Franchise Articles

Last May Paul Brown made a bold move. He left behind his hotel management career to move into the food service arena, taking over as CEO of Arby's. But it's a move Brown was well prepared to make. He has extensive experience and a proven track record in leading global and franchise brands including Hilton Worldwide, Expedia, and InterContinental Hotels Group.
"What I have learned throughout by career in franchising is it is really a competition for capital," says the 46-year-old. "If a brand provides a great return on investment for franchisees, they will continue to invest and build with that brand." Brown says he loves the franchise business because it's a "relatively straightforward virtuous cycle." He sums it up like this, franchisees make a great return, franchisees invest and build more units, franchisor makes a great return, franchisor invests more in the brand, and begin again...

"In an era of increasing automation (CRM, etc.), how do you maintain a personal, one-on-one touch with prospects?"



Jennifer Durham VP of Franchise Development,Checkers
At Checkers and Rally's, we've been in the business of Big, Bold Flavor for more than 27 years. But there is one aspect that sets our guests, our restaurant teams and our support teams apart - and that's Passion. We offer crazy good, one-of-a-kind menu items at a great value to our guests, which are also easy to execute operationally for our franchisees. Our unique buildings and restaurant designs stand out from the pack and provide a retro feel with a contemporary edge.
The same passion holds true with franchise prospects interested in a Checkers/Rally's franchise opportunity...

Franchisee validation is driven by three factors. The first is unit-level economics. Are franchisees' financial returns meeting their expectations?

The second factor is the quality of the franchisors' training, support, and performance management systems. Would franchisees say the value of the tools and support they receive is greater than or equal to the royalty dollars invested?

The third factor is the quality of the franchisor-franchisee interpersonal relationships. Do franchisees, employees, and leadership of the franchisor trust each other and work toward crafting mutually profitable campaigns, offers, and solutions? Do franchisees feel they are heard and understood? Does information routinely flow up and down the organization or just funnel down from on high? Would franchisees say they are informed about issues important to them? Would they say they feel like an integral part of a team or more like the low man on the totem pole?

The way franchisees would answer these questions speaks volumes about the culture of the franchise organization...

How would you grade your sales effort? Is a "C" okay for your company? Are your competitors scoring higher?

With 2013 trending to be one of the best years in the recent past for franchising growth, we must make sure we are prepared to take advantage and grow our franchise brands.

To do that, we need to examine our systems and procedures and create a "scorecard" for success. Today's franchise buyers expect the best in marketing materials, in systems, and in professional sales consultants who can guide them to a franchise that can meet their financial and personal goals.

The franchise systems that will be most successful today will have taken the time and invested the capital to implement the critical changes they need for success...

Hopefully, you are adopting a standardized real estate process that encompasses a clearly defined all-in-one strategy for site selection, lease negotiation, and legal review. I realize that, as a franchise executive, you may not have the time, resources, or capabilities to put this process in place. This four-part series highlights 11 key points for standardizing your real estate process. Click to read or review Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3.


VIII. Building a Successful Real Estate Strategy
Site selection, lease negotiation, & legal review

Up to this point, we've focused on the importance of having a standardized real estate process in place to support franchisee success. Now let's take a look at the central components of this process, as well as the potential costs of not having a process in place...

To stand out among the more than 3,000 active franchise opportunities in today's market, you must seize your buyers' attention with benefit-driven programs and systems. Stay tuned to the cycles of the economy, your industry, new competitive influences, and buyer interests. Savvy franchisors do what it takes to 1) maintain compelling franchise programs, 2) remain sensitive to their buying audience, 3) understand what those buyers want, and 4) know how to package their opportunity to successfully recruit them.

Here are 6 key tips on how to keep your successful franchise system moving ahead in today's marketplace.

