A complete and overall evaluation of a wholesale business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is called SWOT analysis. It is a powerful tool to understand the happening of wholesale business and how to improve it. It is quite necessary that a wholesaler must understand the importance of SWOT analysis to fully utilize it. It is seen that wholesalers do not apprehend its importance and are unable to know that it a best way of monitoring external and internal environment and then developing strategies accordingly. After conducting a successful SWOT analysis a wholesaler must be capable of monitoring macro and micro-environmental factors that are affecting wholesale business working and ability of earning profit.

Most of the times, it is seen that a wholesaler understands his wholesale business’ strengths. It is also true that opportunities may exist in several forms and a good wholesaler must be good enough at spotting them. All that needs is a wholesaler to be honest in discovering and determining opportunities and strengths. SWOT analysis has been in practice since long and showing its impacts on wholesale businesses while mitigating the potential external and internal risks. No doubt, SWOT analysis is very important tool yet one should not forget that it is having only subjective approach. Therefore, a wholesaler must not solely rely on this analysis to develop further strategy.

Once a wholesaler is done with SWOT analysis he must move on to conduct specific goals for the further planning of wholesale business. This process is called as “Goal Formulation”. Goals are objectives that can be derived from the subjective portion of SWOT analysis and are completely made with respect to time. Majority of wholesale businesses have common corporate goals such as how to increase sales, how to get more profit, how to get larger market share, grab more customers and enhance reputation. Goal Formulation is a critical process that works well in the long run if objectives meet specific criteria. That criterion is being given below:

• Goals must follow a specific hierarchy and they must be formed in a manner from the most to least important. This point can be explained with the help of example that if a wholesaler has objective for the period to enhance profit then he must develop goals accordingly. He must control his business expenses first, increase his sales, invest more revenue, expand his product line to more regions and increase prices by increasing market share.

• It is advisable by the experts to develop goals that can be measurable. For example, a wholesaler wants to increase his profit, he must state this goal that he wants to increase profit by 25% as compared to present stage by the end of 2011.

• Goals must always be realistic and not based on imaginations. That is why it is recommended to must conduct SWOT analysis before generating goals. The subjectivity of SWOT analysis emphasize on developing realistic goals from the analysis.

• Goals must be viable for the wholesale business to fulfill them. It is possible to generate profit and increase sales by selling wholesale products but it is not possible that these goals will be fulfilled simultaneously and the very next day of goals formulation.

On the other hand goals can also be developed for long term growth or short span. Once the goals are developed, a wholesaler must follow them to achieve the desired results.