Michael Gerber's Franchise Prototype Rule to Win #5: Uniformly Predictable Service

Gerber's fifth rule, from p. 105:

The Model Will provide a Uniformly Predictable Service to the Customer.

Your customer has to know that your business will be the same tomorrow as it is today.

Otherwise he or she won't come back and they won't tell their friends about you, or they'll say you're out to lunch. And if you have a franchise, customers have to know that your product will be the same in Seattle as is in Saskatoon.

One of the things that draw customers to places like Howard Johnson's, or MacDonald's, Wal-Mart, or Starbucks, regardless of whatever you think of those places, is that people know what they're going to get. I know that Starbucks is always going to make a grande Americano the same way wherever I go.

If I go to a different caffeine den I don't know what the coffee's going to be like, what sizes they have, or how it will be made and I always have to ask them how they make it. I have enough on my mind without having to worry about how they're going to make my coffee. And the layout's pretty much the same. You know where you go to order, to pick up, and where to get the sweetener and cream. Other places, you have to search around unless you know it already.

What do you think of this? The goal is to produce more skilled entrepreneurs. Does this help? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.

The Turn-Key Revolution

Michael Gerber, in The E-Myth Revisited; Why Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. New York: Harper Business, 1995, on pp. 79-80,points to the "turn-key revolution" as a "way of doing business that has the power to dramatically transform any small business--indeed, any business, no matter what it's size--from a condition of chaos and disease to a condition of order, excitement, and continual growth."

Gerber writes about Ray Kroc, who expanded McDonald's from one hamburger joint to an economic power house by not caring about selling hamburgers. He cared about selling businesses.

He touts what he calls the "Business Format Franchise," which goes beyond mere franchising. In franchising, "the franchisor licenses the right to small companies to market its nationally known products nationally. But the Business Format Franchise moves a step beyond the trade name franchise. The key he says, is this "provides the franchisee with an entire system of doing business." And in that difference lies the true significance of the Turn-Key Revolution and its phenomenal success. The Turn-Key Revolution and the Business Format Franchise were born of a belief that runs counter to what most business founders in this country believe. Most business founders believe that the success of a business resides in the success of the product that it sells...[Rather,] the true product of a business is the business itself. (See p. 83)"

If you want to read more about this, get the book and read pp. 83-90.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Share your experiences. Post to this blog.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com