Updated 20 September 2026: first published on Elite Agent in May 2025. The article has been refreshed as an AI basics guide to building a practical SWOT analysis from your agency’s own evidence.
Where should you put your effort next: improving the follow-up process, building on a service clients already value, or investigating a new opportunity?
A SWOT analysis gives you four places to organise what you know. AI can help sort those notes and ask useful questions, but you still need to supply the evidence.
For this AI basics for real estate exercise, start with your own agency and one business question. It is easier to check an analysis of work you know than a confident-looking report about a competitor’s inner workings.
What does SWOT mean?
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses concern the business itself; opportunities and threats concern the environment around it. Business Queensland’s SWOT guide explains that distinction and the need to review and act on the findings.
Here is how I would frame the four questions for an agency:
- Strengths: What do we do well, and what evidence supports that?
- Weaknesses: Where does our own process fall short?
- Opportunities: What outside change might give us a useful opening?
- Threats: What outside change could make our work harder?
A flattering adjective is not much use on its own. “Clients value our communication” becomes more useful when you can point to dated feedback and explain which part of the service people appreciated.
What should I give the AI?
Choose a question such as “What should we improve in our seller communication?” Gather a short set of relevant notes: your current process, de-identified feedback, agreed measures and any recent external information you want considered.
Label each item with its source and date. Keep observations separate from ideas you have not tested. A few checked examples are a better starting point than a large pile of unverified material.
Use an agency-approved AI chat tool. Remove private client information and leave out confidential business details that the tool does not need. Do not assume it knows your performance, has read your website or can access a current report simply because you mention it.
Try this first SWOT prompt
Start a new chat, paste the prompt and replace the brackets. A prompt is simply the instruction you give the AI.
Help me draft a short SWOT analysis for my real estate agency.
Business question: [WHAT I WANT TO UNDERSTAND]
Relevant agency process and goals: [NOTES]
Checked observations and feedback, with dates: [EVIDENCE]
Relevant external information, with source and date: [MATERIAL]
Constraints on any changes: [TIME, PEOPLE, BUDGET OR OTHER LIMITS]
Organise the supplied information into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Keep internal factors separate from external factors.
For each point, show its supporting evidence and label it as a supplied fact, an inference to check, or an unanswered question. Keep the list short. Leave a category incomplete if the evidence is missing.
Do not invent market share, financial figures, competitor problems or customer opinions. Ask me up to three questions that would most improve the analysis. Finish with two possible next steps for discussion, explaining what we would need to confirm before choosing either.How do I check the result?
Follow each claim back to its source. Has the AI treated one person’s comment as everyone’s view? Has it placed an internal process issue under external threats? Has a possibility quietly become a fact?
Illustrative example: if reviewed records show that your team sometimes misses an agreed update, the weakness is a gap in the communication process. “Competitors communicate better” would require separate evidence. The first finding already gives you something useful to investigate.
If you later research a competitor, limit factual claims to material you can verify. Their public website does not establish staff morale, finances or internal problems.
Turn one finding into a small action
Discuss the analysis with the people who do the work. Choose one finding, decide what to investigate or change, and give it an owner and review date. For the communication example, that might mean checking where responsibility for an update becomes unclear.
Use the SWOT as a starting point for that conversation. The value comes from what you learn and do next, not from filling every box.
For a broader exercise, my free SWOT tutorial includes simple and detailed prompts. If you need ideas for improving a process you have identified, try SCAMPER brainstorming with AI.
The original version first appeared in Samantha McLean’s AI Powered Agents newsletter. The refreshed tutorial is available on AI Powered Real Estate by Samantha McLean, now on Substack.