Business Plan Resources Industry Standards In Small Business Plans

Writen by Peter McLean

The purpose of adopting a quality standards framework is to enable and encourage small businesses to strive for excellence. In some industries, such standards are imposed by government regulations. In fact, the drive for compliance is becoming more and more the norm in an effort to guarantee a minimum level of quality of services to customers.

Effective small business owners and managers engage in best practice activities anyway, and the adopting of standards underpins their business policy development. They take a proactive approach to striving for excellence in their business because they know that by doing so they will achieve highly successful financial results and their key business objectives.

The structure for developing a set of standards within your business requires thinking about the kind of business you are in. The next step is to make a commitment to best practice in the industry sector of which your business is a part.

The following seven areas serve as a guide for aligning and integrating excellence in business:

1. Build leadership and management capacity
2. Develop a strategic business plan
3. Inculcate customer focus throughout your business
4. Deliver products and services that provide value
5. Create a developmental culture
6. Adopt a common decision making framework
7. Measure your business performance

One - Build Leadership And Management Capacity
Implementing this principle ensures that the business owner and managers are committed and dedicated to the purpose and the direction of the business. The leaders of the business show the way, through their own beliefs, attitudes and behavior. They engage in their own leadership skills development as a constant.

The leaders in the business are the ones who must live the mission, vision and values of the business, on a daily basis and at all times in everything that they say and do. They adopt an 'always learning' mindset.

Two – Develop A Strategic Business Plan
Effective business owners have a deep and thorough understanding of the nature and direction of their business. To this end, they clearly articulate the vision they have for their business within the framework of the small business plan. Everyone in the business understands the business plan. Everyone knows what their roles, responsibilities and accountabilities are in bringing about the results that have been spelled out for achieving the vision of the business.

Three - Inculcate A Customer Focus Throughout Your Business
Everything that is done within a business is about delivering quality outcomes and results for customers. The effective business owner knows who his or her customers are, where they are located and what their needs are. With this knowledge in hand, they then ensure that their customer needs are met and, indeed, exceeded. Systems, policy development, procedures, processes and measures are all essential in achieving this area of excellence.

Four - Deliver Products And Services That Provide Value
The effective business owner and manager always make sure that their business provides value for money with their product/service range. This means having proper controls in place for quality assurance, from product design and development, production, distribution and customer follow-up and feedback. These control mechanisms are indicative of an ongoing, continuous improvement culture that ensures value for customers on a consistent basis.

Five - Create A Developmental Culture
The successful business owner creates an ethos where continuous learning is the hallmark of pursuing excellence in everything that is done. This is evidenced from the recruitment stage through to exiting. All the employees in a value-based business are employed as being competent and being the 'best fit' for the business. They are always developing, both personally and professionally. They all have development plans that are aligned to business objectives and performance outcomes.

Six - Adopt A Common Decision Making Framework
Effective decision-making is critical in achieving excellence. Successful high performing business environments adopt a common language and agreed ways of arriving at best-balanced choices, reaching conclusions, resolving conflict and making hard-edged decisions. Everyone in high performing business cultures knows what these frameworks are and uses the tools consistently to ensure common understanding in the implementation of problem solving/conflict resolution.

Seven – Measure Your Business Performance
Establishing benchmarks and measuring results and performance against agreed objectives and outcomes will insure high performance and excellence in business. Such measures are identified and spelled out in concrete terms in relation to the other six areas listed above.

Peter McLean is a highly experienced Coach, Senior Manager, Consultant, Business Owner and Company Director. He successfully coaches top Executives in some of Australia's leading multi-national companies. One such Senior Executive recently won an International Award for Excellence within his particular field. In addition, Peter works extensively in the Public, Private, Commercial and Not-for-Profit sectors, delivering outstanding results for his clients. To learn more of how you can benefit from Peter's experience, visit the Essential Business Coach web site!

Over Disclosure Hurts Businesses

Writen by Lance Winslow

Many investors and business ethics professionals are calling for more transparency and regulators are calling for more disclosure. Yet in the franchising industry this can spell disaster indeed. Often Competitors seeking information about companies will collect these documents and use it to the disadvantage of franchising companies.

In my company we have done extremely well on the Internet in attracting people who want their car washed, we are well spidered on the search engines for key words, partly because our websites have been up prior to 1995. We therefore get a high number of website visits or hits; we have exceeding 1 million visits per month on many occasions. Many times people in the market sector of car washing will come to our site after searching the words that categorize their industry. They look through our site and then they find the opportunities page, and think to themselves, hmmm? These competitors then fill out the online form without revealing they are already in the business and actually competitors.

The FTC's online complaint form also draws many such people to file complaints; few of these folks represent legitimate grievances. In the case of our company, The Car Wash Guys, like Ray Kroc who never sold franchises to those previously in the restaurant business, we will not sell to those in the car wash business. We believe that they have ingrained in themselves their way of doing things, which is incompatible with our system and methods and of course we feel are quite inferior to our business plan developed over 27 years. Had such competitors been as well developed they would be franchising as well. These competitors ask us questions thinking the can copy some of our idea, so they call up, email, and start asking questions. Sometimes about five minutes into such a conversation we often know they are not real, but not always. They are too knowledgeable about the industry and they usually slip up in one of their questions or just have to tell us how great they are and how many cars they are watching, thus giving themselves away.