Joe Hertzman is always thinking.
When the Louisville, Kentucky, father of four attended sporting events with his kids, he noticed that they always requested waffle cones when they ordered ice cream. So when Rally's decided to add new Cold Creations items to the brand's menu, Hertzman had a suggestion.
"I said, 'Look guys, why don't we put the ice cream in waffle cones and we can get another buck on the transaction and make another 80 to 85 cents?'" he recalls. "Around the office, we jokingly call it the 'JoeCone.'"
That kind of innovation over the years is what has earned Hertzman the Franchisee of the Year Award from Rally's/Checkers and this year's Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine Innovation Award.
"Rally's has great brand relevance, and we truly appreciate their leadership...

90 percent of SMBs fail from poor financial management

You say you want to own a business and make your own decisions? You say that owning a business is one of the few remaining ways to build net worth today? You say that building a business is one of the greatest personal challenges you can face? That success makes the clearest possible statement about your perseverance, ingenuity, and skill?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, you're right. And you're right no matter how you became an independent business owner. You probably didn't volunteer for the job. Perhaps you married into it, or inherited it, or got fired from another job and just fell into it. No matter. There it was, and you did it.
It wasn't easy, either. I know...

Ricky Warman was a Prudential Securities investment manager who chucked the corporate life to take a stab at franchising in the early 1990s. He's created a successful operation over the past two decades and lately he's been strategically consolidating his business to Southern Florida.
At one point in recent years he had 53 Papa John's locations throughout Florida. Over the past four years, however, he sold off all the units outside his core areas of Miami, Dade, and Broward counties and redirected his focus to the remaining 31 units.
"I like to be near the stores and be able to concentrate on doing things really well right here in my own backyard," he says. But with his Papa John's territory now maxed out, and his desire to grow propelling him, he's turned his attention to additional brands...

You have only one chance to make a first impression.
While that statement is something you've probably heard at least 1,000 times, many of us think of it only in terms of meeting someone in person. We fail to realize the importance of that first impression when meeting someone over the telephone.
The truth of the matter is that, when interacting with a customer on the telephone, you must work even harder to ensure a great first impression than you would if you were meeting face to face. Why? Because your voice--and your words--must compensate for the lack of visuals that would connect you with your customer when talking to each other in person.
Here are some tips I urge you to put into practice in order to provide your call-in customers with the best possible service:

1...

How to Handle Embezzlement in a Family Business
Hearing about embezzlement in a public company rarely shocks anyone, but when it happens in a family business, people are often stunned. "How could he steal from his own family?" "Doesn't she know she's hurting her siblings/cousins/parents?"
As tough and painful as embezzlement is, it's not as uncommon as many of us would like to think. Sure the kind of embezzlement that results in jail time is rare, but other levels of it happen daily.
How could this happen? Many factors lead to embezzlement, including chronic financial strain, a general sense of family entitlement, lack of internal company controls, and the reality or perception of being overworked and underpaid. To make matters worse, often the embezzler doesn't even know that what he or she is doing is wrong...

Study finds burger QSRs are most visited but leave customers least satisfied

A second round of results from the recent Empathica 2013 Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Benchmark Study have been released. The latest results reveal that burger chains are winning one battle and losing another in the QSR industry.
The survey queried 10,000 U.S. consumers on the 62 top QSR brands, measuring food, order accuracy, speed of service, menu, restaurant atmosphere and cleanliness, staff, and value. These results determined QSR category rankings, as well as the drivers behind customer loyalty for each genre of quick service restaurant.

Number of Visits Doesn’t Indicate Satisfaction
Based on the number of customer visits to the top 62 QSR brands reported in a 30-day period, the study ranked QSRs by category...

"In your development efforts, how does your marketing team balance automation with a personal touch?"


Heather Anderson
Director of Marketing
Little GymAt The Little Gym International, our franchise development process is more high-touch than high-tech. While automation is an integral part of our marketing strategy, building personal relationships is our top priority.
Since its inception in 1976, The Little Gym has been a family-oriented business. As the company has grown, we've remained true to our roots and have cultivated the same atmosphere within our corporate office and with our franchise owners. It's important to us that we establish a personal relationship with prospective franchise owners from the very start...

