Conduct a SWOT Analysis

By Debbie Gregory.

Gather Your Team

Gather a group of people from all areas of the company to perform the SWOT to ensure different perspectives. The sales team will have a different outlook than the marketing team or the engineering team. You can even pull in people from outside of the company to provide input as a customer or vendor. A SWOT analysis is very similar to a brainstorming meeting so the more creative and fun, the better the ideas you will receive from everyone involved.

You can begin by selecting one of the four sections and having everyone jot ideas down on post-it notes, then stick them to a large piece of paper on the wall. Organize them and then rank them by having the team vote on the ideas presented. You can stick colored dots to the post-its or place tally mark them. This way you can get a clear picture of what the company needs to focus on and how they should be prioritized. This should be done for each part of the SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

After you have completed this part it is a good idea to discuss and debate each point further to make sure you have a clear path forward.

Questions To Help:

Strengths:  Internal factors that are in our control and are positive.

• What are our assets (people, education, reputation, skills, etc)?
• What are our physical assets (customers, location, equipment, patents, cash flow, etc)?
• What do we provide that our competition does not?
• What do our customers love about us?

Weaknesses:  Internal factors that need improvement.

• What do our customers complain about our products or services?
• Are we missing any key personnel?
• Are we missing any key equipment that would make our company more attractive to customers?
• Is there something we should be doing that we are not?

Opportunities:  External factors we have some control over.

• What do our customers think of us? What is our reputation?
• Are there any events we should be attending?
• Is our market growing?
• Are there any changes in regulations that might help us better serve our customers?

Threats:  External factors we have no control over.

• Is our market shrinking?
• Are our offerings outdated?
• Is our market being flooded with new competition?
• Are the costs of running the business going up?

 Next Steps

Once you have completed your SWOT analysis you are ready to put your strategy to work. Analyze your Strengths and make a plan to ensure you can take advantage of your Opportunities; as well as look at how your Strengths can overcome your Threats. Look at your Weaknesses and lay out a plan to work those out or minimize their impact on your business.

With an action list in hand, grab a calendar and place goals on it. What do you want to accomplish in a given week, month, quarter, and/or year? Make sure that your goals are clearly laid out, with specific deadlines, and make sure that they are reasonable and achievable. It is best to regularly check and make sure you are on track.

Your SWOT analysis will provide you a clear picture of your current abilities, the areas where you need to work on things, threats facing you in the market, and ways to take advantage of potential avenues for sales or increased revenue.

Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, VAMBOA,

SWOT Analysis

By Debbie Gregory.

What is a SWOT Analysis?

Who needs it and how to do it – Part 1

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool to help your business succeed, develop your business strategy, and pinpoint what you need to prioritize in order for your business to grow.

Strengths & Weaknesses refer to the internal challenges and opportunities your business faces. These are things that you have the most control over and can easily change – like patents your company may need or already has, employees you hire, the management team, etc.

Opportunities & Threats refer to external challenges that are not within your control and may not be easily changed. The general rule here is that you can find and take advantage of opportunities while trying to protect against threats but you cannot change their existence or occurrence. These include prices of materials, shopping trends, competitors, etc.

Regardless of the size of your company, from the largest multibillion dollar corporation to the small mom and pop shop down the street, you can benefit from a SWOT analysis. For the best results, you will want to gather a group from all areas of the company to perform the SWOT to ensure different perspectives. The sales team will have a different outlook than the marketing team or the engineering team. You can even pull in people from outside of the company to give input as a customer or vendor.

Once you have your SWOT team assembled you will then organize your top Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats into an organized list on a simple 2-by-2 grid as seen in the table below:

A SWOT analysis will force you to look at your business in different ways and from new directions. It will give you a clear picture of your current abilities, where you need to work on things, threats facing you in the market, and ways to take advantage of potential avenues for sales or increased revenue.

We encourage you to also read Part 2  that will provide more detail on how to gather your team, pose some sample questions to ask, and give a few pointers on where to go with the information after performing the analysis. Stay tuned!

Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, VAMBOA,