# SWOT Analysis Template

**Businessman Talk · businessmantalk.com/strategy/swot-analysis/template/ · v1.0 (August 2026)**

Paste this into Google Docs, Word, Notion, or a spreadsheet. Fill it in one sitting. Delete the prompts once a cell has a line in it.

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## 1. The objective line (fill this first)

**The decision this grid serves:** ____________________________________________

*One sentence. "Should we take on a third engineer?" — not "understand our position". A grid without an objective produces lines nobody can act on.*

**Date of this grid:** ____ / ____ / ________   **Filled in by:** ________________   **Review date:** ____ / ____ / ________

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## 2. The grid

| | **Helpful** to the objective | **Harmful** to the objective |
|---|---|---|
| **Internal** (things you control) | **STRENGTHS**<br><br>1. ____________________<br>2. ____________________<br>3. ____________________<br><br>*Prompts:*<br>• What do customers pay us for that they could not get as easily elsewhere?<br>• Which person, asset, or contract would hurt most if it left?<br>• What can we do cheaper, faster, or more reliably than the two nearest rivals? | **WEAKNESSES**<br><br>1. ____________________<br>2. ____________________<br>3. ____________________<br><br>*Prompts:*<br>• What do we lose work on, and what reason does the customer give?<br>• Which one customer, supplier, or person is more than a quarter of the business?<br>• What have we been meaning to fix for more than a year? |
| **External** (things you do not control) | **OPPORTUNITIES**<br><br>1. ____________________<br>2. ____________________<br>3. ____________________<br><br>*Prompts:*<br>• Which customers have asked for something we do not yet sell?<br>• What has a competitor stopped doing, or a regulation started requiring?<br>• Which cost or technology has fallen enough this year to change the sums? | **THREATS**<br><br>1. ____________________<br>2. ____________________<br>3. ____________________<br><br>*Prompts:*<br>• Which cost, rule, or rate is rising on a date you already know?<br>• Who could take our best customer, and what would it cost them to try?<br>• What single external event would make this objective impossible? |

*Write each line so that a colleague could disagree with it. "Good service" is not a line. "Retained the same three largest accounts for four years; last lost account was 2023" is.*

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## 3. The priority column (score before you decide)

Copy each line from the grid into the table. Score **Impact** on the objective (1 = small, 2 = material, 3 = decisive) and **Certainty** that it is true and stays true for the life of the decision (1 = a guess, 2 = likely, 3 = on the record). Multiply.

| # | Line (copied from the grid) | Quadrant | Impact (1–3) | Certainty (1–3) | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | S / W / O / T | | | |
| 2 | | | | | |
| 3 | | | | | |
| 4 | | | | | |
| 5 | | | | | |
| 6 | | | | | |
| 7 | | | | | |
| 8 | | | | | |
| 9 | | | | | |
| 10 | | | | | |
| 11 | | | | | |
| 12 | | | | | |

**Anything scoring 6 or more decides the objective. Anything scoring 2 or less comes off the grid.**

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## 4. TOWS strip (one action per pair)

| Pair | The question | Action (one line, with an owner and a month) |
|---|---|---|
| S + O | Which strength lets us take which opportunity? | |
| W + O | Which weakness must we fix to take an opportunity? | |
| S + T | Which strength blunts which threat? | |
| W + T | Which weakness and threat together could end the business, and what do we stop doing? | |

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## 5. Decision

**On the objective line above, we decided:** ____________________________________________

**Because (the two highest-scoring lines):** 1. ______________________  2. ______________________

**We will look at this grid again on:** ____ / ____ / ________

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*Method, worked examples, and the TOWS explanation: businessmantalk.com/strategy/swot-analysis/ · Free to copy and adapt for your own business; please keep the source line if you share it.*