Pivoting Your Business

Pivot is one of the words of 2020

It has been a strange year in which businesses have had to adapt at speed. But you can give your business a makeover at any time by starting with a SWOT analysis. If you do this on a regular basis then you can continuously improve your business and avoid underperforming, or even failing, due to complacency.

Strengths

What does your business do well? Consider your products or services as well as how you use them to meet customers’ needs. Where do you excel? What is the primary reason that customers come to you rather than your competitors?

Weaknesses

Where do you need to make improvements? Can you raise your standards by training your team better? What about introducing technology to increase efficiency?

Opportunities

Is there anything happening that you can take advantage of now? Are your customers having a particular problem for which you have the solution? What can you do to make the most of the situation?

Threats

Is there anything happening at the moment that is threatening your business? Is it affecting your competitors too or are they in a position to serve your customers better and to take market share away from you? You only have to stay one step ahead of the opposition.

Actions

But it isn’t enough to just analyse your business; you need to act too.

• Reinforce your strengths
• Shore up your weaknesses
• Act on the opportunities that you have identified
• Counteract any threats

Build your action list and then work through it starting with the high impact, low cost and quick changes first. Then break bigger high impact projects into smaller steps and work through them gradually as time and money allow. Implement a few quick wins so that you will see some return for your hard work.

If you need any help adapting and improving your business then do get in touch.