You've done the SWOT analysis and identified your business's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 80% of business owners consider the exercise complete having identified a "snapshot" view, and file the analysis away into a drawer never to be seen again. But the savvy 20% use the information they've gleaned as a starting point to plan for future growth.

Elaunchers are experts at helping our clients drill deep into their SWOT analysis and find the hidden gems that live within the report. Let's look at Strengths, Weaknesses, and Threats:

"Strengths" is probably the area most likely to be glossed over by the business owner. On several occasions, I've witnessed sales managers working with salespeople in an attempt to hit sales goals. With very few exceptions, the managers that worked with helping their best-performing salespeople hit their sales goals. Conversely, the sales managers that left the high-performers alone and instead focused on "getting the low-performers to improve" missed the sales goals. Very few business owners invest time and effort to optimize strengths and this is a missed opportunity.

"Weaknesses" are most business owners' Achilles heel. They invest time and money "fixing the weakness" without looking at that weakness as a potential strategic advantage. It's common for the business owner to look at an identified weakness and think "How can I fix this?" without looking at the opportunity within the weakness. Google is the acknowledged 800-pound gorilla in the search engine space so upstart DuckDuckGo capitalized on the public's perception that Google is "spying on them" and by focusing on DuckDuckGo's privacy features has carved itself a profitable niche that Google cannot match.

"Threats" are often perceived simply as new, potential competitors. A dentist may see a new dental office opening just a few blocks away and see this new entrant as a threat. However, by strategically analyzing the "threat", the dentist could realize that a significant portion of the new "threat" is using up a substantial amount of start-up cash for non-income-producing assets like chairs, counters, desks, and computers. A reasonable counter might be a new piece of advanced equipment that might be beyond the new dental office's ability to purchase.  This new asset could be market disrupting and could easily counter the new office's appeal.

The key is to look deeper inside the SWOT analysis than most business owners.

Always ask:

 * can we make this better

 * can we make it smaller

 * can we make it larger

 * can we combine it with something else to make it different or new

 * can we break it apart into different products or services

 * etc.

Often, SWOT analysis deep-dive questions like those listed above will reveal opportunities that provide a "market disruption" advantage that can not be easily replicated by competitors. 

For help with your SWOT analysis, USE THIS LINK to book a complimentary appointment with Parthiv Shah.