The Car Wash Guys like many franchising companies are in a really ugly and highly competitive industry, almost as bad as the garbage business before the massive consolidation by Wayne Hiezenga or trucking prior to the days of de-regulation. Luckily that comes with intense egos from independents and not a whole lot of smarts. Why should The Car Wash Guys send out a UFOC to a possible competitor when the UFOC they receive could be copied and a few changes made and potentially save them $35,000 in legal fees and take away from a practicing attorney (who pretend to works their butt off, when paralegals do all the work and they use CD ROMs and Boiler plate clauses). These attorneys often claim to be decent and hard-working professionals on the ABA Franchising Forum as they try to put a lock on their industry from those who might advise in a similar capacity?

The UFOCs cost to send it out is just about $8.00 (including postage) and if those competitors realized I had to send them out they would have every one of the industry's 19,000 tunnel car wash owners across the country email us. So what is $8.00 times 19,000. Oh and there are about 35,000 estimated coin-op car washes too all of which are direct or indirect competitors of the Car Wash Guys (the only mobile car wash franchisor in the country). The UFOC contains estimated number of projected units and all kinds of information we do not want out. We are not a public company and until we know who is asking we prefer to keep our information close to the vest, as the competitive markets are not the level playing field we are led to believe as we study business in our educational institutions. Too bad the Federal Trade Commission cannot see this obvious fact. By keeping information secret we protect our current franchisee team members (consumers) from lose lips sink ships syndrome. Why add competitive disadvantage in the market place to our team against competitors we should not have to disclose information since they are independent businesses.

The Federal Trade Commission fails to understand the extreme competitiveness of the marketplace, they fail to see how this hurts individual franchised units, who are small business people and the Federal Trade Commission fails to see how these independent franchised outlets of the franchisor are actually the same consumer they purport to protect. Therefore the logic that the incessant and unnecessary and totally over regulated and required disclosure is a bogus notion indeed. The Car Wash Guys do a disservice and can cause hurtful competition to our franchisees if we divulge information that easily. There is more information about our company in those 190-230 pages of the UFOC and attachments than on my personal computer or in my wallet. A person could go thru my trash, car jack me and steal my wallet, with one of our company laptops inside and still have less information than is now required by the current UFOC.

The Federal Trade Commission purportedly cares about identity theft, yet demands personal information about myself, my employees and current franchises in a disclosure document that any one can get their hands on, even Osama Bin Laden? Who is the real terrorist? Is it government's job to help destroy franchising and all franchise systems? Then may I ask, who the Federal Trade Commission's franchising division will manage and regulate in the future when no one franchises anymore? When they admit they are destroying franchising to save it from the Domino Effect of the Evil Fraudsters. Is this 'my lie'? No it is the truth. Why are we burning down our global villages. Think about this simple logic and thanks for listening.

Lance Winslow

Small Business Grants Tips From The Pros

Writen by Howard Schwartz

Every business starts with an idea or a dream. To implement this idea or to turn your dream in to reality you require finance. A grant supports the business ideas and turns the dreams of an entrepreneur in to reality.

There are many types of grants offered by the Governments and other financial institutions that include individual grants for personal necessities, business grants for starting new business, education grants for funding education and many more. Grants are always a feasible option to support existing business or financing new business in all fields. While the United States government does not offer direct grants for supporting small business there are many state development agencies, non-profit organizations, intermediary lending institutions and local government, which offer grants to expand and enhance small businesses.

Small businesses always play a significant role in the economic growth of a country and that is the reason governments are always ready to offer financial resources to facilitate small business. You can receive small business grant to start up any type of business. From carpet cleaning, photocopying, private tutoring services to day care business you name any business and these agencies have the grants for you. All U.S. citizens and residents are eligible to receive U.S. Federal Government, State Government and Private Foundation-funded grants and loans. Apart from this these grant programs do not require credit checks, collateral, security deposits or co-signers. Small business grants are easily available. Anyone who is 18 year old and thinking about going into business for himself or wanting to expand his existing business can apply for the grant. Grants varying between $500.00 to $50,000.00 can be obtained from these agencies. Usually there are larger payments for business start up costs. If you are an entrepreneur than you can use the privileges provided by the government. Small business grants are the ideal way to fulfill your dreams of becoming a business owner.

For additional information on Small Business Grants please visit: http://www.hjventures.com/grants/government-grant-proposal.html

Howard Schwartz is a partner in several business strategy groups, including HJ Ventures International, Inc. Howard has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs worldwide with a focus on writing business plans for companies interested in raising capital from Venture Funds and Angel Investors. Howard's business plans have secured several million dollars in funding. For more information: http://www.hjventures.com