Grow

We all get the calls: "What's the best franchise these days?" How do you answer that? Usually, the answer is a muddled, meandering set of comments. Before I get into why we should find it easy to answer that question and how to do so, I think it's important to know what the cost is of not being able to answer that question. How about the future vitality of the franchise business model?
I think it is reasonable to associate a significant portion of franchising's inability to answer that question with more than 30 state legislative initiatives, periodic federal legislative efforts (two bills now pending), countless legal proceedings, regulatory attacks on many fronts, and plenty of of negative press. Most of this came about because of the absence of a common understanding of the business model and a common way to assess its strengths and weaknesses...

Consumer marketing around the world is both the same and different from country to country. Adapting to the differences is critical in marketing a brand successfully overseas. To help sort out the similarities and differences in global consumer marketing, we asked leading franchise specialists in countries with a high level of franchising activity to tell us what they're seeing with respect to PR, social media, and local marketing.

The good news: Franchising is experiencing a remarkable growth phase - not only in unit count and system-wide revenue, but also in the number of new and emerging brands. The bad news: It's harder to keep up with all the good news! That's a nice problem to have - and why we've brought back our "Good News!" roundup of selected news items on unit growth, investment and financial developments, international expansion news, refranchising, and milestones attained by franchisors large, medium, and emerging. Here's your chance to follow the leaders, every third Tuesday of the month.

So if you're not doing it already, send us your good news here.

New Units/Growth/Expansion
MOD Pizza Signs 50-Unit Deal for Florida with BBX Capital
Checkers & Rally’s Signs 40 New Franchisees in Continuing Expansion
Toppers Pizza Signs 2 New Deals for 35 More Locations
Newk’s Eatery Enters Indiana with 15-Unit Development Deal
Captain D’s Inks Deals for 9 New Restaurants (Georgia, Texas, Virginia)
Burgerim Continues U...

When Nancy Bigley arrived at Bottle & Bottega in 2011, it was called Bottles & Brushes and was doing all right as a small, mobile pop-up business. The name wasn't particularly memorable though, says Bigley, whose mission was to transform the business into a national franchised brand. After some brainstorming, she awoke one morning and knew "bottega" was the word she was looking for.

For you non-artists out there, Merriam-Webster says a bottega is "the studio or workshop of a major artist in which other artists may participate in the execution of the projects or commissions of the major artist." For customers, it means a place they can go to spend an enjoyable few hours sipping wine and being instructed in painting by local artists in a safe, comfortable setting...

How do you use social media to attract prospects and validate candidates?

Alex Samios
Director of Franchising
Dogtopia
Social media is a regular function of our franchise development team. We use it to generate leads, nurture existing prospects, and validate that the franchise candidate is right for our brand.
Today's prospective franchisees want a self-directed approach; they don't want to feel as if a franchisor is trying to sell them on the concept. With this in mind, you need to adopt a softer, more subtle social media strategy for franchise sales--especially when posting franchise development-focused messaging on your brand's consumer social media accounts.
At Dogtopia, we keep our corporate Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages separate from those of our franchise owners, who all have their own individual accounts that are updated regularly...

How do you choose the right marketing media to reach your ideal candidates, and how often should you communicate with them?

Mark Jameson
Executive Vice President, Franchise Support & Development
Fastsigns International
We believe in utilizing many different marketing channels to reach our candidates, and more importantly, in targeting those in the right markets and for the right category or model. Our brand relies on a strong public relations and digital marketing strategy to target and find the ideal candidates. With the help of a significant national TV buy, Fastsigns is lucky to have a strong brand presence that enables us to stay top of mind.
However, this is only a piece of how we communicate the franchise opportunity to candidates, so we must employ a variety of marketing strategies to attract the right candidates...

If you've been around the sales and marketing world for any number of years you know the concept of an "Aha!" moment. It is that point in time when the proverbial light bulb goes on, the moment when everything makes sense, the moment when someone finds what they need or, more importantly, what they want.
Aha! moments are key milestones when making monumental decisions such as buying a home, getting married, or investing in a franchise. In the franchise sales world, these moments have a special function. They confirm that we successfully matched the benefits of our brands to the dreams and goals of the candidates. As sales pros, it is up to us to create Aha! moments in the mind of our candidates. At the end of each conversation, ask your candidates to describe the Aha! moment they gleaned from the conversation...

Marketing isn't what it used to be. Your once tightly controlled brand identity is a thing of the past. We live in an era dominated by social media, where literally everyone can share their opinion on what your franchise brand stands for. Supporters, detractors, activists... like them or loathe them, if you want to grow your franchise system you must know how this model works.
One of today's most critical keys to growing a franchise system is evolving into a brand that can honestly demonstrate the answer to the question: "Do they love you, or just know who you are?" The difference has proven to be critical in providing a franchise candidate with the confidence needed to move to close--as well as in improving metrics from historically lackluster closing effectiveness rates (typically about 1...

