Best Practices

A new survey that asked consumers to weigh in on food, order accuracy, speed of service, menu, and other items at the top 62 QSR brands found that, not surprisingly, the likelihood of a return visit to a QSR increases from 20 to 81 percent when guests report a higher satisfaction rate. The study was done by Empathica, which provides customer experience management (CEM) solutions to multi-unit enterprises.
The Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Benchmark Study surveyed 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. Results determined brand rankings in these categories as well as the drivers behind customer loyalty and satisfaction...

We learn by doing. Think about the basic skills you've acquired in life. You learned to walk by pulling yourself up, turning loose, and taking a step. You fell the first time, but you got up and tried again. Each time you did it a little better than the time before. You were learning by doing.
You learned to drive a car by taking one out on the highway with an experienced teacher who could give you instructions and point out your mistakes as you drove.
With each endeavor, you started as a novice, and you learned proficiency from the mistakes you made. It's that way in any undertaking. When you take action toward your goals, you will make mistakes. Don't worry about it. Everybody makes them. Successful people learn from theirs...

When it comes to family business succession planning, one thing is certain: Most family business leaders don't do it, they don't do it well, or they wait to do it until it's too late. While the CEO longevity in non-family businesses is an average of six years, for family owned businesses CEOs tend to stay for 20-25 years.
Sure that long tenure contributes to leadership stability and consistency, but it can also fuel flat growth, narrow business focus, and decreasing leadership drive. Additionally, when the CEO and other top level executive family members do not step aside in a timely manner, it causes a high level of frustration in the next generation who is ready to charge forward and make their mark. Once it becomes clear that the children might reach their mid- to late-fifties before taking over, it becomes hard to hold on to the ambitious ones...

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 here to read or review Part 1.

II. Looking Closely at Legal Strategy

Don't let legal language limit your real estate services.

To identify the root of this hands-off real estate approach motivated by self-preservation, we must take a closer look at the current legal strategy in play. Franchise agreements are consistently drafted so that franchisees have the right to select their final choice of location...

Audit your advertising and increase results

What you don't know, you can't measure. And what you can't measure, you can't improve! Successful recruitment programs invest in marketing intelligence and monitoring tools to 1) determine their most productive selling sources; 2) create compelling, direct-response advertising for each media source selected; and 3) stay ahead of or in step with the competition.

Good news for you smart execs! Many franchise companies still don't track their marketing performance - which provides competitive advantages for those intelligent franchisors who do successfully monitor, measure, and modify their lead generation programs. By knowing where you are and where you want to go, you build the shortest road to get there...

Who are your customers? Do you know what they want? Do you know what they think about you and your products and services? If you don't, you have some work to do.
It's critical that you know your customers, so that you can give them what they want. You must be proactive. Instead of waiting for your customers to start leaving you and wondering why they are heading to your competitors, you must research their needs and determine their opinions of your business.
As soon as I mentioned the word research, most of you are probably thinking, "Oh, great. Now he wants me to spend a lot of money; money I can't spare."
The type of research I am talking about doesn't have to cost you anything. And it basically involves two steps:

Ask...

What can business leaders and managers learn from watching the earnings of publicly traded companies?
"Plenty," says Kathleen Brush, a 25-year veteran of international business and author of The Power of One: You're the Boss (www.kathleenbrush.com), a guide to developing the skills necessary to become an effective, respected leader.
"When looking at the corporations reporting lower-than-expected earnings, you need to read between the lines. They are not going to admit that the reason is a failure of leadership, but 99 times out of 100 that's what it is."
She cites Oracle, the business hardware and software giant, which recently reported a quarterly revenue shortfall based on a decline in new software licenses and cloud subscriptions...

The need for trust in the workplace and communication therein is understood by many leaders to be the foundational building block of the organization. The degree of trust developed will impact employee performance and retention, the development of teams, and implementation of organizational change. Regardless of size and industry, organizations are comprised of individuals who desire the same thing: the ability to trust those they work with. People cannot trust an organization, but they can trust their superiors, employees, and associates.
Issues of broken trust and personal betrayal are far from just the result of restructuring, downsizing, or other major organizational events. They are the product of the numerous micro-decisions that leaders and managers make every day...

As a professional pilot, I meticulously pre-plan my flight including strong and continuous consideration and planning for the weather. I can't control the weather, but I can control how I react to it, including choosing to divert or not fly in it at all. However, there are times that, despite the planning, Mother Nature has her own little surprises. Regardless, as Pilot in Command (PIC), I must continue to safely fly the plane.
It is no different with life's surprises for any of us. Sometimes we can anticipate them and pre-empt either the change itself or its impacts. Other times we may not be able to control the events themselves, but we can certainly control how we react to them and our consequential actions afterwards.
Ask yourself this question: Do events control you or do you control events? Or better yet, are you influenced by life events or do you influence life events? How many times are we faced with a situation that seems hopeless and resign ourselves to whatever fate presents?
Typically, this will happen at what I call a "failure moment...

Putting the right people at the helm has launched many high profile, highly successful turnarounds, from Jack Welch in his early days at GE to Meg Whitman at eBay.
But companies don't have to fire the entire C-suite to put "new" leadership in place, says Barbara Trautlein, author of Change Intelligence: Use the Power of CQ to Lead Change that Sticks (www.changecatalysts.com). ?"Leadership is the key to successful major organizational change, which has had a failure rate of 70 percent for decades," she says.  "It is possible to lead successful and sustainable change - if it's led effectively.  The problem has been that, so often, it's not." 
Workforces in every industry - from manufacturing to service to healthcare to high tech - are confused and bruised, she says...

