10MINMC.Ep.26.V1.AUDIO
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Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] Research without reflection is just noise. And today we're gonna help you switch from noise. To clarity, so let's dive in.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass, your weekly Mic Drop for Business Breakthrough. I'm your host and lead MC Trey Sheneman, and it's my goal each week on 10 Minute Masterclass to teach you timeless business principles that should help solve today's business problems. Now, the way that we do that is through something we call the core four Drivers of growth, which in my experience, again, I've said this before, never really been asked to be the one to build the products.
Always just been asked to be the one to sell the products. So the core four drivers of growth for me have always been marketing, sales, operations, and [00:01:00] leadership. So each week we pick one of those areas of business and we dive deep into a topic in that subset that matters. And in today's episode, we're going back deep into the marketing bucket, which is my personal bread and butter.
I love marketing. It's kind of the space of business that I came up in. And then today we're picking up where we left off in our series. Through our proprietary framework that we run for brands in our, uh, consulting firm, Herald, that we call the Compass Method. Now, if you go back and look through, scroll through wherever you are listening or watching right now, if you're on YouTube, if you scroll through the episodes, you're gonna see an episode about competitive set analysis.
You're gonna see an episode about offer mapping and funnel mapping. You're gonna see an episode about messaging. You're gonna see an episode about your team. That one's called the magnet of the engine. And, uh, you're gonna see one from a few weeks ago about your. Avatar. So that's the C, the O, the M, the P, and the A.
Today we're gonna talk about the first S in the word compass, which is about doing a SWAT for syn synthesis, a SWAT for synthesis. So it's a little bit of a tongue [00:02:00] twister there. A swat, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. It is something people have learned in business school since the dawn of time whenever business school was That is, and the, the difference we're gonna teach you here is we're not doing a general swot.
We are gonna be talking about a SWOT analysis that you do using the components. Of the actual compass process itself. 'cause at the end of the day, most businesses gather information, then let it die in some spreadsheet graveyard somewhere. Um, and so what we, we don't want that to be you, we don't want you to have run through all of the parts of the compass process to just get to the end and have all of this data and know insights.
The SWAT process is about drawing out the insights out of the data so that you actually have something to go on. It's about. Synthesis. So the big idea for today's podcast is that the squad is where patterns help you find priorities. Um, so you're not just filling out boxes, you're not, um, you know, just [00:03:00] checking through this list.
You're actually trying to make sense of the chaos. And the gaps that have been found inside of these other parts of the framework so that you can actually make a plan. Um, it, it's ultimately pattern recognition at its finest. Uh, so strategy here, coming out of the SWAT isn't necessarily about doing more, but it's about finding out what, what matters most and doing that, so not more.
But most in doing that. So again, a quick recap, you know, competitive, the first part of the C and the word compass is the competitive set analysis. The main question that you're answering there is, where do we stand against the rest of our market? Uh, the next step is the os offer. An online experience map is, have we made our offer in our experience irresistible enough yet?
Um, the m is the messaging side of everything. I think about that as the wrapping paper on the present. That is your offer. Uh, does our wrapping paper speak to our, our, uh, does our wrapping paper speak to our ideal customer? [00:04:00] Then the p was personnel and platforms. Do we have the right people and tools to be able to communicate that offer in that message and, and to break out of our competitive set?
And do we deeply understand who it is that we serve? That's the a, the SWAT is where you pull it all together. And you work through a handful of deeper questions about that information in order to get you to where you want to go. So the first step is your strengths assessment. The way that I think about answering the question about where we are strongest as a brand, it's all around unfair advantage.
What are the things that we do that give us an unfair advantage? How do you figure that out? When you go back through your research, you're looking for the things your customers rave about. You're looking where you've been. Cons. Consistently winning. Maybe you have four or five offers and this one's growing and those four are flat.
The one that's growing is probably your unfair advantage. Um, and also the, the, the most important question in my opinion is which of the things that we do can our competition not easily [00:05:00] replicate? Okay. Once you've looked through those questions and analyzed the data that you pulled in the other five steps, that's when you're gonna know what your strengths are, your weaknesses.
Those are the cracks. Okay? Uh, this is where your, it's really feels like it's uphill in your business or it's creating drag. It's where, and, uh, the leads are getting hung up and you're getting consistent objections about one particular feature or product that you have. It's things that feel clunky or outdated.
