Grow From Here

What do You Think of My Website?

This is probably the question I get asked the most.  It’s a hard question to answer for two reasons.  First, because people have often put a lot of time and energy and thought and care into the development of their website.  They want to hear positive feedback, but as a professional, they don’t hire me to be warm and fuzzy – they want a website that works.  Secondly, and more important, because I can’t tell from looking at their website whether it meets the most important criteria of succces for a website:

Does it Meet Your Business Objectives?

In other words, does it do what it’s intended to do?  Which is the most important question of all in rating the ultimate success of your website.

Websites can be a source of good feelings, pride, visual appeal, professional image, and more.  But, above all, they must move your business forward.

You may need your website to do one (or many) of the following:

• Lead Generation – getting potential customers interested enough that they will contact you, or providing enough value that they will give you their contact information
• Closing Sales – actually getting people to buy something (usually a product) from your website
• Building your Brand – being an effective representative of your unique differentiator and value proposition in the marketplace, bringing people back, starting a conversation or an online buzz
• Internal Tools – letting your clients / distributors / suppliers / employees / franchisees log in to a secure area where they can conduct company business from anywhere easily and efficiently
• Stakeholder Communications – especially for public companies and franchisors, this may mean providing a great deal of information in a well organized, easy to navigate, easy to update structure

Ideally, you don’t want your website trying to do all five of the above.  You need to know which one is the key to growing your business, and then orient your website around that particular goal, because each goal has different tactics, strategies, content and workflow management that will make it the most effective.

Trying It Out

I highly recommend determining what you are trying to do with your website, and how it will help your business grow.  Then take a look at your website from that point of view.

If you are trying to generate leads, go to the website as if you’ve never been there before.  Remember that most users will spend only seconds deciding whether your website fits their needs and feels right to them before either leaving to look elsewhere, or deciding to go a little further.  Would you, as someone who doesn’t know your company at all, want to spent time on this site?  Does it answer the key questions:

• What do you do?
• Why should I care?
• What’s in it for me?

If not, you will lose a large percentage of people right away.

Next, look at the website and see whether you have an appealing offer of value in exchange for people’s contact information.  If your site is to generate leads, the most important thing it can do is get people either contacting you directly (which takes effort on their part) or leaving you their information so you can contact them.  What value are you offering that would lead them to provide this information?  Be creative about what you can do.  Make sure you have clear calls to action, and an EASY way for people to sign up.  Look at the trade-offs between asking for a lot of information (will your customers be hesitant to provide too much detail) vs getting more people’s contact information but with less detail. Would you want to sign up on the site?

Next Steps

Obviously, we can keep going here, but I’m sure you get the picture.  The other easy way to decide whether your website is a success is metrics.  Are you getting the number of leads you want from your site?  If not, then to be blunt, the site is not working.  At that point, you may want to get in touch with Open Box and we can work together so you know that your website IS contributing to the success of your business.  At that point, you won’t care what I think of your website, because you’ll know that the people it was built for think it’s great.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Technology

I met with Wayne Maillet, one of the preeminent franchise specialists in Western Canada on Tuesday.  Wayne’s company, Franchise Specialists, works with high volume well established franchises such as The Keg Steakhouse and Overwaitea, as well as with new franchises starting up.  Their services cover three key areas:

1. Operational Manual Writing
2. Strategic Planning
3. Franchise Recruitment

Wayne is also the Western Canadian representative for Davier Consultants and has partnerships with franchise experts across Canada so he can effectively help cross-country franchises deal with regional regulations and differences.

Key Questions

I asked Wayne what the most important questions are for someone considering franchising, and he explained that he always starts with three key questions:

• Why do you want to franchise?

 He says that someone who wants to franchise to make easy money might want to reconsider – franchising is an expensive, time-consuming process that builds value over the long haul, but it’s not a quick and easy cash machine.

• Are you sufficiently capitalized?

Wayne says that franchising can easily cost 100 to 150 K and upwards. Doing it right from the beginning with sufficient investment gives a much stronger likelihood of long term success.

• Do you have the time and energy available?

