Use AI as your business strategy consultant (for free)

A good strategy consultant asks uncomfortable questions, challenges your assumptions, brings knowledge from outside your industry, and helps you see your business more clearly than you can when you're inside it. They cost between £1,000 and £5,000 per day.

Claude and ChatGPT do a reasonable impression of this, for free, at 11pm on a Sunday when you're trying to work through a decision. They are not a replacement for deep expertise in complex situations, but for the strategic thinking that most small business owners never make time for, they are genuinely useful.

Here is how to use AI for business strategy.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) is one of the most useful strategic tools in business. Most people do it badly, listing obvious strengths they're proud of and vague threats that could apply to anyone.

AI pushes you to be more specific and honest.

Prompt to copy:

"Help me do a rigorous SWOT analysis for my business. My business: [type of business], based in [UK region], [number] years trading, approximately [revenue range] turnover, [number] employees. Our main customers are [description]. Our main competitors are [names or types]. We primarily compete on [price / quality / speed / relationships / specialism]. Ask me five probing questions about each quadrant that will help me identify things I might be overlooking or being dishonest about. Then, once I have answered, help me write up a full SWOT analysis."

The questioning approach is more valuable than asking Claude to generate the SWOT directly from a brief description. Your answers to the probing questions produce a much more accurate and useful output.

Competitor research with Perplexity

Understanding what your competitors are doing is foundational strategy that most small businesses skip because it takes time. Perplexity.ai makes it fast.

Perplexity is a search-powered AI that researches and synthesises information from the web in real time, unlike ChatGPT which has a knowledge cutoff.

Prompt for Perplexity:

"Research [competitor name or type, e.g. 'UK independent financial advisers' or 'plumbing companies in Sheffield'] for me. I need to understand: what services they typically offer and how they are positioned, how they describe their value proposition, how they price their services (if publicly available), what customers say about them in reviews, any recent news or changes in the market. Summarise what a new competitor entering this market should know."

Use this to benchmark yourself honestly: where are you stronger, where are you weaker, what are you doing that nobody else is doing?

Market sizing and opportunity assessment

When you're considering a new service, a new market, or a new direction, the first question is whether there is enough demand to make it worth pursuing. AI helps you think through this quickly.

Prompt to copy:

"Help me estimate the size and potential of the following market opportunity: [describe what you're considering, e.g. 'offering HR consultancy services to small businesses in the West Midlands with 5-20 employees']. Consider: the likely number of potential customers, how often they might buy, what they might pay, who the existing competitors are, and what barriers to entry exist. Provide an approximate market sizing calculation and your assessment of whether this seems like a viable opportunity for a small business to enter. UK market context. Be honest if the opportunity looks small."

This is not a substitute for proper market research, but it is a useful sanity check before you invest time or money into something.

Pricing strategy

Pricing is one of the most under-thought areas of small business strategy. Most businesses price based on what they think feels reasonable, what competitors appear to charge, or what they've always charged. These are not good reasons.

Prompt to copy:

"Help me think through pricing strategy for my [type of business] in the UK. Current pricing: [describe your current prices or pricing model]. My costs per [job/unit/month]: [rough breakdown]. My target profit margin: [percentage or amount]. Competitors appear to charge: [what you know about competitor pricing]. My clients are primarily [description of who they are and their likely price sensitivity]. Help me assess: whether my current pricing is commercially sensible, what pricing models I could consider (hourly, project, retainer, value-based, tiered), and what the risks and opportunities are in changing my pricing. Be direct."

Pricing higher than you currently charge is almost always available to businesses that have strong positioning and clear value. AI can help you see whether you're leaving money on the table.

Identifying new revenue streams

Every business has revenue opportunities it hasn't pursued. AI is good at helping you see them.

Prompt to copy:

"My business is a [type of business] with [brief description of what you do, who you serve, and your current revenue]. Suggest 10 potential additional revenue streams I could explore. For each one: describe the opportunity in one sentence, estimate whether it is likely to be high, medium, or low effort to set up, and give a rough sense of the potential revenue impact. Be creative but realistic. UK market context."

You will get ideas ranging from the obvious (add a premium service tier) to the unexpected (license your expertise, create a training product, launch an affiliate partnership). Most won't be right for you. One or two might be worth exploring.

The strategic habit

The businesses that make better decisions are the ones that make time for strategic thinking. Most small business owners never do this because they are too busy running the business.

Block two hours a month. No phone, no email. Just you, Claude, and the big questions about where your business is going. Use the prompts above as a starting framework. Write down the conclusions. Review them quarterly.

That is more strategic thinking than most small business owners do in a year.