Franchise Articles

Steve Jobs was a master at many things. He built Apple into a multi-billion giant, and he did it in large part because of the people he hired. His goal, he said, was to hire people who were creative, wickedly smart, and slightly rebellious to help him build "the company that would invent the future."
To say that he met his goal would be a gross understatement. In Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson quotes his subject as saying, "I've learned over the years that, when you have really good people, you don't have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don't like it if you tolerate B work."
Bradford D. Smart, Ph...

Along with the existence of positive and constructive team roles, negative and destructive agendas can emerge that undermine the ability of individual teams to function and perform adequately.
Negative and destructive roles emerge for a variety of reasons, including personal agendas, resistance to change, immaturity, and lack of motivation and/or team leadership and management.
One of a leader's major roles is to observe individual team members and watch for destructive and negative behaviors. When problems surface, they need to encourage the team to collectively recognize and handle them within the team environment. If this fails, it is up to leaders to take specific action with the offending individuals.
Leaders need to be watchful for the following negative roles and behaviors within their individual teams:

Aggressor
The aggressor criticizes everything said within the team environment, and is in effect an active naysayer...

What are you doing to improve the speed and effectiveness of your responses to prospects evaluating your system?

Steve Cox
Vice President, Franchise Development
i9 Sports
To better position us to reach our 2012 goal of doubling franchise awards, we recently revamped our lead follow-up processes to increase the speed and effectiveness of our prospect follow-up.
Step one was the implementation of Captivate from FranConnect. Prospects want a lot of information before they are willing to fully engage. With the implementation of Captivate, we are providing prospects with more information than ever. Our Captivate virtual brochure provides them with the emotional hook needed to engage them, while also providing them with the nuts and bolts of our opportunity, which allows them to determine (1) if investing time in the discovery process makes sense for them, and (2) if they qualify to engage...

When buying or selling a franchise, the last thing either party wants to think about is what happens if the relationship goes south. Litigation is expensive and distracting, and can drag on for years. It's no wonder then that many franchisors choose to include mandatory arbitration provisions in their franchise agreements. Arbitration can streamline the dispute resolution process. Although not without its own drawbacks, arbitration is less formal, quicker, and usually cheaper than litigation. It therefore makes sense to consider (or revisit) whether arbitration makes sense for your system.

Choosing the decision-maker
One advantage to arbitration is the ability to participate in the selection of an arbitrator. Parties to an arbitration can choose someone with specialized experience, such as in franchising...

Franchising can be a tough business. Franchise growth and expansion can be even tougher. More and more brands - and franchisees - are fighting for space and market share today and certain markets are saturated with operators. Throw in the continuing difficulty to access capital for expansion, and adding franchise units to your portfolio can be difficult. But they say that necessity is the mother of invention and some brands and franchisees are turning to non-traditional locations in an effort to continue building their businesses.
Franchises are showing up more and more in place like airports, college campuses, sporting events, concerts, stadiums, hospitals, military bases, government offices, convention centers, highway rest stops and turnpike plazas, even large companies - anywhere large numbers of people congregate, pass through, or live...

Sunita Sagar got her first shot at franchising in 2007, when she was given the chance to buy an underperforming Denny's in Campbell, Calif.
"That restaurant was going downhill," she recalls, "and we turned that restaurant upside down. We turned the people around, we turned the operation around, and we turned the sales around. We started staffing the restaurant with the right people, and then we had an opportunity to purchase more. So we bought three stores in Fresno in 2008."
Sagar stepped in on each, where she could see for herself what needed to change. "We took over those three stores and managed those stores for a few weeks," she says. "We made some staffing changes, found people right for the business, and took a few months to bring those stores around...

Linda Shaub is CMO of Interim Healthcare, a network of 332 franchise locations providing medical staffing and in-home care services in 43 states. Shaub oversees the company's marketing, development, and execution as it relates to customers, franchisees, and prospects. We asked Shaub about changes in today's franchisee prospects, how they receive and process information, and about the importance of staying in tune with existing franchisees. She says there's no question that when it comes to reaching prospects, a quick franchise system response is a necessity. She also says it's important to keep your message simple, to constantly promote and communicate, and to use efficient systems and technology to reach prospects before the competition does...

