Pigtails & Crewcuts Franchise

Buy a Pigtails & Crewcuts Franchise

You are here: Home / Archives for franchise business management

franchise business management

·

6 Tips for Managing Business Growth

Managing growth is one of the trickiest parts of a leading a business. Expansion can be the best thing that can happen, or it can be the absolute worst if you’re not prepared.

The key to successful growth is constant vigilance and commitment to quality and consistency. It’s important to have a plan in place when your business is small, so that when growth happens, you’re ready for it.

Here are six tips on how to manage business growth.

  1. Keep your eyes on the data. You know how great it feels when business is booming. Customers are streaming in. Products and services are in demand. Everything is going great, by the looks of it. No matter how busy your business is, it’s imperative that you are constantly looking at your numbers. Where do you stand financially? Are you keeping within your budget? Are your expenses too high? What’s your projection for next month? Next year? Don’t rest on your laurels and get swept away in the moment. Keep tabs on your books, because numbers don’t lie. If something looks wrong, there’s a reason. Take the time to fix it.
  2. Make smart hires. If your business is in growth mode, it’s easy to lose sight of your core hiring values and hire too quickly. While that will, no doubt, land you an employee, it likely won’t be the right employee. Before making a hire, talk to your team about what kinds of characteristics will best fit your business’ growing needs. From there, be sure and hire the right person, not just the right skill set.
  3. Keep doing what you’re doing. This is not the time to make any drastic changes, whether it’s altering the direction of the company or cutting the marketing budget. Rather, pat yourself on the back, because if you’re growing, you’re doing something right. And then quickly get back to work.
  4. Outsource what you can. Accept that you can’t be all things to all people. Do what you’re good at and find experts to handle the rest. Thanks to technology, even small businesses can afford to outsource human resources, accounting, IT, marketing and other tasks to subcontractors. That frees the business leaders up to focus on growth.
  5. Continue educating yourself. Make lifelong learning a part of your business goals. Attend conferences, seminars and classes and find other opportunities that will inform you—and your staff—about different aspects of business. By attending educational events and networking with others in the community, you’ll learn from their successes and missteps. As a business owner, it’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day tasks and neglect the big picture. In doing so, you’re limiting your own personal and professional growth.
  6. Keep your customers happy. Whether you’re in a business to business operation or a business to consumer outfit, the end goal should be the same: happy customers. Keep the lines of communication open and ask your customers how you’re doing and how you can improve. When all is said and done, it’s their business that your growth depends on.

Wade Brannon is president of Pigtails & Crewcuts. Brannon has managed business growth for more than three decades, first in the specialty food franchising business, growing a franchise called Heavenly Ham to more than 230 stores across the country, before it sold to HoneyBaked Ham. As the head of Pigtails & Crewcuts, he’s led the business from a single salon to nearly 50 locations across the country.

·

How to Create a Competitive Environment and Drive Business within Your Franchise

When people hear the word “competition” in business, they often think of those they’re working against—the competing restaurant, the competing ice cream shop, the competing salon.

As someone who has worked as an executive in the franchise business for more than 30 years, when I hear the word “competition,” I think of the folks who work for the same business. In the last three decades, I’ve seen friendly franchise vs. franchise competition motivate business owners to work harder and sell more than any kind of amorphous, unknown competition across town.

That’s why at Pigtails & Crewcuts, we measure our franchisees’ numbers and compare them to one another. We also perform annual evaluations so our teams can see, year over year, how we, as a franchisor, rate them.

Whether you’re a franchise business owner or you’re just looking for ways to motivate your own employees, here are some tips to spark a little competition and drive business from the inside.

