adapt to consumers’ needs with velocity and agility, by quickly offering iterations of products with expanded features that customers have grown to love and value. Some companies master this (Apple) whereas others have failed to innovate because headstrong managers continued down a hard-nosed path of the same old technology. While the world evolved, innovation in markets advanced rapidly, and those companies became bygone memories (Polaroid and Kodak). Indeed, innovation and strong leadership are important competencies that are relevant to successful business growth and when combined, can thwart competitors.

Decisions, decisions—After you’ve combed through everything in your SWOT analysis, decide which competencies in your strengths quadrant are springboards for market opportunities and elicit consumer desire or engagement. Take action!

Think with clarity when you review the opportunities quadrant. If it’s financially feasible for you to make an acquisition to increase your reach or expand your capabilities, then do it. Take a risk!

When developing company-wide strategic goals for your strategic action plan, it is vitally important that they reflect your company’s mission, vision and core values. A common acronym for measuring goals is SMART. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. After refining your company-wide strategic goals, consider your measurable objectives.

Objectives are specific, quantifiable, and highly focused actions that particular departments or employees perform daily to achieve the company’s mission. Use the same acronym, SMART, to manage your objectives. Derived from the objectives are your tactics.

Tactics are concrete, essential, short-term tasks that an individual or a department team performs to meet the company’s objectives within a specific time frame to bring about a competitive advantage for your company.

The Resources in your strategic action plan are what your staff needs to achieve the tactics. These resources include databases, cash, equipment, patents, machinery or technology tools, and employees with specific skills.

Timelines are important for reaching certain milestones within a designated period, whether weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly, or for completion of a project that coincides with achieving an objective.

The Outcome Metrics pertain to analytics and measures that you’ll put in place to illuminate company growth and profitability. In this blog post, our Strategic Goal #1 is to increase the profit margin by 17%, which will require outcome metrics that measure business performance. Your marketing and sales departments will provide evidence that you are meeting your customers’ needs. One criterion that reflects your company’s bottom line is net profit: Use this equation: Net Profit = Total Revenue – Total Expenses.

Please see the basic strategic action plan grid that I’ve formulated listing one company-wide strategic goal to help you get started with your strategic planning.

YOUR COMPANY/CORPORATE MISSION

(Write it)

YOUR COMPANY/CORPORATE VISION

(Write it)

Strategic Goal #1: Increase the profit margin by 17% (company-wide)

(Broad-based problem that aligns with your vision)

1) Objective: Increase brand awareness by 5% (marketing teams)

(Specific to strategic goal #1 with tactics to accomplish the objective)

Tactics

Rewrite all marketing and sales collateral (Marcom Dept.).
Assist with generating high-quality leads through aggressive PPC ads and email campaigns across all marketing channels, especially social media, and responsibly track leads (Social Media Dept.).
Create attractive new brand identity package; clarify messaging to attract your target market; modernize the logo and typeface; review color palette, taglines, and visual elements in all marketing materials for consistency (Digital and Social Media Depts.).
Incentivize all employees to become brand ambassadors (live tweets, photo posts) on social media, and provide rave reviews about the company on professional business sites (Digital and Social Media Depts.).
Create a new media kit when the Marcom Dept. completes the rewriting of all collateral (Social Media Dept.).
Organize quarterly company events and provide free company swag, which is a write-off (Marcom Dept.).
Prepare a quarterly internal newsletter or company intranet. Deliver interesting, shareable company news to employees, and ask employees from each department to contribute newsworthy company stories (Digital and Marcom Depts.).

2) Objective: Increase sales by 7% (sales teams)

(Specific to strategic goal #1 with tactics to accomplish the objective)

Tactics

Employ upselling, bundling complementary products, and cross-selling techniques for existing and new customers.
Achieve higher sales (designated $ per week), and receive a deeper commission incentive.
Increase customer value using a loosely scripted sales pitch about introduction of new complementary products.
Increase service contracts by upselling maintenance agreements.
Be flexible with key customers and provide discounts when possible. Keep loyal customers secure and enamored with the company.
Refine internal sales processes, streamlining sales phone etiquette and online response to customer inquiries.
Increase attendance at trade shows, promoting the company’s unparalleled products with superior collateral.

3) Objective: Reduce expenditures by 7% (finance teams)

(Specific to strategic goal #1 with tactics to accomplish the objective)

Tactics

Have finance department audit each department for imprudent spending.
Preapprove expenditures, and cap departmental capital expenses.
Negotiate lower supplier pricing and contractual agreements.
Reduce travel expenses.
Review, streamline, and provide oversight to department budgets.

4) Objective: Increase customer loyalty by 7% (customer experience, call center, sales teams)

(Specific to strategic goal #1 with tactics to accomplish the objective)

Tactics

Improve customer experience processes and revamp the dialogue scripts for answering the phone.
Provide exceptional customer service and communicate a quick (scripted) core value phrase before transferring the call.
Communicate the company’s appreciation to customers and educate them on a new loyalty promotion.
Delight customers, be hospitable, and always greet customers with enthusiasm.
Review your key customers’ social media feeds to reveal their activities. Surprise them with a special, unexpected, branded gift.
Woo customers and suppliers; don’t get complacent. If customers or suppliers sense a detached or disinterested customer experience, competitors are waiting in the wings to welcome them.
Administer post-communication customer satisfaction surveys through IVR (interactive voice response). Ask for feedback regarding personnel, product, department, company, and efficiency.

The maneuverable quality of both the strategic action plan and the SWOT analysis helps inspire your employees to realize their strengths and weaknesses and use the knowledge for continuous improvement. In meeting your company’s objectives, these strategic tools prepare upper management to respond accordingly to unforeseen trends, unmet market needs, and abrupt market changes, making adjustments and moving with agility and velocity.

When you engage in markets with fierce competition, floundering is not an option. The strategic planning process enables you to garner marketing research, set organizational or company-wide policies and procedures, scrap products that aren’t profitable, and enter markets you hadn’t considered. While there is quite a bit of up-front work to create a SWOT analysis, matching your resources and competencies to the competitive environment in which you operate helps you to see potentiality and catalyze your competitive advantage. Operational excellence requires acumen and preparedness to meet unexpected challenges; and for those reasons, strategic planning is a resourceful use of time.