Why Every Small Business Should Model Franchises

Even if you don’t like franchising, you must run your small business like a franchise to maximize your efforts and your profits. Every business can be better with franchise-like systems. When you systemize your business, you spend less time on the day-to-day tasks which frees up your time so you can spend it in a way most beneficial to you and your business.

So what are these systems?

Well, there are many, but they are all captured in a large and ever important Operations Manual. Every good franchise system creates an Operations Manual that documents the Who, What, When, Where, How & Why of the business. This Manual is the Bible of the business.

Essentially an Operations Manual for a non-franchised single location business should include 6 key sections:

1. Personnel

2. Daily Operating Procedures

3. Sales Procedures

4. Marketing

5. Additional Resources

6. Management Documents

Each one of these sections is as important as the other. Together they make up a complete manual that can be a central source for you and your employees to follow to ensure that you are operating your business consistently, predictably, efficiently and hopefully profitably.

Be the entrepreneur, create the business but most importantly, create the operations that run the business. Every business is meant to be profitable and the best way to get there is through systems, processes, and procedures. The best franchise businesses understand this and work daily to continuously fine tune and get better.

Just like all other important parts of your business, you will need to conduct an annual review/audit of your Operations Manual and make changes where necessary. No business is able to set things in place and forget it. This is merely a detailed road map, that captures the essence of your business and clearly defines all roles, structures and operations.

Begin to operate your small business as a franchise and you will soon see the advantages that this great system of growth offers for businesses of any size. The sooner you start implementing a franchise business structure the more it can be refined over time so when you do decide to expand you already have an efficient business with set procedures in place and a franchise growth model can be considered.