  1. Engage your employees (or franchises). Without engagement, there can be no competition. You’ve no doubt heard the word “engaged” as it applies to employees. But what does it really mean? It means a work force that’s interested and driven by the work at hand. As a business owner, you have the ability to engage employees by understanding them. What are their goals? What can you offer them as a reward that will make them work harder? Once you figure that out, you can set up a system of rewards and incentives that will drive your staff to do more for your business.
  2. Measure everything. Track sales, track social media follows, track repeat customers—track anything you can track. This gives your franchisees and employees measured data that they can look at year over year and compete with themselves.
  3. Publish those measurements. Numbers are way more meaningful when compared with other numbers. You might be surprised at just how motivated your employees or franchisees become when they learned that Sally ranks ahead of them, or Stan is creeping up on them. Numbers have the power to create more competition than any boss could.
  4. Award awards. We do this at their annual conference, handing out awards for excellence, sales, most hits on Facebook, the president’s award and a number of other silly awards that we tailor to our audience. Our franchisees love this, and have a lot of fun at the ceremony. By celebrating good work, a business leader is not just demonstrating appreciation. He or she is also planting a seed in the minds of the rest of the workforce, who will work that much harder to be recognized next year.
  5. Create scorecards. Don’t just evaluate the business. Evaluate the staff and how they handle business on a day-to-day basis. That can include timeliness in filing reports, cleanliness of the store, marketing maneuvers or any categories vital to the way the business is run. Use the scorecard as a conversation starter to discuss what’s working, what’s not working and delve into any issues the staff might be experiencing. We’ve done this every year since our franchises began more than 10 years ago, and we’ve always kept the results quiet.This year, to our surprise, our franchisees requested that we publish those evaluations so that all of the other franchisees could compare their results. They told us they want to know if a neighbor is doing poorly so they can mentor them and get them back into shape. This business is their investment, after all, and the last thing they want is someone ruining the brand. By publishing the scores, they can see who’s doing the best, and learn from the great ones.

How’s that for friendly competition?

Wade Brannon is the president of Pigtails & Crewcuts, based in Atlanta, Georgia. To learn more go to www.pigtailsandcrewcutsfranchise.com.

 

 

·

Franchise Expert Wade Brannon Highlights 7 Tips for Business Owners when Responding to Negative Online Reviews

Harvard Business School released a report in September called “Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition and Yelp Review Fraud,” stating that nearly 16 percent of restaurant reviews on Yelp are fraudulent. That news serves as a reminder that small business owners need to be more vigilant than ever about their online reputation.

As business owners, we’ve always had to deal with naysayers and we know that their voices rise above the rest. But this report brought to light some new findings. First, we know that businesses are paying other businesses to write glowing reviews that will benefit the bottom line. Second, competitors are trying to sabotage the competition by writing negative reviews. Whether real or fake, if it’s about your business, you’ve got to stay on your toes and be aware of what folks are saying about you.

Business owners who honestly address negative reviews—whether fraudulent or genuine—will wind up with happier customers. Here are seven tips to help small business owners become more aware of and responsive towards online reviews.

  1. Stake your claim. Before you can address any online reviews, you need to claim your business on sites such as Yelp and Google. That way, you’ll be in charge of supplying the correct information, such as location, hours, phone number and website, and you’ll be in a position to respond to reviews, when necessary.
  2. Read the reviews daily. It’s important to stay on top of the sites where customers are reviewing your business. These reviews are in the public eye, and your customers are reading them. The last thing you want is to hear about a negative review through the grapevine.
  3. Address negative reviews. Don’t ignore a negative review, and don’t make excuses. Truly consider what the customer is saying. Respond to him or her briefly, on the same forum, and, if possible, explain what happened, from your perspective (without assigning blame or making excuses). Then, ask that person to connect with you offline. You don’t need the whole world to see your dialogue. But you do want a chance to make the situation right.
  4. Respond to positive reviews. Don’t give the negative Nellies all of your attention! If you’re touched by a positive review, let that person know! By responding to reviews, you’re showing your customer that you’re interested in what they have to say and grateful for the time they spent to say it. That’s a great way to build upon a growing relationship.
  5. Don’t hit delete. It’s tempting to delete negative comments that might appear on Facebook, Twitter or your website, but don’t do it! This will only escalate the situation, making your customer feel censored. It’s hard to face criticism, but it sends the message that you’re responsive, you put the customer first and you’re willing to do what’s right for your business.
  6. Encourage customers to review your business. If you’ve developed a strong relationship with a customer, it’s not unusual to ask them to share something about their good experience online. It never hurts to try. Just don’t be overzealous about this (i.e. don’t mention it more than once!).
  7. Fix your internal problems. As a business owner, you must learn to take criticism to heart. Try not to let it consume you, but if it the complaints are, indeed, based in fact and you see a pattern, it’s time for some serious soul searching and self-examination. Use this as an opportunity to fix the problem at hand, and be on the lookout for other potential challenges. You can often nip a situation in the bud, before it goes viral.