Increase Franchisee Compliance With Coaching

Franchisee compliance and conducting regular ‘Field Visits’ or ‘Audits’ were, for many years, the sole form of franchisee touch-points with their home office.

Field Visits and Audits are a more traditional, reactive form of franchisee support, while the more modern approach to franchisee support is proactive business coaching that both:

• Improves franchisee engagement and satisfaction
• Increases franchisee compliance and buy-in on their system

Proactively coaching franchisees on business skills, financials, leadership skills, vision planning, and soft skills like emotional intelligence all fall under Field Support.

As a company that helps franchise systems maximize their field support, we spend most of our time focusing on how proactive business coaching for franchisees improves profitability, performance, validation, and lifecycle.

However, there is another benefit to proactive field support in franchise systems, and that is a greater understanding, and increase in franchisee compliance.

Let’s talk about it:

Why Franchisee Compliance Matters

Franchisee compliance is incredibly important for franchise system success. This isn’t new news but it’s worth highlighting why franchisee compliance matters so much:

Protects The Franchisee’s Investment

Every time we phrase it this way, people really get it. Compliance is when a franchisee sticks to the legal, operational, and branding standards outlined in their franchise agreement.

Often that can sound like it only applies to the home office team, and that the corporate team is trying to enforce brand compliance for their own interests. But protecting the franchisee’s investment into the franchise system is the home office’s job. 

When the franchisee understands it this way, compliance gets a whole lot easier:

When every franchisee in the system is working together under the same brand standards, every franchisee gets the fruits of that effort. But if even one franchisee starts to go outside of those standards, it hurts all the other business owners within the brand. 

Customer experience changes, franchisees no longer benefit from what they invested in, and they lose the leverage of being a solid, reputable brand.

Improves Customer Satisfaction and Brand Consistency

Just like the point above, focusing on compliance being something that the home office does for the benefit of the franchisee makes compliance a lot easier. 

The easiest way to get that point across is to talk about how a customer feels interacting with a familiar brand, and how creating a solid brand experience across all locations means everyone gets better reviews, more repeat customers, and improved overall revenue.

Preserves Legal and Brand Standards

When the ‘protecting the investment’ and the ‘customer satisfaction & brand reputation’ points don’t work with a franchisee, that’s when the legal element often comes into play. 

A guiding question we suggest using with your franchisees who are struggling with compliance is to ask them Why they invested in this franchise, and What value did they see in starting an existing business model vs starting from scratch.

How Field Coaching Improves Compliance

When it comes to proactively supporting your franchisees with regular coaching, there are several ways this improves franchisee compliance.

Keeps Your Finger On The Pulse

Regular field coaching sessions allow franchise operations teams to monitor each franchisee’s progress toward compliance goals and allow more frequent check-in points than an annual or even quarterly audit.

How To Implement: As part of your coaching call check-in, include an opportunity for your franchisee to bring up any challenges they’re experiencing so you can brainstorm together how they can get ahead of the issue. 

This is also a great opportunity to clarify expectations, refer franchisees back to their operations manual, and offer personalized recommendations that will support that franchisee specifically.

Grab our free coaching call planner here for a spreadsheet to use.

Encourage Accountability and Ownership

Regular franchisee coaching fosters a culture of accountability and encourages franchisees to take ownership of their business. Taking ownership means compliance and ‘protecting their investment’ will mean more to them on a personal level.

How To Implement: Start with vision planning. What does this franchisee want out of their business? Do they want to retire by a certain age or take specific trips? Do they want to scale their business and sell? 

By focusing on their own unique goals and vision for their business, creating action plans, and having regular calls, your franchisees will feel more connected to their business and have a stronger desire for growth and success.

Provide Training and Education

Field coaching provides more frequent opportunities for ongoing skill training, professional development, and touchpoints for questions about brand compliance. When your franchisee is consistently leveling up their skills and seeing the benefits of growing their business, compliance becomes a tool to accomplish their goals.

How To Implement: Provide training on things like financials, SWOT analysis, hiring strategies, leadership development, and more. If you’re looking for a resource for providing this training to franchisees, check out our Performance Groups!

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Have more questions about field support for your system? Get on an initial call with our team to learn more about our field coach training, fractional coaching, and franchisee performance groups!

Get in touch with us!