Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash
Many franchised companies seemingly meet all the requirements to succeed.
They provide the necessary support to their franchisees with a turn-key operation. They continually create products. They advertise to promote their company’s overall reputation.
However, that’s not enough for a sector that is increasingly turning to automation because of minimum-wage mandates and franchisee employees who lack in common sense.
Customer service and marketing skills are at the core of every sustainable business.
Unsuccessful franchisors fail because they don’t adequately monitor and train their franchisees’ workers in customer service and marketing.
Assuming you’ve recruited quality, trainable franchisees, you have to continually help them to market your brand.
So for brand enhancement, it behooves franchisors to empower their franchisees with the right training for sustainable growth to attract loyal, repeat and new customers.
This means periodic reminders on spending money cost-effectively, upgrading local-community marketing and social-media techniques.
Here are training imperatives:
1. Bring in an outside participant
No matter what they claim, don’t assume your new franchisees are skilled in marketing and customer service.
Even if you provide the best of marketing and customer-service playbooks, you’ll find franchisees won’t be able to adequately execute without training supplied by you.
Hire third party experts in customer service and marketing. Have the experts start with your own team.
In this way, you’ll know what your franchisees are learning and your people will be prepared to train future franchisees.
2. Encourage franchisee mentoring
There’s an old saying that’s apropos here: “You can’t keep what you’ve got unless you give it away.”
Motivate your successful franchisees to communicate with new franchisees. By discussing important concepts and ideas, there are multiple benefits to both your successful franchisees and neophytes.
It can be very gratifying for established franchisees to help others and it will help them to stay sharp by teaching others.
If a new franchisee fails in marketing and customer service, it can adversely impact the other franchisees and your business overall.
So, it will save you time and money and will help insure your overall brand reputation after the new franchisees implement best practices.
3. Learn to innovate from your training consultants
Not only will outside participants help your franchisees to implement your playbook, they are a source for information.
More than likely, they’ve been exposed to new ideas which they can share to help your business.
They can also help you to anticipate future obstacles to your business.
4. Inspire your franchisees to excellence
New franchisees are often guilty of not practicing due diligence. To their way of thinking, they’ve bought a turnkey operation. So they robotically go through the motions but don’t take ownership of their operation.
It’s important for your franchisees to regularly monitor and evaluate their progress.
If solutions to challenges aren’t readily obvious to them, they should be checking with you to get help even between the visits by your representatives to their locations.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related resources:
The Right Recipe to Grow Your Business by Franchising — Franchising is an alternative to organic growth. You don’t need nearly as much cash on hand for facilities, products, services and talent. Here’s how with five strategies.
For Profits, Manage Your Growth at the Right Pace — Entrepreneurs frequently try to rush their business growth. Certainly, growth is great but if you scale too fast, you’re looking for trouble. The key is to prepare.
“Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation.”
-Max Euwe
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