In this scenario, franchise businesses are the solution to their problems. Today there are franchises in all industries. To purchase a franchise, you have to go through three basic steps. These three steps are interview, purchasing the franchise and training. The confusing process of gearing your business up for franchising can be simplified if you take each of these three purchaser steps individually

The Interview

There is an interview process for almost all franchises. You should interview to determine if the potential franchise holder is capable of being a franchisee. Usually franchises will prefer a person who has some business background. But others are not much concerned about the relevant background. The secret is to ensure that your business provides good training mechanisms and excellent business systems to turn even the most novice person into an effective team member.

The Purchase

After this, the next step is that of the actual purchase. You may consider financing a portion of purchase price with a deposit for your purchaser. This purchase price should include the franchise fee, the equipment costs and other ongoing royalties. The franchise fee is usually used to provide the purchaser with training in the use of brand name. Almost all franchises charge ongoing royalty fees. This can be a fixed priced or a percentage of revenue. This is also charged to use the brand name and the business practices of the franchise business.

Training

As a last step, after the purchase is complete, a training date is set. Many franchises have a 1-2 weeks training program. During this period you should aim to train the franchisee in your business operations including systems and processes. Marketing training can also be given to the franchisees in the training period. The marketing techniques vary from industry to industry. Lets face it you already have the knowledge of what techniques work the best in that particular industry.

From the above information, you can see that franchising is not that complex at all. Franchising your business operations, marketing and keeping score systems is a great way to get returns on your capital without giving away your business. Get advice and seriously consider this as an alternative way of growing your return on your capital today

3 Action Steps

Draft a list of pros and cons versus straight out business sale

Consider your franchising options – talk to your accountant, lawyer or Business coach

Contact BOOST and order a $899 BOOST Business Franchise lite programme and let us guide you through the decision making process

Jeff Smith

The Business Coaching Guy

Boost Business Coaching Wellington is proud to introduce the $299 Business Coaching program.

The Program is for Wellington Business to have a taste of the BOOST experience. ‘We are proven with a great business track record in other parts of New Zealand’ says Jeff Smith the Master Franchisee for BOOST Business Wellington. We are keen to roll out our program to Wellington Business therefore what better way than to offer a small taste of our services.

For $299 Wellington Business get;

1. A Fully Structured In-depth Capability Assessment interview on the Business.

2. Comprehensive business report outlining recommendations based on the Capability Assessment

3. A Benchmarking report which outlines your competitor’s turnover, Gross Profit, Staffing etc. This is very handy for businesses to compare where they are positioned in their industry

4. An extra BOOST Business Coaching session identifying some immediate actions, tactics and strategies to achieve some early BOOST results.

5. Access to your BOOST coach for up to two weeks.

6. 12 Month access to your own online project space with a record of all documentation, notes, action check lists, templates, your business report, benchmarking report and ‘How to’ manual on any of the strategies or tactics discussed.

7. A FREE USB Stick with Financial Templates such as Break Even analysis, Cashflow Forecasting, Profit & Loss Forecasting etc.

Wellington Business should take advantage now by contacting and registering for the $299 BOOST lite programme  - Below

They don’t have a strategy.

To them marketing is the activities that surround random placed advertising. Usually this is poorly planned often carried out on a spur of the moment decision or a ‘once only’ offer through their local paper or radio ad salespeople.

These businesses may or may not know who their target market is but they don’t show it in their advertising message. They don’t follow the true tested Problem+Solution+Target Market formula and therefore throw away a lot of their resources and advertising budget.

They are generally all over the place with their medium, method and message instead of being focused on one target market and one problem and one solution at a time

They don’t know that advertising is not marketing

Yes I know Mr. Marketing Student 101 the 4ps are Pricing, Promotion, Product and Place. However promotion is only one element of the so called 4ps marketing mix. The reason that a lot of New Zealand small businesses concentrate on the advertising and gimmickry is because it’s the ‘sexy’ side of marketing.

They don’t have a big picture view of marketing and don’t start with the basics first i.e They don’t look at their positioning and targeting strategies based on their product or service and ideal customers. This way they don’t let that direct their pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies.

They are not different on purpose

Many New Zealand small businesses copy the same old rubbish that everyone else uses. This way they are guaranteed to get the same bad results. Even if the marketing is good for one business, it’s probably not going to be that great for their businesses. These businesses forget that they are not the same business so their goals, objectives, target audience, capabilities, etc. are not the same. Secondly – ‘me too marketing’ – does nothing to distinguish their businesses from their competitors. Why would someone buy from them if they are no different than their competitors?

