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Just as I told you before, to have your business franchised, you’ll need everything on your business to be standardized. This is why you should develop documents of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). With a good SOP you won’t be bothered by your franchisee asking how to operate the store, how to pay their employee’s salary, etc. You could compiled and explain everything they need to run the business in the SOP document. SOP is made as detail as possible, so even people with no clue about running a burger outlet (assume this is a burger franchise) could be an expert on the business just by reading the manual. Yeah, it’s just like the manual book included on your notebook, reading this SOP as a manual to run the business is a smart way for a franchisee.

SOP documents are unique between one business compared with another, each business has its own characteristic so the manual must developed in a specific way that suits your business characteristics. To tell you the truth, it’s not that hard to develop those SOP documents. To make it easy, you could use a preparation document, I usually call it as Document Control, in this document we divide SOP as three major parts : Entry, Operating, and Exit. Each of them will be your guidance for you to develop a procedure related to the part.

1. Entry (This would consist of manuals that will give franchisee and/or franchisor a guidance on how to start a franchise outlet, for example : Outlet startup procedure, Market research procedure, locations survey procedure, franchise agreement, etc)
2. Operating (On this part you must develop SOP on how to operate a franchise outlet, starting from warehouse management, financial management, marketing tools,  customer service manuals, serving food & drinks manual, etc)
3. Exit (Consist of SOP on how to end a franchise agreement)

Those are Document Control, developing SOP for your business will be much easier when you setup them with this Doucment Control guidance.

Developing a business proposal is one thing that you should do if you’re on a plan to create some business opportunities. Whatever it is, initial business development, franchise, licensing. Attracting form of this kind of proposal could be the key on pulling investor to put their fund on your idea. But often this thing is the thing that bother most people, they have many, many ideas of new business opportunities, but they don’t know how to put on the line, describing their ideas to money making opportunities in front of those investors. The important point of developing a great business proposal is how you could put your ideas into a profit generator for them. You have to describe it clearly to them, make it make sense for them. Don’t try to give them some sky high words, hiperbolic words about your idea. They just want a simple explaining how this idea of yours could be their money farms.

In fact, some investors just needs a summary wrote on a single page, defining how much it would cost, how much they’ll earn from it, and how you can make it happens. If you’re able to describe these clearly, and sounds make sense for them, then your proposal is good enough. But you couldn’t stop here, at good, you want to create a great business proposal. A perfect proposal usually consists of these :

1. Background of your ideas (Explaining, why you could come up with this idea, and why do you think it would be a great opportunity that if they’re not taking it immediately somebody else will)
2. Technical Analysis (On this chapter, you have to describe what these ideas needs to support on, technically of course. Technical means what kind of support do you need to make this idea operational. What equipment do you need, location for this business, vendors, etc. So they’ll see if they could put investment on your ideas or not).
3. Market Analysis (This part should be explaining about the market of your business ideas, which segment of the market you’re aiming, position that your brand will have on the market, etc. So they could start analyzing is your ideas makes sense or not).
4. Financial Analysis (Financial analysis would be their big concern, here you must interpretate your technical and marketing analysis to a financial statement. Make a financial simulation that they could read about it’s BEP, ROI, IRR, and other financial indicator. So they can decide whether to take or not your offer).

There you are, four simple factors you should considered when you’re developing a business proposal. Hmm, I’m thinking about writing proposals for people will be a great business idea. What do you think, guys? Actually, I’m on a preparation to launch a writing proposal services, I’ll launched my website on it next month, hope I could draw some feedbacks from you guys.

No doubt about it, franchise is one of the most powerful method for expanding your business. Not like traditional business expansion methods, this method has its own strength point. Franchising your business, you could have your strong and powerful brand. You don’t even have to spend more money to build your brand. But one thing you should know, the important point about franchising is market domination. Once you’ve gain control of the market than you have : powerful brand, high profit, and of course domination of market share.

Here’s one example, assume you have a product, let’s take burger as your product. In the current market you’ll jumped in already has 3 different burger stores as your competitor. Then, with you as their new competitor, this market share will be divided to four portion. Assume each burger has equal market share, the you, the new one will have 25% of burgers market share.

With franchising method, you don’t have to spend more money to open your new stores. Ok, now you have 2 burger stores, it’s not your stores though, your franchisee own them. If you look at the profit gained by burger sales, maybe it’s not as high as if you own those 2 new stores. But when you look at market share pie, now your burger has half slice of market share, did you notice it? Because now there are 3 stores that sells your burger, plus 3 existing competitor, market’s divided to 6 portion. And your burger own 3 of them, well you’re the market leader now. You don’t have to spend more money to expand your brand, and you still get profits from franchise fee, royalty fee, training fee, etc. Franchise is a matter gaining profit through your franchisee not from your franchisee. See the difference? I’ll explain it on my next post.