You have probably put your heart and soul into building your business.  Are you ready to put in a manager, step back from the business you have built and put your time and energy into  developing the franchise?

If you are considering franchising as an option, a conversation with Wayne will be very useful in helping you get a sense of the big picture, the potential pitfalls and how to do it right.  Contact him at wmaillet@franchisespecialists.com  or check out the Franchise Specialists website.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Franchise

Factors to Consider in Choosing a Franchise Opportunities Directory

Some of the things you may want to consider when you selecting Franchise Directories in which to list your franchise opportunity are:

• Directory Popularity/number of users
• Cost of getting listed
• Authority of the site
• Ease of use for users searching for franchises

Directory Popularity/Number of Users

If more people go to this site, you get more exposure for your franchise by listing here.  Some of the measures that can tell you about the popularity and how many people use the site are:

Page views – how many pages are seen in a month? (this statistic will usually be provided by the directory)

Number of unique monthly visitors – how many different people come to the site in a month?  (again, usually provided by the directory if the number is positive)

Google rank – a quick & very broad way to see how popular and authoritative Google considers the site to be – relates strongly to how many content pages there are in the site.  Google pageranks range between zero and 10, where 10 is the most popular (and largest) websites on the internet.

Alexa rank – slightly controversial because it only measures people who use the Alexa toolbar, but a low Alexa number does give an indication that large numbers of people are coming to this site.

Cost of Getting Listed

Is the site free?  Is a listing paid advertising?  If so, what benefits do you get?

If a site is free, you definitely want to be there – there’s no downside.  Make sure you have a standard marketing piece that you can add to any directories that offer a free listing, along with a link back to your site.

If the directory is paid advertising, then the other factors (number of users, authority of site and ease of use) become even more important.  Depending on your budget, you may want to decide carefully which sites are worth listing on.  Even consider whether you are better paying for listings on franchise directories or on sites that are more targetted to the types of people you want to attract (i.e. if you want people who love food, should you advertise on a food site rather than a franchise directory)?  This depends on the cost & how you calculate the potential return on investment from the listing.

Authority of the Site

Are users inclined to trust the site?  Are there articles there that provide value to people seeking a franchise?  Does the site look like it’s been built mainly to sell advertising or does it provide genuine value to users who are seeking a franchise?  If the site provides good value, then it is much more likely to build trust and confidence in the potential franchisees, and at least some of this will carry over to you as one of the franchises advertising on the site.  If the site looks like it has been built mainly to sell advertising space, then you may want to consider whether being listed here will add to or take away from the potential franchisee’s impression of your brand.

If you are in Canada, then the CFA’s website is an obvious place you likely want to be listed.  You probably also want to seriously consider the IFA’s listing of franchise opportunities.

Ease of Use

How easy is it for users to find your franchise?

Go to the site & put yourself mentally in two scenarios:

1) As a franchising prospect who is looking for a franchise in a particular industry with a particular price range

2) As a franchising prospect who has heard of a company that they want to learn more about trying to find that particular company’s listing

Rate the site on a scale of 1 to 10 for each scenario.  If a site doesn’t make it easy for prospects to find your franchise, then it’s probably less of a good investment as a place to get a listing.  I was surprised while reviewing most of the franchise directories out there to find that most of them work for situation 1, but not for situation 2.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Franchise

Trends help determine new ways to add value

A couple of years ago, I heard Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon Athletica, talk about the importance to him of keeping up with the latest trends.  He spends a significant amount of time scanning magazines, newsletters, news sources and talking with people just to keep up with what the next social trends are that will affect his company.

As a franchisor or CEO, knowing what is coming brings up opportunities and highlights potential threats, and may give you new ideas for what your customers will be looking for.  Continually finding new ways to add value is an important part of entrepreneurial innovation.

Managing the Information

Technology changes fast, business changes fast, and consumer patterns shift and change.  There’s a lot of information to keep up with, and no time to do it (whose to-do list gets shorter each day instead of longer?).