Everyone loves a good comeback story, and I am honored and humbled to be at the helm of a classic turnaround tale.
Norman Brinker, the casual dining innovator and icon behind Bennigan's, was a wonderful friend and mentor in the business. Thirty-five years ago, he and a team of hard-working executives, many of whom grew within the business and later became CEOs of concepts we know today, built a successful brand with great integrity. When I took over as chief executive of Bennigan's Franchising Company in May 2011, I had nothing but respect for this beloved brand and the franchisees who invested their money and talents into it.
Like many casual-themed brands, Bennigan's became a victim of brand drift over time, moving away from the core elements that made it famous in the late 1980s...

Anil Yadav has graced the pages (and one cover) of Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine twice before. We first interviewed him in 2008 when he had "only" 78 Jack in the Box restaurants and 16 Denny's. Just two years later, when he was named one of the magazine's MVP Award winners, he had expanded to 155 Jack in the Boxes and 26 Denny's.
Today, another couple of years down the line, he's done it again, staking claim to 227 Jack in the Boxes and 30 Denny's. For the record, that makes him the largest Jack in the Box franchisee in the country. He also has become involved with Marco's Pizza as the broker for both the Northern and Southern California markets (so check back with us in 2 more years).
It's all quite amazing when you consider his present-day empire began in 1984 in Northern California, when the teenaged Yadav took a part-time job as a Jack in the Box fry cook to help pay for college...

For franchise marketers, mobile marketing is now paramount to a successful online strategy. Among the 3,500 franchisee websites ElementsLocal supports, we are seeing mobile traffic rise, in some cases more than 30 percent from last year to this. One thing has become evident: mobile traffic is increasing.

According to a recent study by Web.com Group, 84 percent of U.S. small businesses using mobile marketing have seen an increase in new business activity. While early adopters can see a tangible ROI, the majority of small businesses have yet to fully leverage mobile marketing, according to the same study.

Last year comScore reported that out of 234 million U.S. mobile consumers, 82.2 million use a smartphone. And with both Google and Facebook announcing significant initiatives to increase their mobile marketing, it's evident that franchise marketers need to look to mobile marketing for the future...

In case you missed it (and when it comes to marketing and social media there's plenty to keep up on), MarketingSherpa published its Wisdom Report, "Marketing Wisdom for 2012" earlier this year. Subtitled "Real-life stories of success and lessons learned," this 54-page report is offered as a free download and contains something for everyone involved in marketing.

The report contains valuable description and analysis of today's marketing trends from MarketingSherpa, as well as direct comments from members of the MarketingSherpa community. Based on direct experience, these comments offer real-life nuggets and a perspective that can pay off with consumers - no matter what business you're in.

The report is divided into five chapters: Email Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Testing and Optimization, and General Marketing Wisdom...

I am convinced that someday the franchising community will finally get around to unleashing its biggest competitive strength: unit predictability. If a franchisee had the benefit of knowing how every other franchise unit performed over time, could look at what worked and what didn't, and could build their business with that knowledge, the efforts of franchisors would become much more effective. Think how much more powerful this approach would be than being "advised" by training and field support staff rather than shown the results of best practices.
Franchising is uniquely structured to utilize benchmarking capabilities--first, because of the consistency in how the model is applied, and second, because of the size of the unit universe (in excess of 450,000 business format units)...

We asked two franchise marketing pros what they're doing to provide more timely - and relevant - responses to prospect inquiries: Jim Brown, vice president of franchise development at Comfort Keepers, and Steve Cox, vice president of franchise development at i9 Sports. Here's what they said.

Jim C. Brown
Vice President, Franchise Development
Comfort Keepers/CK Franchising
The in-home care sector of franchising has become extremely popular in the past several years. More new concepts are being launched every year. In addition to more competition, these new brands bring more visibility to the sector. Our strategy and sales system have evolved since Comfort Keepers began franchising in 1999. One foundation of our system has remained the same, however: TKD, or Time Kills Deals...

Yellow Pages: "Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated"
Here are four reasons local business marketers should continue to use the Yellow Pages. (1) Providers now offer more than just print directories. They're developing robust online directories of their own, which get significant traffic in local markets. (2) Yellow Pages providers have long-term relationships with local businesses. They've been around for a long time and have strong ties with and deep knowledge of local businesses. (3) They're partnering behind the scenes with the search engines. And, contrary to much received wisdom about advertising and marketing, (4) Print is not dead.

