In the last post, we covered the first three of the 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process. To refresh your memory they are:

• Primary Aim
• Strategic Objectives
• Organizational Strategy
• Management Strategy
• People Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Systems Strategy

These 7 areas will fine-tune your plan for the ultimate level of success. Today we are going to examine the last four.

Think of constructing your business model like planting a tree. At first, it’s so small and weak you wonder if it will even make it through the night. But as you keep watering, fertilizing, and nurturing it with your ideas, the trunk begins to grow and each of these strategies forms the branches of your now strong tree. Finding the perfect support staff, employees, vendors and/or suppliers, and other relationships will make your tree flourish with leaves and flowers.

Management Strategy

The way you structure your management team is not only essential to your growth, but the happiness of your employees, and ultimately, your customers and/or clients. This strategy is results-oriented and doesn’t depend on the people, but the actual system that’s in place.

In short, a management strategy is a set of standards that include goals, rules, a mission statement, and other concrete things that tell your employees how to act, your management how to grow your business, and your customers and/or clients what to expect.

The management strategy should all be in perfect alignment with your business goals.

Employee Appreciation

You need to have a people strategy in place that shows your employees how you feel about their job performance and dedication to your business. They also must understand “why” they are doing specific tasks to help them personally connect to their job, which in turn leads to better production and a happier workplace.

There are a number of strategies you can use to keep it interesting at “the office”:

• Performance Incentive Programs
• Contests That Reward High Performance
• Employee of the Month
• Performance and/or Holiday Bonuses

These are just a few of the ideas you can use to keep employees engaged in your business. One of the best ways to show appreciation to employees is by calling a meeting and asking them how they would like to be rewarded. Spend some time considering different options to put the best strategy into place. Keep it fresh and don’t be afraid to change up the strategy from time to time to keep your employees guessing. Once they become accustomed to the reward, it is time for a whole new approach.

You need to build a community within your company. There needs to be support, appreciation and respect. The more “at home” an employee feels, the better they will perform and the higher their level of loyalty.

 Marketing Strategy

Marketing is essential to the success of any business, but it also must work cohesively with the other strategies you are utilizing. There are two major pillars of a successful marketing strategy: The demographic and psychographic profiles of your customers.

The psychographic reveal what your customers are the most likely to buy and the demographic explains who they are, which can help you identify why they buy specific items. Without this pertinent information, it simply doesn’t matter how good your business prototype is.

Systems Strategy

There are three types of systems in every business:

• Hard Systems
• Soft Systems
• Information Systems

Hard systems refer to inanimate systems or systems that have no “life”. Soft systems are those that could be living. Information systems are everything else, including customer data, product information, financial information, etc. It is anything with data and numbers.

The most important of all three systems is the soft system because it includes the sales systems used by your business. In your sales systems, the two keys to success are structure and substance. The structure is what you sell, and the substance is how you sell it.

All three systems are essential to the success of your business and while they all have their own very specific roles, they all must work together to get the job done. This is also true for your entire business development program.

I would like to take a moment to summarize the ideas we went over through the business development lessons.

An entrepreneurial myth, or e-myth, is an assumption that anyone can succeed at business with:

• Desire
• Some capital
• A projected target profit

There are essentially three key roles that need to be filled to set your business up for success:

• The Technician
• The Manager
• The Entrepreneur

The four different stages of a business life cycle are:

• Infancy
• Adolescence
• Growing Pains
• Maturity

There are a few things we are going to explore with respect to business franchises:

• Business Format Franchise
• The Franchise Prototype
• Franchise Prototype Standards

There are three main areas of business development:

• Innovation
• Quantification
• Orchestration

The 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process are:

• Primary Aim
• Strategic Objectives
• Organizational Strategy
• Management Strategy
• People Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Systems Strategy

I can help you work through all of these areas and give your business a jumpstart that puts you ahead of your competition right from the start. Reach out to me to gain access to a wealth of tools and resources.