Instructions
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Purpose
The Opportunity Matrix™ will help you to analyse and categorise your opportunities, so that you can focus on those that have the best combination of appealing to you and earning you money. It is not intended to be a substitute for proper due diligence and a robust business plan - but it can help you decide which projects are worth doing the research for a proper plan.
Attraction
Step 1
The first task is to list all your opportunities. Click on "Manage Opportunities", then on "Add Opportunity" at the bottom, and enter a brief name for each opportunity. Remember to click "Save" before navigating away from the page. You can return to "Manage Opportunities" to add new opportunities at any time.
Step 2
Spend some time working out what it is that makes a project attractive to you - it might be regular revenue, challenge, novelty, working with people, not working with people, etc etc. One criterion we recommend is congruence with other things that you are doing. At this stage, you should NOT include the size of the potential revenue, nor things like profit margin or access to the market - those belong on the "Viability" sheet.
Click on "Manage Attraction Criteria", and then on "Add Criterion". You can enter up to 12 criteria. You will aslo need to enter a weighting (out of 10) for each criterion.Step 3
Check which of your criteria are most important to you, and adjust the weighting on a scale of 1-10 under each criterion on the "Attraction" page. Although you will have entered the weightings as you created the criteria, they will usually need to be fine-tuned once they are all in. (TIP: be very clear which criteria are essential, and which are "nice-to-haves"; essentials will be weighted 7 or over, nice-to-haves will be weighted below 5. Remember, the more criteria you have, the less effect each has on the overall rating, so with a large number of criteria, the differences in the scores should be greater)
Step 4
Score each opportunity (0-10) for each criterion, entering the scores in the body of the "Attraction" spreadsheet. The scores should be relative to your "perfect" opportunity, not to each other. If your scores are too similar, you will be prompted to review them - though it is possible that all of your projects are close to each other in attractiveness to you; after all, you thought of them!
Viability
Step 5
On the "Viability" page, enter in the "Short-Term £k" column your best estimate of what you could earn from each project for the next 12 months. For now, ignore the fact that you won't have time to follow up on all the opportunities, and enter the figure you could achieve if you had as much time as you need for each of them.
Step 6
Under the "Potential £k" column, enter the maximum yearly amount you could earn from each project at some point in the future. Again, assume you are able to give all of your time to each project.
Step 7
Add criteria to the "Viability" page for what will make a project feasible. This will include things like size of market, access to market, having the right knowledge and skills, how much work will be needed before the product or service can be launched, the price (especially relative to the time it takes), profit margins, number of competitors, etc etc. Click on "Manage Viability Criteria" and "Add New" to add the criteria (as with Attraction, you will also be asked for a weighting as you enter them).
Step 8
Check the weight you have given each each criterion on a scale of 1-10 according to how important it is - making sure that the real "show-stoppers" are much higher (8+) than the more minor issues (<5).
Step 9
Score each opportunity for each criterion, entering the scores in the body of the "Viability" page. The scores should be relative to your "perfect" opportunity, not to each other. Once again, if your scores are too similar, you will be prompted to review them - though it is just possible that all of your projects are close to each other in viability.
Matrix
The Opportunity Matrix™ plots your opportunities according to their attractiveness to you and their viability for you to implement.
The four quadrants are defined as:
Exciting:
(highly attractive, highly viable)these represent the best return on your efforts, in terms of taking your business where you want it to go with the least
effort, and probably also the greatest chance of success.
These are the opportunities for which you now need to carry out due diligence and create a robust business plan.
Needs Work:
(highly attractive, not very viable)these are the opportunities that appeal to you, but will need significant work to make them happen, so they could be worth pursuing but probably only in time that is genuinely spare.
Bread and Butter:
(low attraction, highly viable)opportunities that do not really appeal to you, but which can be implemented easily. As such, they could be used to provide support and cash-flow for the more exciting projects at the top of the matrix. However, care should be taken to understand the factors that make them unattractive.
Back Burner:
(low attraction, not very viable)like "Needs Work", these will take time and effort to get them going, but as they are not very appealing to you, that time is probably best spent on the other quadrants. Should time permit, however, they may be worth resurrecting to see how they can be made either more attractive or more easily implemented.
Options:
You can use the Options button, to switch between short-term or potential turnover, and to zoom in on sections of the chart.
Print:To print out the Opportunity Matrix™ use your browser's Print menu
Breakdowns
The two breakdown pages show a stacked bar chart of how the attractiveness and viability scores are made up. They are useful for sense-checking your results, and for gaining an understanding of areas to concentrate on to move "Bread and Butter" and "Needs Work" opportunities into the "Exciting" quadrant.