Do Business Well

As you might expect, great managers take a welcomingly pragmatic view of our innate imperfection. They begin with an important distinction, a distinction between weaknesses and nontalents. A nontalent is a mental wasteland. It is a behavior that always seems to be a struggle. It is a thrill that is never felt. It is an insight recurrently missed. In isolation, nontalents are harmless. You might have a nontalent for remembering names, being empathetic, or thinking strategically. Who cares? You have many more nontalents than you do talents, but most of them are irrelevant. You should ignore them. Continue Reading »

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External Activity

<CROSS-CHANNEL CONTACT HISTORY (MAIL, TELEPHONE), PENDING SUPPORT ISSUE, FIRST AND LAST SUPPORT CALL AND EMAIL, SUPPORT LOG/EVENT HISTORY, PRODUCT RETURN HISTORY …>

Data generated from your direct mail, telemarketing, customer support, and product return operations can be a critical part of measuring true customer value, cost to serve, and cost of customer contact and conversion. Linking this type of external data with your email marketing system will enable you to spot—and avoid— potential problems. Imagine, for example, that a customer has sent you an email complaining about a product defect. If customer service doesn’t let marketing know about the problem, marketing might send the already-angry customer an email offering the latest add-on to the product he or she is complaining about. Continue Reading »

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Unlike a traditional, direct marketing campaign, an Internet direct marketing program is a tightly integrated combination of marketing service, technology, and 24-7 operational support. Separating these three components by, for instance, engaging a marketing services group, building an in-house operations team, and purchasing offthe-shelf products is a definite possibility, but the lack of tight integration may limit the level of sophistication the program can achieve. Continue Reading »

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This subsection was kindly supplied by Laura Pegg and David McLaverty, Brunel University.

Background

River Island currently occupies 300 high street stores, with 200 of these situated in the United Kingdom. This fashion-conscious chain of retail stores has as its target market both males and females aged 18-35. It is a privately owned company that currently relies on high street sales, encouraged by the River Island Account Card and a limited paper catalogue published twice-yearly. Currently River Island works with a company called Zendor, which supplies all the core end-to-end fulfilment services such as warehousing, distribution, call centres and returns management. The company Web site is basic and does not currently support e- Commerce transactions. Continue Reading »

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Now that you are aware of the history of franchising and the worldwide successes the concept has enjoyed so far, it is perhaps opportune to explain the various types of franchises that are available, as well as their relative advantages and disadvantages. For the sake of clarity and completeness, some other business models, which are sometimes confused with franchising, will be explained as well.

Business opportunity

More often than not, a business opportunity is precisely that. A manufacturer, importer or wholesaler offers independent entrepreneurs the opportunity to purchase a product at a discount and sell it on at a profit. Individuals who sign up for such an opportunity will be expected to pay for their purchases, beyond that, there is little, if any, commitment on either side, neither financial nor otherwise. Continue Reading »

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We considered some of the new business models that are developing online. One of these was the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) model, upon which online communities are based.

These communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. They offer a simple means of overcoming the lack of human contact online and hence can meet consumers’ social activity needs. Consequently, online communities can now represent a significant commercial opportunity. According to Kozinets,

Online social interaction is therefore a unique public—private hybrid never before encountered in human history. Changes in capitalism, social thought and new technologies have imploded the boundaries between home and workplace (and production and consumption). CMC [computer-mediated communication] offers ordinary people access to a mass medium, a stage before a global audience. . . . Opportunities abound not only to broadcast one’s own private information, but also to partake publicly in the private information of others, and also to commoditise and commercialise these relationships. Continue Reading »

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Draw up the franchisee profile. Franchisee selection is perhaps the most difficult aspect of franchising. Given the nature of the franchise‘ relationship, you and your franchisees will be interdependent, in other words, success as a franchisor is likely to elude you unless the vast majority of your franchisees are successful. When selecting franchisees, guard against the danger of seeking carbon-copy images of yourself. This will not work. The character traits of a successful franchisor differ sharply from those of a successful franchisee. Professional testing is available (see the block “Useful services for franchisors” on page 111) but experience has shown that gut feel continues to play an important part in successful franchisee selection.

Prepare promotional material for the franchise. Most franchisors use a variety of items for this purpose.

A low-cost (sometimes called a confetti-type) brochure which can be distributed freely, for example at exhibitions, and posted out in response to casual enquiries.

To respond to qualified prospects, a glossy folder that has a distinctly upmarket feel to it will be needed. It should contain detailed information about the franchise opportunity and a franchisee questionnaire. Continue Reading »

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By becoming a franchisor, you enter a new business environment. It is f longer hamburgers or exhaust parts you are selling, but a business system that will put others into business and help them to become successful their own right. And the mere fact that your core business runs like clockwork does not mean that you are ready to start selling franchises. significant amount of preparatory work will have to be done before you a ready to introduce the world to your franchise offer.

Revisit franchiseability

Should you wish to reassure yourself that your business is inde franchiseable, it may be a good idea, where franchiseability is discussed, with specific reference to Figure 5. At this point, the condensed description of franchising that forms part of t Consumer Code for Franchising may shed additional light on the matt We have reproduced it as the following.

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When discussing franchising, people tend to focus on the rights of the franchisor and the corresponding obligations imposed on franchisees. The fact that franchising is a win-win concept and that every franchisor worthy of this title will assume a clearly defined set of obligations as well is frequently overlooked. When AIDA’s franchise offer comes up for discussion, however, this oversight is unlikely to arise.

Throughout the entire interview that formed the basis for this case study, John Herbst, CEO of AIDA National Franchises (ANF), referred to his franchisees as “clients”. And notwithstanding the fact that he is an accomplished real estate professional, he stressed repeatedly that he is no longer in the real estate business, but in the franchise business. He sees it as his mission to help his franchisees build better businesses. It soon emerged that at ANF, these sentiments are more than mere lip service. Franchisees are seen as customers in the true sense of the word and, as any marketer knows, customers are the very reason for any business’s existence.

Established in 1958, AIDA has long since become a household name in the South African residential property market. Its success is based on the simple philosophies espoused by its founder, namely uncompromising integrity, professionalism and dedication to service. A listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1987 was followed by a management buyout ten years later. Subsequently, a combination of organic growth, several acquisitions and the creation of new divisions prompted management to change the company’s name to Jigsaw Holdings Limited. Continue Reading »

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