In an attempt to cut costs a consulting firm is going to eliminate bus

Question

In an attempt to cut costs a consulting firm is going to eliminate business travel for new business pitches. Instead, all communication with potential new business will be handled and pitched via email, document exchange and telephone calls.

Which of the following, if true, identifies a weakness of the new business model?

A) The firm has many local clients that do not require significant business travel
 
B) The average trip to pitch new business takes 2 full days when factoring in all travel and requires a 3 person team
 
C) Many employees of the consulting firm see travel for business pitches as a perk of the job

D) The company wins 65% of the business it pitches in person

E) Non-verbal communication plays an important role in guiding the presenters of a new business pitch to the areas they should focus most on during the presentation.

umeshpatil · Accepted Answer

'The company wins 65% of the business it pitches in person'
If above line is correct, e-mail, document, telephone calls would help to get around 35% of total business. I guess this should be more correct. In person pitches means shows practical interaction in front of each other.

E)Non-verbal communication plays an important role in guiding the presenters of a new business pitch to the areas they should focus most on during the presentation.

Non-verbal communication is also possible with video conferencing. So, this doesn't weaken the in person business model.

Zarrolou · Answer

In an attempt to cut costs a consulting firm is going to eliminate business travel for new business pitches. Instead, all communication with potential new business will be handled and pitched via email, document exchange and telephone calls.

Which of the following, if true, identifies a weakness of the new business model?

A)The firm has many local clients that do not require significant business travel
 This actually supports the conclusion...
B)The average trip to pitch new business takes 2 full days when factoring in all travel and requires a 3 person team
 Good to know, but not relevant
C)Many employees of the consulting firm see travel for business pitches as a perk of the job
This is a good option IMO, because could mean that employees are more willing to perform while on business travel. So the elimination of those trips could hurt the company. It is between C and E
D)The company wins 65% of the business it pitches in person
Good to know, but since we don't know any other data, this answer cannot be right
E)Non-verbal communication plays an important role in guiding the presenters of a new business pitch to the areas they should focus most on during the presentation.
IMO E. This is better than C simply because the passage from "no travel" to "hurt the company" is more direct, since answer E says clearly that non-verbal communication "plays an important" in the presentation. So the "physical absence" hurts the company.

Ivan91 · Answer

Maybe its possible with video conferencing, but the problem only specifies emails, telephones, and document exchange. So confefencng is irrelevant

Practicegmat · Answer

Why (D) IS WRONG? anyone to explain more clearly? 
Thanks !

Zarrolou · Answer

D)The company wins 65% of the business it pitches in person

We don't have any data to compare, so the company could win 90% of its pithces on telephone => good idea to cut travels
or could win 10% of its pitches on telephone => bad idea to cut travels

VadimKlimenko · Answer

In an attempt to cut costs a consulting firm is going to eliminate business travel for new business pitches. Instead, all communication with potential new business will be handled and pitched via email, document exchange and telephone calls.

Which of the following, if true, identifies a weakness of the new business model?
A)The firm has many local clients that do not require significant business travel
B)The average trip to pitch new business takes 2 full days when factoring in all travel and requires a 3 person team
C)Many employees of the consulting firm see travel for business pitches as a perk of the job
D)The company wins 65% of the business it pitches in person
E)Non-verbal communication plays an important role in guiding the presenters of a new business pitch to the areas they should focus most on during the presentation.
=========
The premise -> the company plans to make cost cutting.
The conclusion -> the source of cost cutting is replacement of business travel (personal meetings) for non-personal communication (email,phone)
The assumption -> the cost cutting should not negatively affect current sales and business volumes; if it does then there is no economic sense in cost cutting.
The answer should - > assure that whether there will be no significant effect in expenses reduction (if travel costs are not significant in the whole cost structure) or there could be loss of some business.
A) As majority of business comes from local transactions, the elimination of travel will not affect volumes of business but reduce the expenses - it strengthens the plans of management.
B) 3 persons for 2 full days sounds like significant expenses and there is great chance (we don't know it precisely) it constitutes significant part of cost structure, so if the firm replaces it for non-personal communication cost cutting will be good, but we do not know how it will affect business sales in general (how many new contracts are gained by those 3 persons during 2 full days ?) - this statement partially strengthen the conclusion.
C) No information about impact on cost structure and current sales levels - neutral.
D) No information what share of those 65% percents are contributed by traveling. Probably, all those 65% are done locally, and traveling is ineffective in terms of new business creation - neutral.
E) It's said that generally non-verbal communication (i.e. travelling) plays significant role in the service level of the consulting firm as its consultant could not emphasize on crucial areas without non-verbal communication and provide value to their clients. So it's implied that business sales of the firm could be negatively affected without travelling; despite the absence of information about cost structure this statement is the only one which weakens the argument at least partially.

avinashrao9 · Answer

How does non-verbal communication relate to travel? Please explain.....

plumber250 · Answer

Hi -

Non-verbal is body language - so the sort of thing you can only get in person.

So if you stop travel you stop face to face meetings and hence limit the ability for non verbal communication...

James

Bluelagoon · Answer

A very good question for people like me who try to read too quickly and miss the most important 'words' of the argument.The argument is about new business pitches. i chose answer choice A that might be more precise if the argument is about current businesses but when we talk about new businesses answer choice A gets knocked out. Now, i eliminated B,C and D. By the time i read E , i was done reading and was too excited to mark the answer choice A and be happy that i finished the question in one minute. But Phew, i was wrong my one minute investment in reading the stimulus, which was easy to understand than most of the RC passages, just resulted to nothing. I got the incorrect answer.

Morale of the story : Read all the answer choices and get the easy questions right!!!

ronr34 · Answer

Yes, but important doesn't mean that deals fail because it's absent.
On the other hand, D, clearly states that most of the business (65%) is won by person to person.

Also, non verbal can be all kinds of signs, presents, courtships of a new client and so on....

Can anyone explain a little more about D vs E and why my diagnoses is incorrect?

ssriva2 · Answer

If a person goes and meets the client.How can it be non verbal?
E is not clear to me

anilisanil · Answer

tricky one- I read D as " The company wins 65% of all its business through in person pitches". It actually turned out that the company wins 65% of all the in person pitches.

So if you are wondering D is wrong, you would know why!

noTh1ng · Answer

I think C is also quite compelling, as it could imply that if the company cuts travel all together it might lose employees or is less attractive to high-potentials in the future.

Thats why I chose it, it was between C and E and E somehow sounded too easy :/

Mahmud6 · Answer

Non-verbal communication:

1. Behavior and elements of speech aside from the words themselves that transmit meaning. Non-verbal communication includes pitch, speed, tone and volume of voice, gestures and facial expressions, body posture, stance, and proximity to the listener, eye movements and contact, and dress and appearance.

2. Transmission of messages by a medium other than speech or writing.

Read more: https://www.businessdictionary.com/defin ... ation.html

Debashis Roy · Answer

GMATNinja   Bunuel   VeritasKarishma

Could you please explain why E?
Thanks

mahikapb · Answer

65% of in-person pitches are converted. However, we do not know about online pitches - the success rate could be more than 65%. So we cannot take D as the answer.

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