Jim Withey, sales manager for Auckland Engineering

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• Sales Management
•  
• CASE 1 (20 Marks)
• Auckland Engineering plc
• Jim Withey, sales manager for Auckland
  Engineering plc, a well-established engineering
  company based in the Midlands, had been
  contemplating the memo he had received two days
  earlier from his newly appointed marketing
  director.
•   Memo
•   To J Withey, sales manager
•  From D C Duncan, marketing director
•   Date 16 January 2008
•   Subject Preparation of annual marketing
  plan

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• You will recall that, at our series of
  preliminary meetings to discuss future marketing
  plans for the company, I suggested that I was
  unhappy with the seemingly haphazard approach to
  planning. Accordingly, you will recall it was
  agreed between departmental heads that each would
  undertake to prepare a formal input to next
  months planning meeting. At this stage, I am not
  seeking detailed plans for each product market,
  rather I am concerned that you give some thought
  to how your department can contribute to the
  planning process.

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• Being new to the company and its
  product/markets, I am not entirely up to date on
  what has been happening to the market for our
  products, although as we all know our market
  share at 3.5 per cent is down on last year. I
  would particularly like to know what information
  our department could contribute to the analysis
  of the situation. To help you in your own
  analysis I have summarized below what I feel came
  out of our first planning meetings.

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• Questions
•  1) Give a brief outline of the ways in which you
  as sales manager can contribute to the marketing
  planning process at Auckland Engineering.
•  
• 2) Looking at Mr. Duncans analysis of your
  previous meetings, what issues/problems do you
  see which are of particular relevance to the
  activities of the sales force?
•  
• 3) How would you respond to Mr. Duncans comments
  on the promotional mix and, in particular, to his
  comments about the level of advertising
  expenditure?
•  
• 4) What is the point in conducting a SWOT
  analysis?

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