Strategic choices: from analysis to action
Choose what you will actually do, backed by the outcome of your SWOT and matrix.
Step 7 of 18: Online business plan
Video: how to record your strategic choices in the Business Planner.
After the SWOT and the confrontation matrix, there is a lot on the table. Plenty of ideas, but money, time and people are limited. In this step, you choose what you will really do in the coming period, and just as important, what you won't. A financier wants to see that you dare to make choices, and that those choices follow logically from your analysis.
What the planner prepares for you
- 01
Priority based on net impact
At the top are your biggest strength, weakness, opportunity and threat: the points with the highest or lowest score in your matrix. Add as choice brings them straight into your plan.
- 02
Your matrix says
Here you find the strongest combinations from the matrix, each with a suggested strategy. Exploit is offensive: using a strength to seize an opportunity. Defend is defensive: using a strength against a threat.
- 03
The table of choices
Use as starting point puts a suggestion into the table. For each choice, you write one line, with the explanation or reasoning next to it. Add Rows lets you record choices of your own.
What makes a choice strong
- Specific: a reader understands right away what you are going to do.
- Backed up: the reasoning refers to a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat from your analysis.
- Feasible: it fits the people and resources you have or are going to attract.
- Visible in the rest of the plan: the choice comes back in your marketing, organization and figures.
The salon's choices
The salon in our demo makes three. First, higher revenue per stylist instead of more chairs: the schedule now follows demand, and the team actively steers toward color and care treatments. Second, renting out the empty chairs on Tuesday and Wednesday to a freelance stylist, so the square meters the salon already pays for earn something back. Third, a haircut subscription for regular clients, because the loyal client base is the biggest strength.
Those choices come back later. The haircut subscription appears under promotion as a campaign for regular clients, and in the financial plan as a revenue stream of its own. That way, the strategy isn't a stand-alone paragraph, but the thread running through the whole plan.