Most New Zealand small businesses forget to give their customers compelling reasons to buy, by not demonstrating that they have something that their competitor does not. Be different on purpose. (Otherwise start the price battle!)

They are amateurs and DIYers

Small New Zealand business people are good at their craft. They are great plumbers, doctors, lawyers, store owners, beauticians, chefs, dry cleaners, accountants. Most of them don’t know anything about marketing- and don’t have the time or patience to learn. And that’s ok. It would cost them more to learn and do it themselves than it would to pay someone competent to do it for them. I don’t want to fix my own broken pipes, or operate on my own heart. I’m no good at it. But other businesses are. That’s why I pay them to do it for me. However, most Kiwi Businesses insist ion doing it them selves. They don’t learn the basics of marketing and don’t start with understanding their marketplace, or find a profitable niche, or define their product or service to serve that niche.

If they did this right, they would either find themselves with no true competition or you they would stand out head and shoulders above their competitors

Small businesses think they can have the same marketing impact as Coke and Macdonalds put together

The problem is most Kiwi small businesses don’t have the money to market like the big boys. The big companies can run branding campaigns and hire expensive Ad companies to produce visually entertaining and stimulating masterpieces that make you almost drool for that new Big Mac or the latest Ford Focus.

NZ Businesses cant can’t afford to run image only ads. Funnily enough, aggressive newspaper advertising departments tell them they can. They don’t realise that their ads have to work hard to create awareness and generate sales or leads.

Unfortunately most small businesses dont market wisely and don’t test and measure to ensure that every dollar they spend is an investment that will produce a measurable return.. NZ Businesses are especially hopeless at using ads that have a call to action to spur a visit to their shops, their websites, or generate phone calls.

Most of them don’t realise until its too late that to do anything else is to risk losing money and ultimately fail in business.

Its all over the place

They are trying random things not really knowing why or they are dabbling in marketing with no real goal, process, or system. As a result their marketing strategy and tactics are not connected to each other or working together in harmony. In fact, they might even be working against each other.

For example running a discounted promotional offer to their prestige clientele using their prestigious services

Tactics must be aligned with strategies and support your goals. Every piece of marketing communication must be integrated with your brand and marketing strategies to be consistent and produce desired results.

Its all over the place part 2 – No system, no processes

Most small businesses have no system in place for marketing. There is no plan for properly evaluating the marketplace and finding profitable niches. There is no system to help position or reposition their products or services to serve those niches. This is especially devastating when their marketplace is changing at a hundred miles an hour every day.

There’s no F.U.

Many Kiwi small businesses, have leads that go un-nurtured and un-converted. Not because they are bad leads but because they don’t follow up.  Chances are, if the lead was not ready to buy right then or at least have a sales person talk or visit with him right then, the lead was pushed to the back burner and evaporated into space.  Or the customer that visited their store once, or even purchased once, never returned and was never contacted with any type of follow up marketing by the business.

Kiwi Businesses don’t realise that if their business relies on generating leads to turn into clients/customers, then they need to have an automated follow up system in place. Most of them haven’t implemented a system to capture their contact information to send them follow up emails and newsletters and contact them by phone or in person to keep in touch with them and nurture their relationship.

Hard Work – Not automation!

Kiwi Businesses are terrible at making sure that their marketing tactics are not automated where they can be automated. This makes sure that marketing is a drag, a bore, and a chore and pretty soon business owners get so busy following up there is not enough time for doing and managing the rest of the business. These business owners are probably not taking the time to measure the results of their marketing so they don’t know what, results their marketing produces.

They get frustrated, anxious  and wonder if marketing is really helping their business at all. They start questioning their time and effort spent on marketing and pretty soon they are doing no marketing at all. Which virtually guarantees their business will not grow- and makes it highly probably that it will not survive for very long.

Conclusion – New Zealand small Businesses

Tools are available along with the simple skills and rules in marketing to turn your marketing effort from a chore into an automatic measured series of tactics. Don’t delay, educate yourself today or get professional help with a business coach or marketing consultant. Invest wisely and get an ongoing return on your investment

Check out Wellington Business Advice

Want to talk to a business coach without the long term commitment – try our $299 business coaching lite programme. Benefits Here

Yes – I want to trial BOOST  – pay for the $299 Business coach here

Questions Call Jeff Smith BOOST NZ Master Franchisee 021 – 566 – 535

Once your payment has been made we will make contact and begin your BOOST Lite Programme

“Ray Whites Paraparaumu are subsidising their clients $50 to a BOOST seminar on gearing up your business to sell”

COURSE FULL – THANKS – PLEASE KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR OUR NEXT DATES BY CONTACTING US ON info@Boostbusiness.co.nz

Title: The Absolutely last thing you should do when selling your business!