Infographic: How small businesses are using social media
The infographic summarizes current statistics about small business social media use, including the importance of social media marketing for small businesses, what percentage of exposure small businesses gain through social media, and which factors produce the most results...

Since national health care reform was signed into law in March 2010, it has generated strong reaction from multi-unit franchisees and small-business owners across the nation. Among its provisions, the law ("Obamacare" to its opponents and critics) requires employers with more than 50 full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees to provide healthcare insurance or face harsh penalties. However, when it comes to the actual impact of the law, the sentiments of many franchisees can be summed up as, "There's still more that we don't know than we do."
Misty Chally, deputy executive director of the Coalition of Franchisee Associations, agrees there's still much to be learned about the law. "But as of today, in 2014 there will be a mandate for all employers with 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees to provide health insurance coverage," she says...

When we talk about customer service, we usually think about how we deal with the people who walk through our doors--both physical and virtual--to purchase our products and services. What we often fail to realize, however, is that we also have customers within our organizations; those customers are our coworkers. 
Customer service means being responsive to a customer's needs and being resourceful in meeting those needs. Customer service is many things: knowledge, communication, skill, attitude, efficiency, integrity, reliability, knowledge, and helpfulness.
How you interact with coworkers and supervisors has a huge impact on the effectiveness of the team. When Dan asks for your help, do you tell him that it's not your responsibility, or do you eagerly offer to do whatever you can to help him meet his deadline? When Bethany points out an error, do you get defensive, or do you view her comment as constructive and vow to improve your performance?
When you treat coworkers with respect, when you help them solve their problems and meet or exceed the demands of the job, your value increases dramatically...

Procrastination is not for everyone!
"Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today." (My Mother - ever since I can remember).
Procrastination is like a virus. It creeps up on you slowly, drains you of energy, and is difficult to get rid of if your resistance is low. Procrastination is a close relative of incompetence and a first cousin to inefficiency, which is why their marriage is taboo. These suggestions will help you conquer the virus:

1. Give yourself deadlines. In moderation, pressure motivates. Extreme pressure debilitates. Set appointments, make commitments, write out your goals, and otherwise develop the determination to succeed.

2. Don't duck the difficult problems. Every day we are faced with both difficult and easy tasks...

Effective leadership is based on ongoing input and feedback. Where 20 years ago managers rarely asked for input, today effective leaders are regularly seeking and receiving employee feedback. Leaders elicit cooperation from employees and other individuals when they listen to them. To move employees forward, leaders first identify their needs by asking for their feedback. Identifying employee needs through feedback allows leaders to modify their behavior to serve the best interests of their employees and unit.
Feedback is an effective communication mechanism that enhances productivity and motivation. Leaders use it to create a positive sense of direction that increases efficiency and reduces stress among employees. It empowers employees and gives them ownership in both the ideas and direction driving the organization...

Gavin Hart loves his Dairy Queen vanilla cones and Dunkin' Donuts coffee. But he also loves to see his customers enjoy them, too.
"That makes me glad to get up every morning," says the Indiana family man and multi-brand franchisee. "We try to create a family-type environment for our customers in all our restaurants--it makes them want to come back."
Hart, an athlete and a criminal justice graduate of Indiana University, strongly believes that a relaxing, fun, upbeat work environment is largely responsible for the success of his 9 Dairy Queens and 14 Dunkin' Donuts. "We believe good people equals good profits. We treat every employee as family, which creates loyalty and an emotional connection and makes a lot of things easier. We have no theft issues, our retention is good, and we have good employees taking care of our guests...

"All of us do not have equal talents, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."John F. Kennedy

"Our people are our greatest asset."
If somebody were ever to build the Hollow Business Phrase Hall of Fame, this one stands right up there with "Your call is very important to us." Everyone says it because it makes sense. Yet when times get tough, too many businesses abandon investment in their people. Studies and surveys for years have shown that business leaders recognize the value of training. You don't need me to regurgitate these consistent findings to tell you something you know is true.
Developing your internal employees and your franchisees should never be viewed as a cost center. Like marketing communications, when done properly, it is an investment in your business's future success that is directly measurable...