I manage the information flow in two ways; first, keep a general eye on what’s going on and use resources that send me summaries and synopses that I can skim, and second, ruthlessly jetisson anything that doesn’t fit with my top priorities at the moment.  I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t find something again if I needed it, but now I only pay attention to the information that is relevant to what I’m working on.  Send me a great article on clean energy trends, and I’m afraid that after the initial skimming it gets rapidlly dropped.  But send me a good article on franchise growth by building stronger relationships with franchisors, and I will read it carefully, follow up on any links, see whether it would be useful to my customers, and then keep it on file as a great business resource.  The key is not what’s new and exciting, but what may affect my business, my customers, my industry.  To know that, I have to see what is happening that’s new and exciting.  Fortunately, there are lots of great tools and sites that will send me this information regularly in a nicely condensed format.

Great Trend Watching Time Saving Resources

Trendwatching – http://trendwatching.com/ - sign up for their regular monthly newsletter and get briefs on the latest trends sent to your inbox.

Springwise – http://www.springwise.com/ - trends by industry and offers a regular weekly newsletter about interesting trends

Trend Spotting – http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog

Google trends – http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends - see what people are searching for on a daily basis

Google alerts - get information related to new information online about what matters to your business.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Time Savers

Because of hearing and reading statistics many times in my years working with franchises, I thought it would be an easy job to put together some basic franchise statistics (number of franchises, revenue, growth patterns, success rates).  Was I wrong!

Great Looking Statistics

When I started looking for reliable statistics, I was amazed to see that many websites put up great sounding statistics with no indication of where they come from.  But do they ever look good!

• Franchising creates almost $2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion) revenue every year
• A 1999 study by The United States Chamber of Commerce found that 86% of franchises opened within the last five years were still under the same ownership and 97% of them were still open for business
• Franchising employs over 1 million people in Canada or 1 out of every 14 working Canadians is employed by a Franchise
• A Canadian franchise opens every 2 hours 365 days a year
• Of all the franchises opened in Canada within the last 5 years, 86% are under the same ownership and 97% are still in business

Debates, Disputes and Controversy

As I looked further, I found fascinating posts debunking some of these statistics, along with passionate discussions about methodologies, sources and attribution.  Have a look at blue maumau’s post on unreliable franchise statistics or check out their reproduction of a letter from the IFA (International Franchising Association) disclaiming the use of these statistics.

Who was it that said ‘Lies, Lies and damned statistics’?  Benjamin Disraeli, then Mark Twain, wasn’t it?  A mathematician I know well who teaches statistics said that you can make statistics say anything, depending how you crunch the numbers.

Reliable Statistics

The key is knowing where your numbers come from, who collated them, and what their interests are.

Having said all that, the IFA commissioned a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers looking at the economic impact of franchising between 2001 and 2005 in the US.  Some of their numbers are

• In 2005, more than 900,000 franchised establishments generated over $880 billion of direct economic output
• The franchising industry provided jobs for more than 11 million American workers, or just over 8 percent of all U.S. private sector employment
• Direct economic output increased by more than 40 percent from 2001 to 2005, from $624.6 billion to $880.9 billion.

In Canada, the Canadian Franchising Association has statistics (with attributions) available on their fast facts page, including

•  There being over 78,000 franchises in Canada employing over 1,000,000 people
• Franchising accounts for $90 billion per year in sales nationally or 10% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

While these numbers are presented by organization aimed at presenting franchising, they come from external and reputable sources, and are a good starting point for looking at the real impact of franchising on the North American economy.  As we can all see, franchising is a very important factors in the economies of both Canada and the United States.  And those of us who work in and with the industry can sit back and relax, knowing that not all the statistics out there are inflated or unreliable.

Business Growth, Franchise

Will You Be Found?

Do your locations show up when customers search in your area?  One easy way to let customers come to you is to make sure your company shows up on Google Maps. 

Spend 10 minutes and claim your business, put in basic company information and then site back and watch.  Even better, add coupons or get your customers to write reviews.  Make it easy for potential customers to know what you do and how good you are.  For franchisors, you can even manage multiple locations through the Local Business Center.