Target Market: Anyone who intends selling their business over the next 2 – 10 years

Topic: This seminar is a short workshop discussing the most common mistakes that business owners make when selling their business that costs thousands / hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will go away with knowledge, templates & specific actions to add thousands of dollars of value to your business. You will also find out the last thing that you should do when selling your business!

Time: 9.30am –  12.00pm

Date: Thursday 18^th February

where: Porirua Chamber of Commerce – Parumoana Street – Porirua

Cost $99 per participant or $49 for Businesses reffered by Ray White Paraparaumu (Must use link below)

Click here to book and pay securely a GST invoice will be issed by BOOST Business Coaching

Presented by

Jeff Smith

BOOST Business Coaching

info@boostbusiness.co.nz

www.boostbusiness.co.nz

“The plan with Jeff’s guidance helped turn our business around and we headed off with confidence and new direction.”

John and Coralee Stevens

CAS cleaning products

BOOST Payment Page – Miscellaneous

Please click below to make secure payments for coaching or seminars using a credit card.

A separate detailed GST invoice will be issued and emailed to you from BOOST Business Coaching.

Map of New Zeland

New Zealand Business Climate

New Zealand appeals to foreign investors because we’re a safe and stable country with a strong commercial outlook. Many parts of the world suffer economic, religious and political upheavals. New Zealand is fortunately free of the turmoil experienced in other countries. And our code of business practice is straightforward and direct.

We have a democratic political system, a free-market philosophy, and our economy is strong.

New Zealand is geographically isolated from the rest of the world, but this has a big advantage – we’re the first country to greet each new business day. So we’re always ahead and able to do business with every other country.

Add the creative and independent approach of many New Zealand entrepreneurs and you have an ideal investment opportunity. The business scene here is strong and flourishing.

All of this leads to great investment opportunities and it’s a solid basis for establishing a new business.

Business Visa

Thinking of Moving to New Zealand on a Business Visa. BOOST Business can assist you with Business Planning for new businesses or relocating businesses. We can advise on the Economic Climate and put a good case up for you backed up with data, local knowledge and expertise

We Provide:

- Business Planning

- Data and Statistics

- A Local representative for your business in the start up phase

- Business Relocation services throughout New Zealand

- Introduction to suppliers / customers

- Good linkages into Business Associations, Government Departments and all types of opportunities in New Zealand

New Zealand is a fantastic place to live work and play. We can help you get here.

We are not immigratrion consultants, however have a relationship with NZs finest immigration consultancy if required.

For official information on immigration please check out the NZ immigration page – Here.

Contact Us

Contact us and we will forward a FREE info pack on our Services for relocating or new businesses. Email info@boostbusiness.co.nz or call +64 4 2982667

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BOOST Business Coaching

Title: The Absolutely last thing you should do when selling your business!

Email jeff@boostbusiness.co.nz if you would like to attend the next course

Target Market: Anyone who intends selling their business over the next 2 – 10 years

Topic: This seminar is a short workshop discussing the most common mistakes that business owners make when selling their business that costs thousands / hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will go away with knowledge, templates & specific actions to add thousands of dollars of value to your business. You will also find out the last thing that you should do when selling your business!

Cost $99 per participant

Pay Now $99.00 Safe and Secure – GST invoice will be issued

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Presented by…

Jeff Smith

BOOST Business Coaching

info@boostbusiness.co.nz

www.boostbusiness.co.nz

“The plan with Jeff’s guidance helped turn our business around and we headed off with confidence and new direction.”

John and Coralee Stevens

CAS cleaning products ]]> http://boostbusiness.co.nz/art/2010/01/14/porirua-the-absolutely-last-thing-to-do-when-selling-your-business-18-feb-2010/feed/ 1 http://boostbusiness.co.nz/art/2010/01/14/porirua-the-absolutely-last-thing-you-should-do-before-selling-your-business-bni/ http://boostbusiness.co.nz/art/2010/01/14/porirua-the-absolutely-last-thing-you-should-do-before-selling-your-business-bni/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:20:16 +0000 Jeff http://boostbusiness.co.nz/art/?p=439

BNI - INternational Networking Organisation

COURSE BOOKED OUT – THANKS – PLEASE KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR OUR NEXT DATE BY CONTACTING info@boostbusiness.co.nz

Title: The Absolutely last thing you should do when selling your business!