Okay? So those are the things that are gonna. Pull you back your opportunities. This is where should your growth come from? It's what competitor gaps can be exploited. Maybe there's another, a second or a third avatar type that you had missed out on when you first started your company that you've now found because you went through the Compass process.
And that's a big opportunity is, hey, we've been selling to. Uh, busy moms of toddlers and now we're gonna sell to busy moms of tweens and teens too, you know, as an example. So like a avatar expansion could be an opportunity. Um, and then the last [00:06:00] area of the SWAT is of course the threats. That's the t and the big question you're trying to answer when you're looking at the T area of the SWAT is.
What could derail this? Like what, is there some marketplace shift or dynamic that's going on? Is one of the competitors like really kicking our butts? Uh, when it comes to our differentiation, um, are we v are we vulnerable to like people turnover? Like do we have what's called key, key man risk inside of our company?
Uh, may. Maybe there's one or two people that carry the load. You know, that's certainly something that we have to fight against. In Herald, my, you know, my consulting firm is having a lot of key man risk. So you just work through all of those questions against the information that you found on the C, the O, the M, the P and the A.
Okay? You're not doing a SWOT of the whole world, you're just doing a SWOT of those things. And, and, and the main thing you're really looking for is what's in that S and in that O bucket, because those are gonna be the things that you can capitalize on the fastest and grow. So when you've worked through all of this, I want you to circle and come up with your top three priorities, all right?
Because [00:07:00] we're gonna build a 90 day growth plan based off of those top three priorities. So one of the priorities could be, uh, killing one of your weaknesses. I know that sounds valid, but it's like, Hey, stop doing that. That thing that's holding you back, that could be a priority. Of course, another one of your priorities could be to do more of the thing that was working.
Okay? And another category of priorities could be to create. So it's keep. Kill or create. Um, and those are the ways that you decide what the sort of, uh, the linchpins of a good 90 day plan are gonna be based off of this. So let me just work you through like a quick mental model example here. Let's say I recently finished a compass, a compass for a SaaS client, which, which I did by chance.
And let's just say one of their strengths was they had insanely high customer retention. And let's say one of their weaknesses was they had low brand awareness and no one really knew they existed. Except for the ones that had already hired them. So let's say the opportunities that presented themselves were all of their competitors were going up in price, [00:08:00] leaving a gap for a high value, lower cost player who has a really high chance to keep customers paying them because it's a good product.
Um, and let's say Google is recently rolling out and announced an AI feature that might turn that industry on its head in three or four years. So what's their 90 day play in that situation? Well, they really need to go out with a heavy branded campaign with a bit of a. Pricing guarantee. Um, they need to maybe lean into some switch and save kind of messaging because they are the more affordable option in the stack.
And maybe they also need to invest in some AI in their own product so that a, uh, Google's AI tool that they've announced doesn't take 'em outta the market altogether. That's how you would analyze. The things that come out of a compass and build a very specific 90 day plan that fits exactly where the business is.
So listen, if you've listened to me at all, if you know and if you've tried to do some of the steps in the compass on your own, if you do all of the steps, but you don't actually get to this, the the two s, the swat, and then building the [00:09:00] strategic plan, which we'll talk about next time we get into marketing.
If you don't do that, you've kind of missed the boat. In other words, you just wasted your time, did a bunch of research, that's not really gonna matter. So take some time this week, run your SWOT analysis. If you need help running this play or you get stuck on anything, shoot me a DM on LinkedIn, I'll be happy to help.
Um, you can also join our newsletter, which is on 10 Minute Master Class's website, which is 10 MIN mc.com. Uh, whenever this episode drops, there will be a newsletter that comes out and I've got a pretty cool tool that I'm gonna give to our newsletter subscribers that's gonna help them with their SWOT analysis.
So hopefully, like always, you've gotten some value out of this episode, I think. All of us are drowning in data in most areas of our business. We want to be people that focus on insights. Data is a good place to start, but insights are the things that are gonna make a difference. So be a person that goes after the insights.
Use this system to get to 'em. Hope you got some value out of this, and until next time, we'll see you on the flip [00:10:00] side.
