Ensure Your Franchisees Understand the Big Picture

As a franchisor, do your franchisees resist, or even get a little paralyzed when you start talking about adding franchises to their region? I’m betting that they do! And really, can you blame them? In case you haven’t figured out by now, I have a soft spot in my heart for franchisees. And that’s partly because I’ve worked with a lot of different franchisees, but also because I have been one for the past 18 years.

In the experience I’ve had on both the franchisor and franchisee side of the business, I’ve developed a true passion for understanding what franchisees are feeling, what they go through and where they’re coming from. Franchisors often forget that these franchisees are counting on them to have their backs. So when the franchisor adds franchises to their region, franchisees can feel like the franchisor doesn’t have their back.

Improving Profitability and Increasing Brand Engagement

Prior to being a franchisee, I worked with a lot of different franchisees on the franchisor side, and my intention was always to help them improve profitability and increase their engagement with the brand. I would often hear the fears and frustrations when we were opening new franchises in their area. And guess what? They’re right. It’s true. Sales are going to go down. But what we’ve found, is that typically sales would go down, only for about the next couple of months. But then they would rebound and often they would rebound exponentially.

We have to help franchisees understand that the overall growth is going to lead to growth for them and increase everyone’s business. My response when franchisees would be upset about us opening another franchise in their area was, as compassionately as possible, to help them understand that growth was always part of the plan and that to look at those sales that they were getting before those other franchises came into the area as a bonus.

Help franchisees see the bigger picture

I really found that franchisees needed help wrapping their head around how this increase in brand awareness is actually a really good thing. The increase of resources that are going to come into the franchise through royalties and the ad fund is going to create more economies of scale. This is going to lead to lower costs for everybody and a beefed-up corporate infrastructure, which includes more support staff and technologies that create even more efficiencies. Not to mention, it includes more marketing money to promote the whole brand. That’s all going to trickle down as a benefit to the franchisee.

So my exponential growth tip for today is:

Ensure your franchisees understand the big picture of brand growth

If this gets your wheels turning or you need help communicating this to your franchisees, I’m here for you. Helping franchisees and franchisors establish win/win relationships is one of my superpowers. I’m looking forward to hearing from you and in the meantime, go be awesome.