Xact Impact Franchising Analogies

Getting into business is more that having a truck with a spray rig. There are many issues to consider and so much information to gather and understand. Wouldn't it be great to have some assistance? How about:

Incorporation —what kind of entity should you be (sole proprietor, LLC, Inc.)? What’s the difference? Where should you incorporate? Can you incorporate in another state? Why would you want to? What are the tax issues that you should consider when incorporating? Do you need an EIN and if so, what is an EIN and where do you get one?
Insurance —what kind of coverage do you need? Who do you call to get a quote? How many quotes should you get? Is there much of a difference between insurance providers?
Licenses —what kind of licenses do you need to have? Where do you get them?
Naming —should you invest the time and money to create a great name? If you do think up a great name, do you need to protect it (i.e., trademark)? How do you do that? Do you need to protect it just locally or do you need to get federal protection? How do you do that? Is it worth it?
Logo design —how important is a logo? How do you design one? Does it matter what colors you use or how many colors you use? What about size, readability or text treatment? Does any of this matter? Do you get more customers faster with a good logo?
Advertising —where do you advertise? How much does it cost? Which yellow pages should you use? Should you place an ad in the on-line yellow pages? Should you place an ad in the local paper? Should you print door hangers? How do you do that? What about post cards? Design, printing, mailing—how do you do all of those things well and not spend too much money? How do you know what will work and what is just a waste of time and money?
Software selection —do you need special software to help manage your business? Is Do you need software for pest management? How many choices are there? How do you choose? Who is going to provide you with software support?
What else do you need to know? What else should you consider? How can you increase your changes to being successful?

Okay, let’s say you research the above questions, made good decisions and spent considerable money to get into business for yourself as a pest management professional. You are not Orkin, Terminix or a big regional company so nobody recognizes your company’s name. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you get noticed?

There are 20,000 professional pest-control companies in the United States and most use the same chemical applied the same way. How do you compete? How can you be different? Most likely you will need to compete by offering customers a very low price. Are you willing to be the lowest cost provider? Of course, there is a limit to how cheap you can be. If you are not making a profit, what’s the point?

Here is an analogy: Let’s say that instead of starting a pest-control company, you decide to open a sandwich shop. You know about sandwiches and you want to have your own business. You decide to open Tom’s Sub Shop (assuming your name is Tom) and now you need to make hundreds of decisions about how to have the best sub shop. How do you compete successfully? How can you be different than the hundreds of other places people can go to buy a sandwich?

Now, let’s say that instead, you choose to open a Subway Sub Shop. You have great name recognition, you get help with choosing a site, a menu, pricing, advertising, forecasting and planning. You have people you can call to ask questions. And you know that there are already thousands of very successful Subway stores out there. You have the template to be successful too. This is why people buy franchises.

Okay, last analogy. Instead of a sandwich shop, you decide to open a grocery store. You could open Tom’s Grocery Store and compete with Publix and Winn Dixie. Groceries are groceries, right? Is there a store out there that is doing it better? You could open a Whole Foods. Their natural/organic approach draws in thousands of customers daily. Some 30% of the population identifies themselves as a “natural” consumer (people who want to purchase at least some organic or natural foods, products and services). Whole Foods has the value of being natural and health conscious. They don’t compete on price, they don’t have to. The people who shop at Whole Foods choose to shop there because they like the products and the experience.

That’s what Xact Impact Natural Pest Management is. A franchise that helps you compete by making it easy to get into business and gives you a way to be different in the very crowded pest-control market.