The attached document will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses by asking you to rate yourself in several areas that are important to small business ownership. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is important because (1) it can tell you whether you're ready to start a small business, (2) in choosing a new business, it can help you match your skills to the right business, and (3) it can tell you whether you need to consider adding a partner who can bring skills to the business that you lack.

Successful small business owners know their own strengths and weaknesses. They build their businesses around their strengths and they compensate for their weaknesses. If you're to succeed, you'll have to be able to identify what you do well and what you don't do so well.

This section of the marketing plan analyzes the major external opportunities and threats to the company and the internal strengths and weaknesses of the company, along with a discussion of key issues facing the company.

This subsection of the situation analysis section provides information about key competitors:

If asked whether they had the "right stuff" to run a small business, most people who are interested in starting a new business would answer with a resounding "yes." But the purpose of this section is not to arrive at a yes or a no answer; it's really just to help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses so that you'll be in a better position to make certain decisions that you'll have to make before you start a new small business.

The information age has increased the number of opportunities for new businesses and products and has tremendously increased the speed at which new products are developed and introduced into the marketplace. As a result, the information age has also increased the need for businesses to be thoroughly familiar with their competitors.

A SWOT analysis is an analytical tool that can help you work through all the information you have about your business. "SWOT" stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This type of analysis represents an effort to examine the interaction between the particular characteristics of your business and the external marketplace in which you compete. Many of the conclusions that you draw as a result of the SWOT analysis will be incorporated into the market analysis and market strategy sections of the business plan.

You should be very aware of your first-level competitors— in many cases, you'll know them by name and may even belong to the same business associations they do. If you don't know much about their business operations now, make sure that you do soon! It's to your advantage to know as much as you reasonably can about the details of their businesses. Study their ads, brochures, and promotional materials. Drive past their location (and if it's a retail business, make some purchases there, incognito if necessary). Talk to their customers and examine their pricing. What are they doing well (that you can copy) and what are they doing poorly (that you can capitalize on)?

In setting prices for your product or service, one of the first calculations you must do is to estimate approximately how large your potential sales volume could be, based on a reasonable assessment of your potential market share in the product category, at different price levels. Knowing the size of the existing market is critical to determining if there are enough customers to establish and grow a business.

Our independent architect who specializes in designing residential homes, Life Designs, has a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) list that includes: