TABLE OF CONTENTS In Chapter 1, we discussed the headless chicken syndrome, wherein small businesses have a tendency, in the early stages of their existence, to chase all sales opportunities that come their way irrespective of profitability, on the assumption that any sales that make a contribution towards their overheads must be good for the business. In consequence, they often expend a great deal of effort chasing low-margin sales when a more planned and directed approach could have resulted in more profit for less effort. As the business matures the effort is directed towards the profitable sales opportunities, but such opportunities are usually limited because of competition in the market. If the business is to expand and develop in the long term, it has therefore to focus on the market segments where it can use its strengths to the full.
This chapter will look at some contemporary ideas about the strategic marketing audit, the process of identifying suitable market segments and the production of the strategic marketing plan, and how these apply to small and developing firms. The issues that are examined here relate to Units B1, B2, B4 and B5 of the Revised Business Development Standards.
The first stage in preparing your business for expansion is to carry out a review of the marketing processes presently in use, identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses, current spare capacity and/or overload, and in particular any major problems that need to be addressed. Some of the relevant issues will hopefully already have...
