ChaPter 5: review your PurPose, renovate your business

ChaPter 5

review your PurPose, renovAte your business

Corina Vucic, Director, FC BuSINESS SOLuTIONS

About the Author

Corina Vucic is the Director of FC Business Solutions. With over 20 years in the franchise industry, and extensive operational and management experience, she works closely with leaders to take their business to the next level.

Whatever their goals, Corina coaches, mentors and supports business owners and executives to maximise success and minimise risk for long-term business prosperity and security.

Just like a home, a business or franchise model grows tired and shabby over time – despite lavishing regular care on your asset. Every now and then, you need to cast a super critical eye over it. Look at it through the eyes of a potential buyer. What is it about your business that would get them excited, and what would make them hesitate to sign their name on a contract to purchase?

Be brutally honest in your assessment, and give yourself a score out of ten on all the areas below. Then, start with those topics where you scored the lowest and address any failings as quickly as you can.

Your products or service

Is your product or service as relevant as it used to be? Or has it been relegated to the status of familiar but not the best out there any longer? How does your specific offering compare to those of your closest competitors? Are you always researching new innovations in your space?

Examine every facet of your product or service journey, from supplier to the customer interface. Can you make improvements to your purchasing costs, and decrease any wastage you incur? How about your customer interface, whether it’s by email or faceto-face: is it the best it can be? Does it offer a really special experience for your clients? Not adequate – special.

Look at your revenue streams. Have some of your secondary products or services become more popular than your hero product, but you are still devoting your time and marketing budget to what has now become your second income earner? Are there opportunities to add revenue streams to your business? Are there adjacent areas of expertise that you can move into? Make a list and concentrate on the low hanging fruit, the easy pickings, for your first forays into new products or services outside your core business.

Your brand

How strong is your brand across all of your consumer touchpoints? Is it unified, upto-date and adhering to your brand specifications, or has it frayed around the edges with old colours or brand elements still out there? Is it dated? Does it work well in the digital space? Does it need a refresh? Does your logo work well in a Facebook or Instagram feed?

Has the messaging attached to your brand been reviewed lately? Does it have a customer-facing message? Does it reflect current society values? Does it reflect the values of your business?

Have you considered adding a secondary colour to your palette? Or just tweaking the current brand colour?

Refreshing your brand is not something that should be done by an in-house committee.

It needs a fresh eye, and a distance, from the attachment your team will have to your brand. You need experts in branding and marketing and how it’s applied. And don’t forget to test your concepts before you go to the expense of making a change.

Your reputation

It used to be that if you had a PR clanger you could console yourself with “today’s headline is tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper”, but that’s no longer the case. Any bad publicity is now available forever to anyone with a search engine. While hits to your reputation can’t be totally mitigated, there are processes you can put in place to try and minimise any. Have you got a policy about who is allowed to talk to the media? Do your team members or franchisees know how to handle the sudden appearance of journalists with camera crews? Do your management team have media training? Have you sourced a PR firm with the ability to deal with major reputational incidents? You don’t need to engage them, just know how to contact them if necessary.

Your reviews

Google reviews and other product and service review sites have the ability to really cause issues for your business. Potential clients increasingly use reviews to judge the integrity of your service and your product. Do you have a customer complaint process? Many people will contact your business with their complaint before resorting to becoming online complainants. Is there someone at each branch or franchise with the appropriate training and the ability to make decisions to resolve complaints quickly? Do you have a process to address all online reviews? It’s not just complaints that should be acknowledged – take the time to thanks those who give you great reviews. But for those who aren’t happy, it’s really important to address their concerns. Publicly showing a willingness to address problems is reassuring to people checking your reviews. Never get into a public online argument. The best approach is to invite the unhappy customer to call your customer service manager. If you are able to build a good relationship with the person and solve their issue, don’t be afraid to ask them if they would consider deleting their review. There will be people you just can’t satisfy and they will keep on adding narrative to their complaint. At this point it’s best to disengage however if the posts are defamatory, report them to Google or Facebook or the review site and ask for the posts to be removed. This often requires multiple approaches to achieve but don’t give up – your reputation is at stake.

technology

In every industry sector the impact of technology is growing. Whether it’s online ordering at the table in a restaurant, to utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) to draw hot leads from your database or to power your online chat, technology is becoming indispensably in every business.

Have you overhauled your business to maximise the benefits of technology? Are you keeping abreast of the latest technology in your sector? Do you have experts to ensure that you are not chasing every shiny new app, but investing in proven technology? Do you have a goal to utilise emerging tech to increase efficiency, transparency and collaboration?

Your digital presence

An increasingly important part of your marketing budget, digital marketing refers to marketing that is online. That could be search engines, social media, paid advertisement, Electronic Direct Mail (EDM’s) and websites. Digital is an increasingly important area to focus on for lead generation and building your business. It’s more cost effective than traditional marketing methods and it’s far more measurable.

Do you have a budget for digital marketing? Are you measuring the results of your spend daily? Do you have a social media strategy and a campaign calendar? Do you have guidelines for your team members or franchisees who have social media presences? Is your website optimised to rank highly in organic searches? Are you regularly posting content on your website, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In?

Your website

The pandemic has driven a lot of people online to source what they need, and your website is now the window to your business, as well as being the checkout aisle. You need to provide a seamless user experience. Is your website on brand? Is your website fast? Cache your assets, don’t use too many plug-ins and optimise images. Do you have strong “call to actions” with links that lead your potential customer further on their journey? Are you driving people to your website via our social media? Are you leveraging the brand power of your clients by displaying a list of companies you are affiliated with? Is your ordering system simple and intuitive? Is your checkout secure? Do you have follow-up processes for those who abandon a cart? Most importantly, have you had a website audit recently?

