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

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

These 7 areas will refine your plan for the highest level of success. In this post, we will cover the first three.

Primary Aim

In business development, it’s crucial to establish goals and envision the future. This vision should extend beyond the business, encompassing your personal aspirations. What do you dream about? How do you envision your path to success? Knowing and comprehending these factors will provide you with the motivation to begin and the resilience to persevere. Take a moment to jot them down and tape them to your desk for a constant reminder of your objectives.

Strategic Objectives

These elements are vital in elevating your business from surviving to thriving. All of these objectives should provide solutions for achieving your primary aim.

There are many things you can use to set strategic objectives, but here are a couple of the most popular:

Money:

Establishing financial goals is a powerful yet straightforward method to assess your progress at any stage. It’s easy to measure and simple to make necessary adjustments to achieve these goals.

Worthy Opportunities:

When contemplating partnerships and other business opportunities, it’s important to assess whether they will contribute to achieving your primary aim. The ones that will are the best opportunities to seriously consider.

The key to establishing standards and goals is not to limit yourself or cause unnecessary stress. Seek quantifiable metrics that allow you to measure your progress toward your primary aim. These are just two suggestions, but no matter which standards you set, pay close attention to the details, as they are one of the most significant factors contributing to your success.

Organizational Strategy

The strength of your organizational structure can significantly impact your business, so it’s crucial to invest time in building a solid foundation for your business to grow from. Typically, a company is structured around the roles and responsibilities that require daily attention and the personalities suited for those roles.

Regardless of the roles and responsibilities you’ve assigned to your employees, it’s essential to keep your personal primary aim distinct from your company’s primary aim or mission statement. Once you’ve determined the primary aim for your company, setting up a position structure that aligns with it will become straightforward.

Don’t forget to create position contracts. Your employees should sign a statement outlining their roles and responsibilities. This helps maintain clarity for you, the employees, and other employees, vendors, or individuals.

You can observe how these areas collaborate to establish a strong foundation for your business. If you require assistance in defining any of these aspects, you can explore the resources and tools available, and also consult with one of our fantastic coaches during your FREE test drive.

The largest sector of turn-key businesses consists of franchises. There is a franchise for every industry in the world, and they are relatively easy to acquire, coming with pre-packaged, easy-to-assemble systems. McDonald’s serves as a prime example, with a staggering 12-figure number of 38,000 franchises.

There are a few things we are going to talk about:

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

Business Format Franchise

The business format franchise originated from an earlier model called the ‘trade name’ franchise. The major change was in the rights. During the ‘trade name’ era, franchise owners only had marketing rights. Now, franchise owners have ownership rights over the entire business, including its systems. This shift in focus has allowed for a transition from relying on the quality and name recognition of the products that constitute the business to focusing on sales techniques that drive the business.

The Franchise Prototype

It was the franchise prototypes that truly enabled the changes necessary for today’s franchises to shine, thanks to the techniques developed by the owners rather than the corporation. This can significantly impact the franchise’s success, as the owner can customize their marketing and promotions to directly meet the needs of their local target customers.

Franchise Prototype Standards

Now, with that said, no one in their right mind would purchase a franchise if the parent company didn’t have a solid plan of action in place to ensure the prospective success of the business. Therefore, several standards are established to help jump-start the process of opening a successful franchise.

Build model of prospective customers/clients, suppliers, creditors and employees who will consistently offer high quality work.

1. Build a user-friendly model that can be used by individuals of any skill set.
2. Build a defect-free model.
3. Build a model with Operations Manuals.
4. Build a model that will provide guaranteed, consistent results.
5. Build a model that encompasses the same branding in color, dress and facilities codes.

These are all methods by which the parent corporation ensures that their brand remains consistent and stays in the forefront of customers’ minds. When you purchase a widely-known brand, you will attract customers simply by being associated with it.

If you’re considering purchasing a franchise, speak with one of our experienced business coaches during our FREE test drive.

Today, I’d like to discuss the various types of support staff you require and why they are crucial.

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

• The Technician
• The Manager
• The Entrepreneur

All of these roles must be performed simultaneously by individuals with the right talents. It’s all about finding the right balance.

The Technician

This individual represents the present and handles all the physical aspects of the business building process. They are the “doer” and typically the most visible person in the entire operation.

The Manager

This person represents the past and works to address issues by learning from past mistakes. They are responsible for the practical aspects of the business and oversee the planning and assembly of the business.

The Entrepreneur

This person represents the future and envisions the direction for the business. They are responsible for the creative aspects of the business and continually explore ways to enhance products/services, business image, branding, and more.

All three of these roles are essential for the success of any business. To establish a solid foundation from the start, you must put in extra effort to find the right individuals to fill these roles. Of course, you need to be one of these key individuals, but make sure you choose the role that aligns with your skills and talents, rather than simply what you THINK you should be doing.