Getting Set Up

1. Go to Google Maps & type in your company address
2. Click on the letter for your location
3. Click on ‘Claim your business’ and put in the information requested
4. Add your hours of operation, company description, website and other relevant information.
5. Google will add links to web pages that mention your company

 Advanced Options

You can invite your customers to write reviews of your company – just ask them to search on your company & then click on the ‘Write a review’ at the top left-hand side.

Add coupons by going to www.google.com/local/add (where you can also manage information about multiple business locations).  There is no charge to set these up.  Consumers then see your special offers and can download them, print them off, and bring them in to your location to redeem.  Another easy component to a comprehensive online advertising strategy…

Technology, Time Savers, Tips

Execution & Advisors

I value advisors and mentors very highly and believe in using other people’s experience to fast-track my company’s growth.  I have always worked with a variety of mentors and specialists, and even before starting Open Box, was getting advice from a very experienced businessperson that I have a lot of respect for.  He reviewed our financial plans, asked questions about the assumptions, and had great suggestions about risk management, getting clients and what to watch out for.

My current Advisory Board is invaluable

We have a monthly phone meeting, and prior to that I write an update on where we are at with our strategic goals, how the financials are doing, and any questions that I want to discuss with them, as well as whatever background they need to give me the best advice possible.  Just writing up this information on a monthly basis makes me stop and take stock of how the company is doing and what changes have happened and what’s really important.
Then, during the conversations, they come up with creative ideas and suggestions, as well as asking questions from their experience that I might not have thought of.  They remind me of progress being made, and follow up on what I said I would do in the previous conversation.  They remind me to look after myself as well as my business, and when I have a hard decision, they suggest alternatives and things to consider, but always remind me that part of being an entrepreneur is making the hard choices and that in the end it’s my business.  I love working with them, and with other mentors that I have had over the years.

Time for Execution and Implementation

At the same time, towards the end of last year, I found myself in the interesting position of having too many mentors/advisors (not just my advisory board, but other experienced people that I respect highly who were available to bounce ideas with & get advice from).  I found that I was spending too much time talking with a variety of wonderful people, when I knew what needed doing and really needed the time to implement.  There’s definitely something seductive about the brainstorming/idea sharing/gathering wisdom processes.  But it was important for me to recognize that it was time to put my head down and prioritize, plan, then implement the plans.  2009 is all about implementation for me.  I have pulled back from a number of my mentors, and am focussed on making the plans happen.  Lists and execution are the key, so I have pared down my advisors to that core Advisory Board and look forward to seeing what happens as I use the distilled wisdom from all those great conversations.

Signs that it is time to shift

What helped me recognize that it was time to make a shift?

• My to do list was growing (with no inessential or busywork items).
• I started scheduling meetings with advisors further apart because I needed time to execute on plans.
• I didn’t have a lot of key questions that were pressing at me.
• I had the opportunity to participate in a business growth workshop and decided the time was better spent doing.
• I knew exactly what to do next, and had good risk management plans organized.
• I wasn’t spending enough time selling (and yes, I believe that this should be 30-60% of the time allocation of the average entrepreneur).
• I was starting to talk too much about long term plans because the short term was crystal clear.

The Joy of Execution

Since the new year started, I have been focussed on execution.  So far, the results are stellar.  My to-do list isn’t getting shorter, but some of the key items are progressing well.  I know that I’m focussed where I need to be.  I’m able to enjoy crossing items off my list every day and have a good sense of the overall strategy for the company for this quarter.  Now I just need to make sure I notice when I need to go back to them for more  – but fortunately I still have my regular monthly advisory calls and now I’m really looking forward to them again.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Focus

Google Alerts – What Are They?

Google Alerts are one of those nice little Google offerings that is super easy to set up and lets you automatically keep up to date on information online that may be important to you.  You can create Google Alerts on any topic that is valuable to your business and get instant, daily or weekly updates.  For example, I get Alerts on ‘franchise software’ since anything that relates to both franchises and software may be of interest to me.  They come in as small daily digests that I can skim.

A Competitive Edge

As a franchisor, or a rapid growth entrepreneur, you need to know what’s going on in your market.   You also need to know what’s being said about your company and products in the online world.  And you need to do all this without a large time investment.  Google Alerts let you keep in touch either by email or via RSS feeds, and setting them up is a matter of minutes.

