SWOT: Identify Opportunities and Defend Against Threats

You may be familiar with the term SWOT Analysis.  It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  It’s a well-documented methodology for analysing your competition.  If you want to achieve your goals and have a successful business that gives you the life you desire and deserve, you can’t do it with your head planted in the sand or better said, simply looking at yourself in the mirror.  You must know where you stand RELATIVE to your competition.  The SWOT Analysis will help put your business into perspective.

Doing a SWOT Analysis is very simple.  Take 4 sheets of paper and on each one write one of the following – My Strengths, My Weaknesses, My Opportunities, My Threats.  Then over this next week, as you think about, observe and gather information about your main competitors, simply put your thoughts on these pages.  Be candid with yourself.  This is not being scored or evaluated.  You are going to use this to give yourself the advantage.  But first you must collect the data and fill in the pages.

Then, once you have your four pages filled with notes, here is where the magic happens.  Take your Strengths page and your Opportunities page, put them side by side, and ask yourself “What could I do using my strengths to take advantage of my opportunities?”  Make a list of the things you could do to “leverage” your strengths specifically targeted into the opportunities that your competition has offered to you.

Next, take your Weaknesses page and your Threats page, put them side by side, and ask yourself “What must I do right now to shore up my weaknesses and eliminate the possible threats?”  There may be one or two critical things you must do now to cover your flank.

These last two exercises are the ones that most business owners fail to do.  They list the SWOT Analysis, put it in a strategy book, and never do anything with it until the next year when the pull it out, dust it off and do it again.  If you want to win you must TAKE ACTION on your SWOT Analysis!

Having completed your SWOT Analysis you will want to make sure you stand out from your competition with a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  Competition is everywhere, even when and where you don’t expect it to be…that’s why having a unique aspect to your business is so valuable, more so now than ever before.  Even if you’re trading well now your products and services will eventually become a commodity – particularly if you don’t have a USP.