Target Market: Anyone who intends selling their business over the next 2 – 10 years

Topic: This seminar is a short workshop discussing the most common mistakes that business owners make when selling their business that costs thousands / hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will go away with knowledge, templates & specific actions to add thousands of dollars of value to your business. You will also find out the last thing that you should do when selling your business!

Time: 9.30am –  12.00pm

Date: Thursday 18^th February

where: Porirua Chamber of Commerce – Parumoana Street – Porirua

Cost $99 per participant or $49 for BNI members or any BNI referral

Click Here to Book and Pay – A GST Invoice will be issued

Share/Save

Presented by

Jeff Smith

BOOST Business Coaching

info@boostbusiness.co.nz

www.boostbusiness.co.nz

“The plan with Jeff’s guidance helped turn our business around and we headed off with confidence and new direction.”

John and Coralee Stevens

CAS cleaning products

Every day we get tons of enquiries from Wellington Business. We will attempt over time to answer some of the most frequent questions In a series of articles.

One of the more popular questions concerns debt collection and best practice around this. Most small Wellington Businesses have had issues around this at one stage or another. BOOST Business wrote an article about how to stop giving your customers permission to delay paying you which was generally well received however we thought it was time to delve into the topic in a little more detail.

Business Help Wellington

Get paid on time every time
1.    Don’t give them a reason to delay paying you. Your invoice should be accurate, pretty well detailed but easy enough to understand. Include;
a.    Your Company’s contact info, name, address, GST no. Phone, Email, Web and name of the contact person.
b.    Invoice Date
c.    Customers Name and Address
d.    Itemised Description of Goods and Services
e.    Amount due with GST amount
f.    Invoice Terms – See Business Help Wellington article on how to stop giving permission to your customers to delay paying you

Invoicing

2.    The longer you take to send an invoice the longer it will take for you to get paid. Send invoices promptly and religiously every week, fortnight or month. (Daily or on Job completion would be even better)

Stock Turn

3.    Think about the time it takes you to receive the cash for the goods or services you provide. If you order your raw materials in January – and you pay for these on 20th February. Depending on your stock turn or manufacturing process the materials / stock could be in storage for 1 to 90 days. You sell the end product and say wait for 60 days. When you drill down and take the time to realise the impact could be a delay of between 60 – 150 days before you are paid. The ideal for this scenario is to be paid 0 to minus 30 days. Its possible depending on your operational processes. Call BOOST to discuss this – you could end up freeing thousands of dollars – You might even get rid of the overdraft.

Calculate this

4.    Do the following calculations

a.    Calculate your average collection period by dividing your total sales for the previous year by 365. This gives you your average daily sales volume.  (Total Sales / 365 Days = Average Daily Sales Volume)
b.    Then divide your average daily sales volume into your current accounts receivable balance to get the number of days it takes to collect a bill.  (Average Accounts Receivable Collection Period = Average Daily Sales Volume / Current Accounts Receivable Balance)

This is you average accounts receivable period. Answer the following questions

Question 1: Is your average accounts receivable collection period in line with your business terms of trade? If your terms of trade provide your customers with 30 days to pay their bills, then you should expect that your average collection period will be somewhere around 30 days – maybe a little longer. If your average collection period is 60 days then you need to examine other factors that affect billing.

Question 2: Are you billing your customers consistently? Look at your Accounts Receivable Aging Report. Are the outstanding invoices on that report related to products and services sold within the last 45 days, or are they related to products and services you provided three months ago and just got around to billing? Create a procedure to bill customers once a week or each time you have a completed sale.

Question 3: Are you following the above guidelines about invoicing your customers with enough information and on previously agreed terms? Are your customers calling you with questions about your invoice?

Question 4: Are you tracking overdue accounts and taking consistent action to collect past due accounts? Do you have an effective process in place to track when an account comes due, and knowing who has paid their bills and who has not? When a customer’s invoice goes past its due date, is there a procedure in place to follow-up with that customer? Sometimes sending customer statements and making friendly reminder calls is all it takes.

Business Help Wellington – Summary

So our Business Advice for Wellington Business is to answer these four basic questions, implement a few basic procedures you’ll soon be running a fine-tuned collection machine. If you want help putting together an effective proven collection process contact us at BOOST.

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