The Simplest Guide on SWOT Analysis (+4 Templates)

SWOT Analysis is the first step towards a new relationship with your client. It enables you to take a detailed look at their business and understand its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats it may face along the way.

The SWOT analysis’ can range from an afternoon brainstorming exercise to in-depth evaluation that could shape or redefine your entire business strategy. Whether you use SWOT analysis to define your target market or direct your product development, make sure you dedicate due time and research to this task.

In this article, we will provide you with swot analysis templates, questions that will enable you to get the answers you need, and tips to avoid common pitfalls of SWOT analysis.

Who should conduct the SWOT analysis?

Before we move on the practical part, let’s talk about the team behind SWOT analysis. It should not be a one-person-job.

This type of analysis is often conducted in the closed circles of the business’ top leadership. However, this is one of the greatest mistakes you could make. SWOT analysis should be teamwork and involve employees from different sectors of the organization. Each employee can contribute with their unique perspective – which is often not visible from top positions.

You can go two ways. You can organize a big meeting, lasting no more than two hours. Ask your colleagues and employees to prepare in advance. You can add their insights to a large board, or simply have each chosen employee present their report in five minutes. In the end, you will blend all of this into one large analysis.

If you want to take your time, you could do the following:

Organize a meeting. Talk to the employees, introduce them to the concept of SWOT analysis and explain what kind of feedback you need from them.

Conduct a survey. This survey could function as some sort of evaluation report, so make sure you give employees and colleagues enough time to fill out these questionnaires with actionable information, rather than do it as an annoying tick box practice.

How to Do a SWOT Analysis

To help you do a SWOT analysis, we created are several templates you can use, along with the relevant questions. The answers will be vital to defining, maintaining or developing your business strategy, so make sure that:

All the answers are supported by verifiable data or solid arguments.
If needed, the answers are supported by a separate analysis, such as market opportunity analysis or PEST analysis.
Answers are short, actionable and lead to coherent conclusions.

Now let’s move to the key points.

Strengths

What are your business’ advantages?
What are the things that set your company apart?
What are the things you are good at?
Are there any unique or low-cost resources/suppliers only your business has access to?
What are customers’ positive opinions about your business?
What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
What are the things that contribute to your sales?

Tip:

Of course, you don’t have to answer all of these questions if you feel that some are redundant to your evaluation. Similarly, you can add some – it depends on the goal of your analysis and the nature of a business you are SWOT analyzing.

Try to approach your strengths both from the employee and top-leadership perspective. As you may notice, I also included the questions that force you to look at yourself not only from the internal perspective but also in relation to your industry, market, competitors and potential customers.

Weaknesses

What are the things you should improve?
What are the things you should avoid?
Is there any negative feedback about your business?
What are the things that cause sales drops?

Tip:

While weaknesses are not the most comfortable topic to talk about, try to talk about them as frankly as possible. It is easier to accept that 8 out of 10 people think your customer service is awful and address this criticism than to deal with the damage once customers switch to another business.

Opportunities

What are the global trends in politics, society, technology? How could these trends affect your business in a positive way?
What are the trends in your industry? How could you use them to your advantage?
Can you use changes in other or adjacent industries to your advantage?
Are there any unexplored niches in your target market?

Tip:

Pay special attention to this part of the SWOT analysis because this could be a source of the most valuable information. Luckily for you, we have a very detailed, step-by-step guide with examples on how to conduct market opportunity analysis. Click here and bookmark the article, it will come in handy.

Threats

What are the obstacles to your business growth?
What are some of your competitors’ successful practices that could affect your business in a negative way?
Are there any global, regional or local changes in policies, technology or lifestyle that could threaten your business?
Have you had any financial problems?
What is the level of these threats?

Tip:

The opportunities and threats part of the SWOT analysis requires you to be up to date with global, regional and local events. Policies that at one point may seem like they have nothing to do with you could easily disrupt your supply chain or significantly affect your expenses or sales.

You can use PEST analysis if you want to pay extra attention to the political and technological environment of your business. And finally, I added the question of the level of threats – it is important not to overestimate or underestimate the effects certain changes and events have on your business.

SWOT analysis templates

You can copy and paste our list of questions into a sheet, or you can use one of these SWOT analysis templates we created for you.

1. SWOT analysis template 1

2. SWOT analysis template 2

3. SWOT analysis template 3

4. SWOT analysis template 4

You can print and use these templates to add answers, brainstorming points, and tips – putting them in little brackets will allow you to include all the details, making it easier to spot the patterns and things that stand out.

Conclusion

If you want to conduct more detailed preparations for your SWOT analysis, we provided you with several additional reports you could create along the way.

If you want to pay special attention to the way your existing and potential customers see your business, click here and learn how different types of surveys can provide you with different data sets that could boost your SWOT analysis accuracy.

If you need a good tool to conduct a SWOT analysis survey among your employees and colleagues, try LeadQuizzes. With no strings attached, you can use it for free to create surveys and keep all the answers in one worksheet. From that sheet, you can easily export information into the templates we provided – and make sure your business or your client’s business stays on top of the game.