Let Your Franchising Goals Decide Your Path Of Progress

1. Let Your Franchising Goals Decide Your Path Of Progress If you have a goal and a vision in your mind, you will have a definite direction for your franchise business. When there is no inward questioning about the business, you will not have any clear direction and you may end up going round in circles. First of all, sit in a quiet place and have a moment to connect with yourselves. Now, take a bird’s eye view of your business. Observe how large it is and space or environment in which it is placed. Make a mental note of the different parts of your business and see how closely linked are they? You should be able to assess whether all the parts of the business are well connected to each other. Do you see any space for your business to grow? Is there space of overall growth or are there too many hurdles or competition on one side. Make a pictorial representation of your business and the business environment on a paper. Take a very good look at the drawing and think if you are satisfied with it. Ask yourself whether you want to grow in certain areas. See if you want certain aspects of your business safeguarded from external factors such as competition or Government policy. www.frantastic.in 1

2. Now, take another paper and jot down your observations regarding the business scenario. The observations could be anything whether it is regarding the positive points or the negative points regarding your business. For example, you may note that there is space for growth only in certain markets or that a competitor is about to eat into your market share. It could be positive that you are the market leader and others are still a far way off. Do not avoid any of the major observations that come to your mind even if they seem too far enough to impact your business. Once you are done analyzing the various aspects of business, put away those two papers and simultaneously put away business from your mind. Take a deep breathe and spare a minute to ground yourselves. Now, look at your life, yourselves and your family. Now visualize yourself and your family after five years, after ten years and then after twenty years. You will have grown, so will have your family and so will have your collective needs grown too. How to define it? There are two ways to visualize the future. One way is to see what you will be and the other way is to see what you want to be. The difference is only of one word but the outcomes will be very different. The goal is simply what you want to be in the future. For example, If you are the owner of a 24x7 restaurant that is young, single, earning well, and your body is showing early signs of fatigue. The future you see may be that you are still earning well, still single, and not very good health. But, the future that you want to see may be that you have a life partner, earning even better, and feeling very healthy. Are they your own wants and wishes? Once you know your target, the way ahead is usually clear. But, the problem is that people are often not clear it. They often accept widely accepted notions of success as their own but in reality, their satisfaction and wants may not lie there. Try to sort out this confusion. You don't have to sell unhealthy food even if it is popular and can earn you the money you desire if you don't believe in the concept with your heart. Maybe you could develop your own line of healthy food that can earn you money in addition to satisfaction. Stay true to your desires whether they are big or small, difficult or easy. www.frantastic.in 2

3. Now, derive practical objectives out of your wants and desires. Relate your personal desire to your business and identify your targets. The following could be your goals related to your franchise. Expansion: How big are your expansion plans? Do you plan to achieve growth through new units, new territories or you plan to grow the revenues from the existing units. It depends on which stage of growth you are in at present. The early and middle stages of franchising business have the potential for growth through increasing the number of franchise units. If they have focused on a single region, they can broaden the horizon to another state too. If you already have a number of franchise units, you can find out if there are markets that you can reach out. In any case, the growth of revenues in existing units is definitely desirable. Whichever route of expansion you seek will have implications on the quality of your product or service, profits, and investment funds. Also, do not forget that your success depends on the success and survival of your franchisee units. Do not compromise the health of your franchise unit for your expansion. Building your brand: You should always have a vision for your brand. It is expected that you already have a certain level of brand building in place because you are in the franchise business. No matter how your brand image is at present, you will have to work on improving it or even maintaining the image at a certain level. Evaluate your market and see if you need a few changes in the brand positioning in the future. You may need to improve the quality of your services or work on the ease of access such as home shopping or online payment gateways. It may be even simple things like changing the colors in your logo. www.frantastic.in 3

4. Market share: How much of the pie do you already have and how much do you want in the future? Increasing the market share requires a lot of planning, investing and marketing. You may want to understand the developments in marketing such as digital marketing and consult experts on the subject. Don’t make the mistake of planning for drastic jumps and keep to small steps at a regular pace. This will enable all the stakeholders to walk together and make it seem easy. www.frantastic.in 4

5. Enabling operations: Marketing may help you to increase the change but you should be able to meet the demand. Be sure not to bite off the pie more than you can chew. You will have to upgrade the entire operations to be able to increase supplies. It will require new infrastructure, equipment, manpower, sourcing, and logistics. It takes a lot of time and will take dedication to complete the project in time to meet the demand created by marketing. Innovations: It is very easy to forget about innovating afresh when you are focusing on a product that is already much in demand. But it is advisable that you have specific plans for innovation. Focus on innovating new products, processes, and new ways of customer interactions to continue being relevant in the fast-changing world of business. Innovation requires an open mind, acquiring fresh talent, flexibility, and sometimes the ability to take a risk. Innovation can be supported by experience and investment in testing and launching the new product. A business has to keep working on these aspects in order to enable an atmosphere where innovation can thrive. Personal aspirations: Focusing on franchise development does not mean that you forget your personal priorities such as health and personal development. Work on refining your schedule in such a way that you have time to work out at a gym or just go for a run, manage stress through yoga, and eat on time. You should also develop yourself by improving your communication skills by learning a new language or your management skills by attending a refresher workshop on strategic management. The last in setting your goals is to ensure that there is a synergy between all and none of them are achieved by ignoring the other. Once your goals are clear, get set and go! www.frantastic.in 5