4 Best Practices Businesses Should Learn from Canadian Franchises

Whether or not you’re looking to invest in a Canadian franchise, there is a lot to be learning from the way that these business models are run. In today's post, the FranNet franchise experts review 4 lessons that Canadian business owners can learn from franchise best practices.

 

• Establishing a concrete game plan or “playbook” that employees and management can consult. Did you ever play the “Telephone” game as a kid? You sit in a circle with your friends and somebody starts the game by whispering a message in their neighbour’s ear. The message gets repeated and passed through the circle until it reaches the final person, who then has to repeat the message. If you have any experience with this game, you know that the final message often has little resemblance to the original, with everyone in the circle giving their unique interpretation as they pass it along.
  

  When you don’t have a concrete game plan or play book in place, you’re essentially playing “Telephone” with your staff. Even if you spend hours distilling your daily operations, brand message, or specific instructions down to a basic, digestible message, details can be distorted or lost as its passed from one employee to the next. Verbal instructions simply aren’t enough, which is why successful franchises don’t pass their business systems down through word of mouth. If business owners can learn anything from franchises, it’s that putting your plans, processes, and instructions down on paper is critical.

• Building a strong brand. Canadian franchises have a number of considerable advantages over independent business during their launch. Beyond the streamlined training, established systems, and start-up support, Canadian franchises benefit from a strong brand name the second they’re open for business. This is a huge deal, considering most self-starters have to grind through their first few months offering considerable discounts and gratuities to try to generate word of mouth and establish a loyal customer base.
  

  Building a strong brand isn’t easy for business owners outside of a franchise system, but it’s doable. The first thing to focus on is your brand’s consistency and reliability. Stop letting your business line go to voicemail, closing earlier than your posted hours, neglecting customer communications, or skimping on signage and advertising materials. While this won’t give you the same level of brand recognition that high-profile Canadian franchises enjoy, it will improve the quality of your brand name in a meaningful way.

• Investing in consistent marketing. A wise businessman once said that the key to monetization was not work, but marketing. Likewise, Henry Ford famously wrote, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” While you cannot sell a product based on marketing alone, even the most wonderful product in the world can bankrupt your business if you don’t get the right eyes on it. Canadian franchises understand the need to constantly feed the marketing machine, and self-starters can learn something from their commitment. Too many entrepreneurs see marketing as a flexible expense that can be scaled down during the slower seasons.

• Standardizing training. Many independent business owners train their staff in an entirely unstructured way, which is a huge problem both for their employee’s on-the-job comfort level, and the company’s consistency. Training staff by giving them verbal on-the-job advice as problems arise is simply too disorganized. If your employees aren’t trained in the same way, then they’re never going to produce the same results, which can hurt your customer retention and diminish the strength of your brand name. Referring back to our first point, it’s imperative that you write things down so that you can refer back. Quality Canadian franchises use training manuals, and it’s something that countless businesses across the country could benefit from. Standardize your training and you’ll get standardized results!

You can learn more about Canadian franchises by visiting http://www.frannet.ca.

 

About FranNet Canada

 

FranNet is a 29-year-old company with roots in the U.S. Its purpose being to nurture every entrepreneur’s dream of business ownership. We actively employ a specific profiling and consultation method. This method is geared to each investor with a specific business model and based on franchise trends typically found in Toronto, Ontario, Vancouver, British Columbia, or Calgary, Alberta. The most lucrative Canadian franchise opportunities are waiting for you. For more details visit - http://frannet.ca/buy-a-franchise/canada-franchise-buying-process/