A SWOT analysis for a small business, worked through for a made-up tractor-implement dealer

A SWOT lists your strengths and weaknesses (inside the business) and opportunities and threats (outside it). It only earns its place if every line leads to a decision. A SWOT often turns into a page of true but useless sentences such as "good customer service" or "rising costs". Below, an invented dealer works through the grid, loses two of his seven first lines and ends with five things he will do on Monday. The dealer is made up. The method is yours to use.

What is the grid and what is each box for?

The rule in the right-hand column is the whole technique. A line that fails it goes in the bin.

What does the first draft look like?

Imagine a dealer in Karnal, an invented business, who sells rotavators, seed drills and sprayers to farmers and small contractors. His first list read: strengths, "good relationship with farmers", "wide range"; weaknesses, "limited funds", "staff shortage"; opportunities, "growth in mechanised farming"; threats, "competition", "price pressure".

Every line is plausible. None of them tells him what to do on Monday. The cure is the right-hand column above.

How do the lines get sharper?

He took each line and asked "so what do I do?".

• "Good relationship with farmers" became: his mechanic visits farms after sale and is known by name in the villages he serves. A competitor cannot copy that quickly. Decision: advertise the visit, and put the mechanic's first name on the quote.
• "Wide range" failed. Nobody thanked him for it, and he stocked slow-moving items that tied up money. It went in the bin.
• "Limited funds" became the concrete weakness: he stocks spare blades and tines for only two machines, so a farmer with a third make waits for parts. One such farmer waited weeks for a ₹2,400 blade (an invented figure) and bought his next sprayer elsewhere. Decision: ask the three most frequent third-make owners what they would pay a deposit for.
• "Staff shortage" became: only the owner quotes, so quotes stop when he is at a mela. Decision: write a quote layout and train one more person.
• "Growth in mechanised farming" failed. He could not name a first step. A sharper line took its place: a neighbouring cooperative society buys equipment for hire to members. Decision: visit the secretary and ask how purchases are decided. Rules and subsidies differ by state and change, so he would check with the agriculture office and the cooperative itself, not assume.
• "Competition" and "price pressure" became one line: a larger dealer in the next town sells at a lower rate but does not service, and one farmer who chose him came back angry when a machine broke down. Decision: put the service promise in writing on every quote.

Two of the seven lines went in the bin ("wide range" and "growth in mechanised farming", the second replaced by a sharper line), and "price pressure" folded into the competition line. What remained could each be paired with a first move.

What is the finished grid?

Five lines, five decisions, one page. Each line rests on something he had seen. A farmer waiting for a blade. A quote that stopped while he was away at a mela. A customer who chose the larger dealer and came back angry. A line he could not tie to an incident went in the bin, however sensible it sounded.

When is a SWOT not the right tool?

A SWOT is thin for a decision about money, such as whether to take a loan or open a second showroom. For that you need numbers. The grid has none. It is also poor at choosing between options. It lists; it does not rank. And if you are running it only to fill a section in a loan application, you will produce the generic version, which a reader at a bank can see through.

It works best for a small firm that is stuck between several things to try, and needs one hour to decide which comes first.

How do you run one in an hour?

1. Spend fifteen minutes alone writing every line you think of, with no editing.
2. Meet with your best salesperson and one after-sales person. Give each line the right-hand test.
3. Drop whatever fails it. Sharpen what survives by naming the example you saw.
4. Pair each remaining line with one decision and one owner.
5. Choose the one decision to start with, and write the date next to it.

If the decisions turn out to be about how you present yourself, the next piece of work is positioning and not more analysis. If they are about stages and records, return to the sales process pages.

From grid to Monday

Take the five decisions and start with the one that costs nothing, such as printing the mechanic's first name on the quote. It shows the team that the exercise leads somewhere. Then choose one that needs a conversation, like the visit to the cooperative's secretary, and give it a date and an owner.

Keep the page, and open it again when something big changes, such as a new rival or a lost line of credit. Redo it only when something changes, because a grid redone on a calendar fills up with generic lines again. If you would like help turning the sharper lines into messaging, market positioning and messaging is the work, and you can tell us what you need.