Many franchise leaders are slow to embrace the idea that the best time to grow is in uncertain times. Even those who may reluctantly agree are often constrained by the demands of stakeholders for bottom-line performance, and use the excuse of the "bad economic storm" to cut expenses to meet those bottom-line expectations. Historically, however, the fact remains that the strongest companies are those that create working systems to grow during all economies, and that see the opportunity in bad times for accelerated growth.

In my experience as the CEO of a national early childhood education franchise, while the majority of others in the field experienced difficulty securing new franchisees to continue growth, our reinvestment and leadership speaks well of the brand, and has allowed us to see exceptional growth during recent economic tumult: more than 410% growth since the 2008 recession...

The following is a review of the lead generation principles and best practices outlined in my book, "Grow To Greatness: How to build a world class franchise faster." For a more in-depth examination of successful lead-generation practices, ordering information is available at the end of this checklist.

✓ Embrace the four successful lead generation principles that high-growth franchisors use to expand their brands:

In my 20-plus years of teaching and consulting with business owners and hiring managers about how to "hire tough so they can manage easy," I've discovered there are 10 commonplace mistakes almost everyone makes that are guaranteed to result in bad hiring decisions and waste untold time, money, and effort. Thank God I've never had a client who's made all these mistakes at once, but it really only takes two or three to sabotage your efforts to hire great people. Are you guilty of any of the following?

A franchise is not an ordinary business asset. You don't really "own" a franchise outright as you do a traditional business. What you own is a right or license from the franchisor to operate the business under the franchisor's name for a period of time (the franchise term). More important, when retirement, disability, or death requires a sale of the franchise, you cannot change ownership unless you meet the franchisor's requirements.
This difference becomes even more complicated when it involves multi-unit franchisees, who may be area developers or subfranchisors and who may have more than one unit in two or more unaffiliated brands or sectors (think donut or burger franchisees who are also hotel and convenience store franchisees). Not only are there different franchise terms for each of the franchises, there may be different franchisor requirements in the franchise and area development agreements controlling transfer upon retirement, disability, or death of the managing member or members of the multi-unit franchisee...

"What's your best advice for women in business?"
It's a question I hear frequently as more and more women strike out on their own, whether it's to start their own company, write a book, turn their great idea into a product, or otherwise monetize their talents. The number of women-owned businesses in this country is growing 1.5 times faster than the national average. From 1997 to 2011, they increased by 50 percent.
I love seeing this surge of confidence! Putting yourself out there is risky, but it's better to try and fail then to spend a lifetime wondering, "What if?"
Yes, I do have a favorite piece of advice for women in business but first, a word about self-employed women. Did you know that our businesses added 500,000 jobs over 10 years while other privately held firms lost jobs? That in 2007, we accounted for $1...

Over the years we have encountered hundreds of successful business owners who have made the statement "I have it all done," as they describe how well they have planned and documented their business succession plan. Unfortunately, in most cases these business owners were referring to the work they have done to implement their wills, trusts, buy/sell agreements, and life insurance, which we would constitute as business continuity planning. You may be asking yourself, what is the difference?
Business continuity planning addresses transferring a business to the next generation, whereas business succession planning addresses transferring a business through> the next generation. Frankly, achieving business continuity is a relatively simple transactional project addressed within your will, trust, and/or buy-sell agreement to transfer your business to your children or partners...

Productivity is enhanced and empowerment achieved when leaders solicit, then act upon employee feedback, ideas, and concepts. Soliciting and acting upon feedback is the essence of leadership. The proper use of feedback allows leaders to build consensus among their employees and give them ownership of the ideas and concepts to be implemented within the organization.
There are critical differences between managers and leaders. Managers tend to direct and control without soliciting feedback and building employee consensus. Leaders, on the other hand, build their strength from group consensus, acting as facilitator rather than controller. They understand the power and synergy of combining ideas and working together to achieve mutual goals...

As of 2012, there were about 1,300 franchised food brands operating in the U.S.; roughly two thirds started offering franchises in 2000 or later.



In 2011, these food brands operated an estimated 176,700 franchised locations. The largest industry by number of franchised units is QSR, which accounted for 72% of franchised units in 2011, followed by baked goods (9%) and retail food (8%).



To estimate the growth rates in franchised food units, FRANdata created a sample of 488 brands for which consecutive data for 2004 through 2011 was available. In 2011, the sample operated 163,054 franchised locations, about 92% of the estimated total. From 2004 through 2011, the number of franchised food locations in this sample increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5%...

In some companies, under the premise that they will be perceived more meaningful, rewards and recognitions are given so infrequently as to in fact be meaningless. In order to be effective in generating long-term, concrete results, such rewards, recognitions, and motivation must be given liberally, frequently, and publicly. They should be fun, uplifting, and encourage all members of the workplace.
A critical aspect of leadership is the manager's role as cheerleader. Leaders need to keep their employees motivated and emotionally prepared to do business in a marketplace fraught with intense competition, rejection, and failure.
There are both tangible and intangible aspects of motivation. The intangible aspects of encouraging words and pats on the back, although not insignificant, can be quickly forgotten, while the tangible aspects are visible and durable...

Employee theft is a common crime that is not even regarded as such by most people who commit it. Taking an odd pen or few sheets of paper home is regarded by many as being a right rather than a crime and something that even the most senior managers can be found guilty of.
It's estimated that 95 percent of all companies suffer from employee theft, but it's probably closer to 100 percent. Serious theft, however, is a different thing entirely. There is a world of difference between the theft of a few pens and the steady depletion of stock through organized crime within a large organization. This sort of employee theft is estimated to cause more than 30 percent of all company bankruptcies, and many companies are in desperate need of a means of controlling it...