SWOT’s It All About? (FREE Download)

Last week, in four parts, we created a SWOT analysis by defining the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and  Threats to your business.  One final step is necessary in putting the SWOT information together.  An analysis is only valuable if you put a plan into place. In this last step you will create a list of strategies for your business.  In this last step we’ll take a look at how we can:

• maximize our strengths to take advantage of opportunities: Strength-Opportunity Strategies (SO Strategies)
• use our strengths to minimize the threats to our business: Strength-Threat Strategies (ST Strategies)
• use opportunities to lessen  weaknesses: Weakness-Opportunity Strategies (WO Strategies)
• mitigate the weaknesses in light of impending threats: Weakness-Threat Strategies (WT Strategies)

Here is a matrix for a Wedding Florist Business to help you see how all of these details fit together:

Here are a few observations:

• See how we’ve lined up our niche strengths (unique floral design) to take advantage of opportunities (submitting photos to that new magazine)?
• Notice how we’re beefing up our strengths (strong customer service) to work around the threats (increased competition)?
• Do you see how we are taking advantage of external opportunities (cost of rent and real estate is dropping) to lessen the weaknesses (high overhead)?
• Observe how we can mitigate the weaknesses (no blog; start a blog) to adjust for threats (advertising costs are rising)?

In Summary

The SWOT is a very powerful tool in identifying the internal and external factors that affect our business.  I find it useful to do one every 6 months.  Some of the factors don’t always change so a working word or excel document can be helpful in analyzing the constant and/or dynamic aspects of your business.  The final piece, putting a strategy in place, is helpful in determining short and long term goals for your business.  All of the SO, ST, WO, WT strategies can be put into your 1-10 year goal sheet, and into your business plan.

Do you like this? We love feedback… let us know in our SWP Survey.  And, if you love it, feel free to DOWNLOAD this here: SWOTAnalysis.