Set up a Google Alert

 To set up a Google Alert, just go to www.google.com/alerts and type in the terms you are interested in,  what type of information you want to know about (I recommend Comprehensive, but you can limit your alerts to the web only, to video only, to news only, to blogs only or to Google groups only), how often you want to receive the alert, and your email address.

Next,  go to your email, and confirm the alert (Google sends an email with a link that you can click on for confirmation).

That’s it – you’re all set & good to go, and every day (or week) you’ll get a great digest of what has been happening online related to your chosen topic, with links so that if any of them are valuable to you, you can go directly to the original article.

Franchise, Technology, Time Savers, Tips

What No One Ever Tells You About Franchising by Jan Norman, 2006

This book has three main sections; Franchisors, Franchisees and Experts.

It is a great book for a newcomer to franchising and developing a franchise, but it’s also a good reference manual for people who just want a quick reminder and overview of some of the many balls you need to keep in the air as a franchisor.

Each ‘chapter’ is one to a couple of pages related to one concept, and each concept is told as the story of an actual franchise experience along with the important concepts.  Even the chapter titles alone are a good reminder of some of the basics.  For example, under ‘Franchise Relationships’, the core concepts are

• A Fair Franchise Agreement
• Give Franchisees Value for Their Money
• Teamwork with Franchisees
• Persuade Franchisees to Follow the System
• Communication is King
• Creative Franchisees Improve the System
• Franchisee Training is the Number One Priority
• Ongoing Franchisee Training
• Train for Sales, Not Just Marketing

Because of the story format, the real life experiences, the short chapters and the overall breadth of concepts covered, What No One Ever Tells You About Franchising is an easy, appealing read and a good reference manual.  No brilliant new insights, but solid information and very realistic.

Book Review, Franchise

Starting a new blog is fitting as the new year starts.  Many of our clients have said that the information we provide is extremely useful because our company sits at the intersection of business & technology.  We focus on helping franchises increase efficiences and strengthen their systems.  This can sound a little dull, but it’s actually very exciting seeing the difference that improved operations can make for a growing franchise.

As I’m sure is true for all business owners, each new year brings many many lessons in what really matters to grow your business.  This past year (2008) has been a very full one for Open Box and for me personally. 

Highlights from 2008

We have continued to add to our roster of clients, with a particular focus on clients who have franchised or who are interested in building a company that is franchisable.

As well, our company went the investment raising route for VitalityLink and went through a major expansion and then a contraction to get us back to a lean, mean team that can deliver the best results for our clients.

I participated in Acetech’s Growth Strategy program, which was a like an ‘on the job MBA’ – designed to take best practices and teach and implement them in succesful growing tech companies here in Vancouver.  Great learning, incredible mentoring and a good way to build relationships and share with other CEOs about the challenges we face together.

The Corner where Business & Technology Meet for Growth

I decided to start the Grow from Here as a way of sharing our experiences and learning with franchisors and business owners.  The corner where business & technology come together is one where there are lots of small things that can be done to improve your success, and I hope to share those I know with you, and keep adding to my own toolkit.  This blog is for best practices in business growth, learning from one another and sharing what works (and, hopefully, what doesn’t!).

Looking forward – Focus is the Key for 2009

One of the most important things I continue to work on is picking the Big Goal (BHAG).  Probably like many entrepreneurs, Jeff & I are always excited by the new idea, opportunity, adventure.  There’s a funny post about entrepreneurs and our attraction to the Great Shiny New Thing at onstartups.com.  My lesson for this year has been to focus, stay on course, and let go of some of the great exciting ideas that come on an ongoing basis.  As my Board of Advisors like to say, ‘what’s your core business’?  Keeping that question front and centre has led me to some hard choices and continues to be a challenge, but it is one that I needed to confront in order to grow our company.  Keeping focussed is the one biggest things I will do in the coming year.  How about you – what has been your one takeaway from the last year?  What would you like to share with other business owners and entrepreneurs?

Best Practices, Business Growth, Focus, Franchise, Technology