Like all small businesses, your company can do well and not do good in other places. For instance, you can excel at distribution but constantly grapple with responding to consumer complaints in real-time. And you can have a powerful marketing message, but no social media presence. Whatever the situation is, every business needs to thoroughly grasp the full spectrum of its strengths as well as weaknesses or risk falling victim to unrealized opportunities or being outsmarted by the competition.
How should you identify these strengths and weaknesses?
Start with a SWOT analysis.
SWOT analysis studies internal/external factors that are helpful and harmful to your business and the way it is run. This approach concentrates on identifying factors in the following four categories:
- Strengths – The strong parts of your business model and the most efficient selling points. The core competencies of your team and investments.
- Weaknesses – The weak parts of your business in the sales funnel. What is lacking in your team as well as missing from investments?
- Opportunities – Potential leads, investors, and new target markets.
- Threats – Potential competitors, negative market developments, and reasons why investors will cut funding.
Consult with others.
Obviously, you are the expert on business. But potentially valuable info is possible if you take time to consult with different stakeholders, involving employees, consumers, and suppliers.
Through different methods, seek their input into the strengths or weaknesses of the company. There is a strong likelihood you will garner insights into everything from pricing plan to consumer service that you cannot otherwise have considered. All of that data may be factored into a comprehensive look at what your company does perfect, and where its efforts can be improved.
Closely monitor customer complaints.
Evaluating your strengths of the company is possibly easier than taking a look at its flaws. One helpful source of info is consumer complaints. If you aren’t monitoring the frequency and substance of these complaints, this’s a good time to start. The info you receive will help you recognize weaknesses because you’ll see patterns of complaints, notes Price Manager. This may be especially helpful when a complaint is consistently being made about a certain policy, product, and service.
Spot the Opportunities
Completing a SWOT analysis will allow you to pinpoint core activities and recognize what you do well, and why. It’ll point you towards where your great opportunities lie and highlight places where changes require to be made to make the most of your business.
Analyze
It’s essential to conduct an analysis to determine the strengths as well as weaknesses of your business. In doing this, you will need to be honest. Again, it is hard to admit that we have weaknesses, but for making improvements, one must recognize that. Sometimes these changes may have to be made to costs after you review costs in comparison to the marketplace via a pricing analysis report. In other cases, they can come from a lack of knowledge of your overall audience. Changes can’t occur without taking stock of everything and being honest with yourself.
Make a list
Pull out a sheet of paper and create a list of everywhere that you feel the business shows strengths as well as weaknesses. If you’re being honest, there’s a better chance you can recognize various of those areas yourself. Maybe you had not thought about it before, but once you do it will not be hard to pinpoint a few areas of concern and areas where your business excels.
Ask others
If you have difficulty recognizing what the weaknesses, as well as strengths of your business, are, consider bringing others in on the conversation. Ask employees, family, friends, and likely even consumers what they think. If you’re going to ask consumers you may need to make a survey for them to fill out, where they can offer reviews on service and products, along with places they feel your company can make improvements. One instance will be to go and get help via a competitive cost analysis firm to see what’s going on with your price schedule of the company and how relative it’s to market values. The info you receive from something like this may be invaluable in helping you grow and make positive changes.
Notice complaints
Does your company track the consumer complaints that it receives? If not, begin making a procedure and policy do so. This’s a perfect way to learn more about the weaknesses of your company are. The info you receive will aid you to recognize weaknesses because you’ll see patterns of complaints. Utilize this info to make changes, particularly when a complaint is consistently being made about a certain policy, product, and service.
Make improvements
As you gather all this info, you’ll find out what your weaknesses and strengths are. The info about your weaknesses is maybe the most significant and needs to be addressed. Do not overwhelm yourself by taking on all of them at once. Instead, concentrate on 2 or 3 weaknesses at one time. That way you can create a goal and plan to address, before moving on to others. If improvements may be made instantly, great. But if they’re ones that’ll take long-term solutions do not fret. Begin implementing changes and work toward strengthening the areas of weakness, and in time things will improve.
Check for a Broad Marketing Approach
Marketing consists of product development, pricing plans, places of sale, and the promotion of a product and service. If a business plan concentrates on the 4th P of the 4 Ps the marketing mixes, it’ll be weak. The plan must not confine marketing to social media campaigns, public relations, advertising, and other promotions. A better business plan should have separate sections on product development, pricing plans, promotions, and distribution channels.
Anticipate Marketplace Disruption
Additionally, to analyzing your marketplace as it stands nowadays, your business plan needs to consider what might occur in the future. You must address new technologies, environmental factors, economic situations, customer buying trends, and other factors that can change. For instance, a business plan for a company that makes difficult hats for coal miners should address the fact that more and more coal mining is done using machines, not miners, and that environmental laws are making it harder for utilities and factories to burn coal.
Our team at YMA Wealth Management Group can assist you in optimizing your business to run more efficiently and achieve your business goals. We have YMA Financial in house and ready to prepare you for the upcoming roadblocks in 2021.
Contact us now: 1-800-381-9206
