KFC business experience and success over the decades provides opportunity for entrepreneurs, business owners and managers to learn valuable strategies and ideas to run their businesses to success. Here are business strategies, which have taken KFC from a one-man business to the multi billion dollars enterprise that it is today, and which you can apply in your business.
Your Knowledge/Skill is Invaluable Asset
The success of any business is determined to a large extent by the expertise, knowledge or special skill the founder is bringing to the table. A business stands to succeed if the founder is well experienced, knowledgeable, and possesses uncommon skill in that line of business. This is why it is always advisable for people to set up businesses from their experience or special skill.
Colonel Harland Sanders’ uncommon skill in preparing chicken meals was no doubt a major factor for the success, growth and expansion of KFC.
Uniqueness Sets You Apart
By doing things differently from how other people or businesses are doing it, will cause customers to see you as being different. This perception takes you away from the pack, and places you on a virgin land in the customer’s mind. It is therefore very important to differentiate your business from competitors by the way you create products, attend to customers, deliver your products, etc.
Harland Sanders became very popular in the late 1930 because of the unique method he developed for spicing and pressure-frying chickens.
Directed Focus and Persistence
When we focus our energy and efforts squarely at accomplishing a goal, and we persist on working it out even with little or no progress at the beginning, we would eventually reach the goal in the passage of time.
After losing his business and flat broke at 65, Colonel Sanders’ total commitment to rebuilding his business for another 10 years paid off with 600 franchises, and income of $300,000 before tax.
Allowing Professional Managers
You may have started your business as a one-man enterprise, however, as it grows, you must bring in expert business managers to build it. They can come in as employees or as partners. These are people who can create the structures and systems that will enable the business to run independently and to outlive you.
Having allowed professional managers to take control of Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1964, the business was transformed from a one-man business into a smoothly run modern corporation with expansion to all 50 states and to some foreign markets.
Expanding Your Market
Whatever business you are into, there are always good markets for your products elsewhere other than your immediate location or environment. Most times, the demand for your products may even be greater in some foreign lands, with little or no competition, as well as cheaper cost of production, than what you are experiencing where you are located. To increase your revenue, you must continually discover and expand your market.
By 1992, KFC was making more profits from its international operations than what was being made by its units in the U.S.