Cyber security

A cyber security attack can cripple your organisation and a ransomware attack can wipe out your profit. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to trick people into clicking on their links. Have you installed a firewall and is it automatically updated with security patches? Do you have anti-virus software installed, does it update at least hourly and run scans regularly? Are you keeping your operating software up-to-date? Do you have a process for ensuring that team members update their software programs? Do you have a two-factor authentication for logging on to critical online assets? Do you password critical folders and files? Attackers are prone to finding open directories and injecting their own malicious code to gain access. Have you disabled hotlinking on your website? Do you have secure storage for your passwords?

The weakest link in your online security will likely be your team members. Are you continually advising your team members on the latest phishing schemes? Do they know to not click on a link wanting their information? Do you have protocols around passwords, how often they are changed, where they are stored?

Are you backing up regularly? If it’s not to the cloud, is it to an off-site location? Do you have a rolling back-up process – daily, weekly, monthly? Do you ensure your team save to the server or cloud and not to their PCs?

Compliance, culture and values

This is about your people. Your team members, the people who work in your business, whose loyalty and commitment are critical to your success. Are you paying your employees enough? Are you meeting award conditions including allowances, working hours, breaks, overtime rates? There are several pieces of legislation around this topic including the Vulnerable Workers Bill and in Victoria a separate law regarding Wage Theft. Fair Work Australia are chasing down companies that are underpaying and publicly exposing them as well as pursuing them legally. If you haven’t carried out an audit on what you are paying your team members in the last six months (bearing in mind there was a 2.5% increase to the basic wage on 1 July this year), then you may well be unintentionally underpaying them.

Have you addressed the latest rise in superannuation contributions? Are you paying your super on time? Are you allowing your employees to choose their super fund if they want to?

There are a raft of quite complex requirements in the Human Resources area and it is tricky to keep up. If you don’t have a dedicated HR specialist, find an expert to help you.

Does every employee have a Letter of Engagement? A Position Description? Are people thoroughly inducted when they join you or left to sink or swim? If you ensure that you are complying with all the legal requirements around employment, your culture has a better chance of thriving. But you do need to work hard to become an employer of choice. Engage your teams – seek their input – as they have a great collective intellect and are capable of providing great strategic ideas and innovations. Bring them on your journey, share you vision and reward them when they achieve goals.

Do you know what the top five skills are that you need in your business? Are you actively nurturing these skills? Are you profiling your team members to identify gaps in their skills? Are you recruiting for the future – are you hunting out the best graduates to continually replenish your team?

The values of your business, and your willingness to use your business to take a stand on important societal issues, are becoming increasingly important to your clients and your team members. Recent research carried out by Atlassian and PwC Australia showed a significant shift in the importance of a business’s actions or inaction on stated

values to employee retention and loyalty. It heralds an increasingly activist workforce. The survey was carried out in March 2021 and was across a range of business sectors and age and gender demographics. It revealed that:

• 69% of employees would turn down a promotion in favour of preserving their mental health. This trend is true across all age groups and income levels.

• 74% of employees agree businesses should be just as concerned with their social impact as with their financial results. • 55% of Gen Z are worried about future job prospects, yet 54% of those would quit their jobs if employer values did not align with their own.

• 54% of employees are satisfied with their current employer. This increases to 89% amongst those satisfied with the level of action their employer takes.

(These statistics are courtesy of Atlassian / PwC Return on Action Report 2021 - The rising responsibility of business.)

How you, as a business owner, manage mental health and well being in the workplace; recycling; zero emissions; and other climate action initiatives; racism, equality and inclusiveness across all people will be judged by your employees.

Getting on the front foot with this clear change will be important to your ongoing success. Do you have policies on diversification, bullying and harassment, equal opportunity? Do you live these policies? Do you have a program to minimise your environmental impact? Do you have employee input and actions to this program? Do you have a corporate responsibility program? Do you contribute at a local level to charitable and environmental causes?

Do you have a flexible workplace? Are you working to allow the balance of working from home (where the job allows) versus onsite work? With mental health and wellbeing such a prominent driver of employee engagement, the business owner who doesn’t at least look at the feasibility of flexibility will do so, at their peril.

operations

Operations is a huge topic. Broadly speaking, it involves every aspect of your business and working to ensure that it runs smoothly. It is the sum total of all the headings above. More narrowly, it is the nuts and bolts of how things are done. Do you have operations manuals for all your processes? If someone leaves unexpectedly or is unable to attend work for a protracted period of time, is the information easily available to allow someone to step into that role? Do you have a manual for every piece of equipment that you utilise? Are your manuals updated regularly by the subject matter experts? Are you manuals available on your intranet where everyone can access them?

Do you have strategic goals for 12 months, three years and five years? Do you review them regularly, measuring results and tweaking where necessary? Do you belong to

industry groups so that you are abreast of new innovations, new technology, world trends? Do you plan for the future – do you have a plan to nurture graduates or apprentices, or motivated young people, to renew your workforce as it ages?

leadership

Finally, how you run your business, how you lead and coach your teams is one of the most critical elements of success. Reflect on how you do this. The days of the authoritarian leader, the command-and-control model are dying out. Leadership needs to be inclusive; it needs to be inspiring and authentic. Are you continually doing professional development in the area of leadership? Are you passing on your leadership skills to others in your team?

Renovating your business should be more than cosmetic changes. It should include inspecting the foundations and critically reviewing every piece of infrastructure. Every process, every client touchpoint, every asset.

CorInA VuCIC | Director FC business Solutions

phone: 03 9533 0028 email: cv@fcbs.com.au web: www.fcbs.com.au