Meg Roberts says her professional career path changed course into the franchising business unexpectedly. The Michigan native always thought she would be in the advertising business, studied it in school, and went to work for one of the largest ad agencies, BBDO in Chicago, eventually working on major accounts such as Wrigley. But the high stress and long hours weren't conducive to a family and any life outside work. So she moved back to Michigan where she lived not far from Molly Maid headquarters and, as fate would have it, she even knew someone who worked there. One thing led to another and in 2007 she found herself as the director of marketing for the 30-year-old brand.
"One of the things that I came to realize very early on was that franchise marketing is much more complex than consumer retail marketing," she says...

In an effort to protect and strengthen their brands, national franchisors and corporations often enforce restrictive marketing policies for franchisees and local operations.

For example, new research from BIA/Kelsey indicates some franchisors limit or filter social media used by franchisees. According to the survey of local franchise businesses, more than half (51 percent) stated their franchisors are "highly involved" with the social media presence of their local franchise businesses, with some requiring the local franchisee to run public dialogue with customers through the national corporate website.

Another 23 percent of franchisees said their franchisors are "somewhat involved" with their social media presence, allowing the local franchisees to use social networks like Facebook, but with rules and boundaries about how active they can be and what they can say...

"Location, location, location," long the mantra of real estate, is becoming a key factor in mobile marketing, according to a new report, "How Location Data Is Transforming the Entire Mobile Industry," by BI Intelligence. (The complete report is available free if you sign on for a 2-week free trial.)

The report includes statistics on the location-based services marketplace "that indicate its supremacy in mobile marketing," writes Marcelo Ballve, editorial director of BI Intelligence, a subscription research service from Business Insider that provides research, reports, and data about the mobile industry.

Noting that Facebook, Google, Yelp, Instagram, Groupon, Twitter, and dozens of popular apps offer location-enabled features, Ballve, who authored the report, writes:

"Those mobile properties, and many others, have moved way past the 'check-in' concept, which in any case never really caught on with users...

Every now and then in the race to keep up with the breathtaking pace of change in social media - marketing's Usain Bolt - it's good to step off the track, catch your breath, and try to grab not only a little oxygen, but a bigger perspective. That's what Marketo's Jon Miller has done in his blog examining what has changed - and what hasn't - since August 8, 2006, 1,000 blogs later. The entire blog is long, so we've presented edited excerpts. For the full blog, click here.

This is the 1,000th post to Marketo's blog. It seems fitting to commemorate the occasion by revisiting our very first post, "Modern B2B Marketing Defined."

What Hasn't Changed

The three core principles I outlined then are just as true today - in fact, even more so...

Facebook marketing: myth vs. reality
Knowing what works and what doesn't is crucial for social media marketers. There are a lot of misconceptions, mistakes, and just plain misinformation out there. Four Facebook marketing "myths" that we hear over and over:

When Kevin and Laurel Wilkerson, winners of Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine's Veteran Entrepreneurship Award, came to Marco's Pizza from the military using the IFA's Vetfran program, they were pretty sure their total of 44 combined years in the U.S. Army stood them in good stead.
"What I enjoyed most about the Army was the variety of things I did every day: decision-making, analysis, operations, logistics, training," says Kevin Wilkerson, who retired in 2005 after 24 years as an infantry office in the Army. "Franchising, especially multi-unit franchising, tends to be similar to that. When you look at what a multi-unit franchisee does in a typical day, you're talking about the fact that we can apply ourselves to lease negotiations, site selections, hard and soft science, construction, sequencing, marketing, operations, business analysis, personnel, training...

How much maintenance information do you have on all of your locations? Do you know how many of your HVAC units will need to be replaced this year? Are your signs still under warranty? What maintenance is the landlord required to do, and when? How often do your floors need to be stripped and waxed? When should your backflows be tested and fire extinguishers inspected? Do you know how much you are spending on repairs, and are those charges consistent at different locations?
Tracking your facilities maintenance transactions may not be a priority; treating this as a reactive component to your business is standard practice. However, if you believe that your locations are your #1 asset and that maintaining them could lead to more business and a better customer experience, you would want to simplify this process, correct?
If you had a work order management system that was easy to use, you could quickly find all of this information and automate your maintenance programs using the following key features found in work order systems: