One of the things people either get stuck with when starting out in business or even don’t do at all (shock horror!) are proper business plans or marketing plans.
But planning your business effectively is a key element of success. Although our franchise fee is small compared to most franchises, it’s obviously still a fair amount of money to find, so many people may consider borrowing to do it. We have produced a template business plan with the assistance of one of the major high street banks, which covers all the information about the proposed business that a bank would be looking for before agreeing to lend money. Although we designed it for that purpose, it obviously could be used for general business planning as well.
For those HR professionals who do become franchise partners with us, they will have done a certain amount of business planning already before starting to go ahead, so what they tend to need more help with is marketing planning.
So as well as providing lots of training on the techniques and approaches they need to use to effectively market themselves as an HR consultant to small and medium sized businesses, we also put together a detailed bespoke marketing plan for each new franchise partner. We agree financial targets with them, based on what others have achieved, on what hours they plan to work and a number of other factors, and agree specific plans for each area of marketing they will be doing. We review this regularly, including progress towards the targets they have set themselves, and adjust it along the way if necessary.
All this is helpful because it gives them a solid framework for their marketing – it’s not just theory, it’s actually planning for what they need to do, and it’s based on their own circumstances, preferences and local factor.
If you’d like to hear more about setting up your own HR consultancy with our business and marketing guidance, do get in touch.