SWOT, a popular business planning technique, can also be a powerful tool for identifying ways in which you can add value to your work and life. And one of the best ways to do this type of exploration is with a mind map.

In this new Mind Mapping Insider report, I provide members with brief instructions on how to utilize this thinking technique and how to mind map the results. I also provide links to a mind map containing 80 questions that you can use to analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in your work and life – in 6 popular formats:

• MindManager
• MindGenius
• NovaMind
• XMind
• OpenMind
• iMindMap

Members-only resource

This link to this report is only visible to members of the Mind Mapping Insider membership program. It contains a wealth of resources that can help you to be more productive, creative and have a greater impact in your life.

New reports and resources are being added to the Insider area every week. If you’re serious about becoming a mind mapper, why not check out the Mind Mapping Insider program today?

Providing your customers with an outstanding experience includes every touch point you have with them before, during and after the sale. Increasingly, it means giving them compelling stories they can tell in their social channels and elsewhere.

Here are five excellent techniques you can use to beat your competition, in part by envisioning a better customer experience. Naturally, I recommend capturing the ideas you generate from these exercises in mind maps. They will help you to stay organized, and may also reveal additional patterns and opportunities that you weren’t previously aware of.

If you’re a member of the Mind Mapping Insiders membership group, you can download map templates for each exercise, in MindManager, MindGenius, NovaMind, iMindMap and XMind files formats. If you’re not a member, these links won’t be visible to you – perhaps now is the time to join!

1. Do a SWOT analysis for your company and each of your competitors

SWOT maps help you to visualize your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once you’ve identified these strong and weak areas, your goal is to brainstorm ways to to maximize and leverage your strengths, while at the same time minimizing your weaknessess. In addition to creating one for your organization, I recommend you also create them for each of your major competitors. Look for weak spots or under-served areas of opportunity where you can leverage an advantage.

2. Do a product and service analysis

Map out your products and all of the services you provide to your customers. Spend some time brainstorming about other products or services you could sell to them – either those that you produce or that you could gain access to via joint ventures. The goal is to provide a more complete solution to your customers’ needs. At the same time, use this opportunity to identify any products or services that aren’t providing enough customer value. Either strengthen them or eliminate them. You don’t need them being a drain on your resources.

3. Brainstorm around customer needs

Spend time brainstorming what you think your customers’ biggest needs are. Record them in a mind map. Then talk to several key customers and ask them these key questions. Record their answers in your map. Make them a different color than your own perceptions of their needs. That will help you to see just how close to or off the mark you were. Finally, create a new map to capture ideas for new or improved products or services to meet the key needs you have identified.

4. Who else has solved this customer problem?

Do some research on how other industries have solved the challenges your customers face. Capture any that are even remotely relevant or interesting in a mind map. Then think about ways in which you could adapt their approaches to solve your customers’ problems in an elegant way or otherwise prove greater value to them.

5. What’s your unique selling proposition?

Brainstorm your unique selling proposition, or USP – that singular combination of capabilities and strengths that makes your organization better than anyone else at meeting your customers’ needs. How can you do more, serve better and provide a better outcome for your customers? What makes you a better investment than any other potential supplier? Build your vision for your USP in a mind map.

Conclusion

Remember, beating your conpetitors is all about meeting the needs of your key customers better than anyone else – both those they have articulated as well as any unspoken ones that you can infer from what they have told you.

Run your own game – don’t imitate, because commoditization tends to lead to razor-thin or non-existent profit margins. Instead, innovate – not just in terms of products, but also services, business models, distribution, marketing and your supply chain. Good luck!

Here are 10 ways in which you can utilize mind mapping software to rethink your business, leap ahead of your competitors and delight your customers:

1. Map out ideas to improve or extend your existing products and services.
2. Map your customer segments, including the development of personas to zero in on how their needs have changed in light of the current recession; identify the most promising ones for targeted sales campaigns and look for those that may be under-served by your competitors.
3. Map your current market segments, and identify adjacent ones with similar needs into which you can expand your marketing and sales.
4. Do a competitive analysis, and use your mind map to identify gaps you can fill in areas that matter to your most attractive prospective customers.
5. Use it to perform a SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) analysis, with a particular emphasis on potential disruptive threats. Which emerging firms are you not taking seriously today? What if they suddenly got much better? Mind maps are great for outlining future scenarios like this one.
6. Look for opportunities to reduce waste and streamline business processes. The savings you uncover will go right to your bottom line!
7. Analyze and improve your business model. How are companies in other industries or markets creating sustainable value? What lessons can you adapt or learn from what they have accomplished?
8. Conduct research into emerging industry trends and “weak signals,” and use a mind map to capture, organize and analyze your findings for new insights and opportunities.
9. Brainstorm potential partnering opportunities – the more unusual, the better. Don’t forget your local universities, who can help you with market research and business planning!
10. Ask thought-provoking questions that to generate new insights into your business, its challenges and opportunities. Record both the questions and your answers in a mind map.

How are you utilizing mind mapping software to help re-think your business? Please share your stories in the comments area below!

The SWOT analysis above was created by Michael Deutch at Mindjet, and it is located on BiggerPlate.com, an online community for sharing MindManager maps. There is much we can learn by taking a look at how Michael has structured his map (Please click on the image to view a larger version of  it):

1. Each of the four areas of inquiry – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – are placed on a main branch.

2. Next, items that describe your organization’s current situation for that element are listed in sub-topics. If you have more details that you want to record, those can be captured in notes, as Michael has done under “threats-increased competition/new innovations.”

3. Michael uses “guide post” questions as part of his SWOT template map to help him to flesh out each part of the map as completely as possible. Note how he has formatted each of these “guide post” sub-topics in a hexagonal shape and a different background color, to make them stand out.

4. Michael also makes use of call-out topics to draw attention and emphasis to specific topics, and relationship lines to connect related topics.

5. Supporting data – in this case, two spreadsheet ranges – are incorporated into the map to provide valuable supporting data. Note also how several other topics have been converted into tasks, and contain icons depicting percentage of completion.

In short, this map communicates a wealth of information with a high degree of clarity – in a much more usable form than a 15-20 page, single-spaced document!

If you are a MindManager user and download this file from BiggerPlate.com as a MindManager .mmap file, you can easily trim Michael’s map down to the four main topics and guide post questions, and use them as a template for your own SWOT analysis.