This process may be challenging for you because you will need to relinquish some control over the business and place trust in people to let them do their jobs.

Remember, our business coaches can guide you through the entire process and teach you how to avoid falling victim to e-myths when you take our FREE test drive.

We will go through the 5 essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign launch. Once you have these basics down, you can use them repeatedly.

The 5 essential keys are:

• Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Put an effective sales offer to work
• Avoid the marketing pitfalls
• Use a world-class marketing perspective
• Get results!

We’ll go through each of these so you can see how to use them and how they affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the perspective of your customers/clients. What would it take to get their attention? What needs do they have that need to be met? What are the promises they want fulfilled?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet these needs. Then, take a look at the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) your competitors are using to help you develop your own. Your USP is the promise you make to your customers/clients. It’s what will set you apart from your competition.

Put an effective sales offer to work

To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:

1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
2. Share the benefits of your products/services, speaking from the customers’ perspective.
3. Identify the specific needs met by your products/services.
4. Make it easy to do business with you by offering guarantees.
5. Share your specific sales proposition.
6. Walk your customers/clients through how they should respond and act.
7. Motivate with a call to action.

What all this means is that you must assemble what makes your products/services special and compel customers to make a purchase. If they don’t feel like they NEED your product, they won’t buy. You must address a question, solve a problem, or satisfy an obsession.

You need to provide them with all the information necessary for an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse is one of the worst outcomes.

Avoid the marketing pitfalls

There are 5 major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into and you should avoid:

• Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan.
• Include incomplete information or reasons in their marketing plan.
• Fail to notice the needs of their prospective customers/clients.
• Fail to diversify their marketing options.
• Fail to get market opinions on their offers.

These are all areas to avoid. If you’ve been working through these lessons, steering clear of these pitfalls should feel easy and natural.

Use a world-class marketing perspective

A world-class marketing perspective is crucial, especially if you aim to attract customers/clients from around the world.

You can do this a number of different techniques and activities:

1. Keep a marketing journal and jot down any innovative ideas you come across.
2. Keep encouraging your marketing department, or yourself, to try new things and discard what isn’t working.
3. Place an order from your own company using a different name and analyze the entire process, including ordering, shipping, the online store, customer service, and the product itself. This will reveal areas for improvement in the customer experience.
4. Read every quality ad you can find and keep a file for future ideas to consider.
5. When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases.
6. Step down a notch or two and work on the front lines with your sales and customer service staff.
7. Continuously acknowledge your staff, vendors and customers. Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.
8. Always listen to feedback from employees and customers.
9. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques. This is the only way to remain successful and understand what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not.
10. Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell.
11. A great marketing plan can always improve. Continue to fine-tune and refine your marketing plan based on testing results and feedback.
12. Maintain classiness in your marketing. Ensure that your marketing and advertising align with your company image, products, services, and quality.
13. Improve your best marketing areas and drop those that aren’t working.
14. Focus on what you say, not how you say it. The best marketing ideas naturally evolve into the best marketing.
15. Develop all your ads, campaigns and sales materials with an attention to compelling and factual information.

By using these techniques you can put your name out there to the world and become one of the top brands in your industry.

Get results!

The last area we will discuss is having the most satisfied customers. If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted all your marketing resources and any chance of positive word-of-mouth advertising.

You can satisfy your customers by:

• Providing quality products/services
• Providing high quality customer service
• Providing a low-pressure, highly informative sales experience
• Taking all the risk away with a great guarantee

To generate more business there are a couple of simple techniques that work every time:

• Build your database with a contest.
• Do regular mailings with sales, discounts, or other incentives.
• Find other creative ways to keep your current customers coming back for more.

“As long as the reward is directly related to your product or service, you can’t lose. Why not get started today? It’s so simple, it’s so seldom done, and it’s so profitable. And that’s the bottom line.” – Jay Abraham

It’s so simple! So, why aren’t you starting today? We can assist you in creating a great marketing plan that will yield results. Give our FREE test drive a try and discover the tools and resources built by some of the biggest names in the marketing world.

There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lies in:

• Public relation or publicity
• Merchandising
• Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations encompass all forms of media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines, and more holds equal power. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important than traditional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
3. Format your press release professionally. For press releases, include a dateline, place the most important information at the top, provide facts and figures, and conclude with contact details, including the names of contacts and how to reach them. Print the press release on your letterhead.
4. Send your press release to all television and radio stations, both local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forget to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites, and industry professionals.

More importantly than having a perfect press release is ensuring that you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products or services you offer and have made that clear in the press release. If you provide people with a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem, and an opportunity to enhance their lives, the media and the public will be interested.

If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offered newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.

“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” – Jay Abraham

Our FREE test drive can demonstrate how to create effective press releases. Learn from the pros and craft the perfect press releases for your business.