What are the keys to building, training, and retaining a great sales and development team at your brand?

Marcia Mead
Vice President of Franchise Development
PuroClean

The process of hiring, training, and retaining qualified individuals for sales and development is a necessary company practice that should not be taken lightly. Having a great sales and development team as the backbone of your business is critical to company success in both the immediate and distant future.
Hiring the most qualified people for your company can be challenging, but if you take the time to work diligently in the early stages of seeking out a potential employee, there is great long-term payoff. At PuroClean, we first identify which candidates can fit in with our company culture...

Nearly seven years after the recession ended, the U.S. economy has become a slow-growth machine. In these years of sluggish growth, the franchise business model has found ways to expand. We examined franchising at the sector level to provide some clues and insights about what's in store for 2016 and beyond.
We are projecting that, on average, about one new concept will begin to franchise every day in 2016, continuing a streak of increases in annual new concept growth that began in 2011. If the number of new franchise concepts were a small fraction of all franchise concepts, this wouldn't be all that significant. However, we are adding new concepts at an annual rate of about 6 to 8 percent a year. That's impressive by any measure in this weak expansionary economy...

In the U.S. we are privileged to have many women senior franchise executives (some of whom are profiled in this issue--Editors). We also have the Leadership Conference at the annual IFA convention, which is put on by the very active IFA Women's Franchise Committee. And, of course, we have the Women's Franchise Network, which has meetings during the year across the country. But what about the rest of the world? There are many, many women leading franchise companies around the world. Here are just some of them.

In the life of a franchise sales professional, never a day should go by when we do not learn (or relearn) a selling skill. We are the tip of the spear when it comes to representing our brand to future franchise owners. We possess the sales skills to guide candidates from every conceivable background through a selection process that ultimately causes them to embrace risk and make a life-changing decision. And we are accountable to select only those candidates who will make positive and valuable contributions to the brand.
Wow! That is a lot of responsibility. However it is an accurate description of the contribution franchise sales professionals bring to their brand. It is also what brings us to the office day after day, year after year (or decade after decade)...

For 30 years, Cicis has been delivering unlimited pizza, pasta, salad, and dessert to every guest who enters its restaurants. But over the course of three decades, customers evolved. They wanted something better, more innovation, more contemporary restaurant designs... something beyond where Cicis had been.
So, with the introduction of the company's new leadership team, the Cicis brand underwent a comprehensive review to pull itself out of the past and into the future. We started from the ground up to evolve every facet of the business, including product, price, place, promotion, and the meaning behind our name.

First, we listened
The first step to understanding where we needed to go was to listen in on what guests enjoyed about Cicis today...

Discuss the importance of franchisee validation and how you use it as a sales and development tool.

Michael Powers
Managing Director
Painting with a Twist
Unit franchise growth is the fuel that supplies life and sustainability to every franchisor's existence. Without significant annual unit growth, your brand and market share will eventually erode away while your growing competitors will gladly capture the excess and continue to grow their own brands. Simply put, you are either growing or dying. And in today's competitive franchise environment, the latter is not an option for any franchise organization.
Franchisee validation can heavily influence your development success, whether you're an emerging franchisor or a large established one...

Our annual mystery shopping survey shows some improvement, with much room for more
Franchise recruiting is serious business. Incredibly, year after year, franchise brands continue to fumble the fundamentals. They are not executing the X's and O's. They are failing to meet prospects where they are (mobile devices anyone?), providing flat-out wrong information, responding too slowly to prospect inquiries, and worse, not getting back to them at all. These are just some of the key findings of Franchise Update Media's 2015 annual mystery shopping survey.
Every brand that registered by August 15 to attend this year's Franchise Leadership & Development Conference was mystery shopped by a "qualified, perfect candidate," said Gary Gardner, chair of Franchise Update Media, during his presentation of the survey results at the conference in mid-October...

"If it's on the Internet, it must be true." While we chuckle at that, franchisors also know the dark side of the Internet: that there is so much more misinformation than information out there. While it is easy to disregard misinformation for what it is, it is hard to do so when you are protecting the integrity and image of a brand. I'll describe what I see going on and, by way of example, show a way to take control of online information.
First, let's understand the problem in the context of current events. On the consumer level we use search tools to quickly determine who provides a local product or service. Then we take it further by checking any number of third-party sources for ratings on the quality of the product or service. Is it any wonder the same approach is rapidly being adopted by prospective franchisees, whether considering how much they can make, the likelihood of success with a given brand, franchisor performance relative to franchisees, or the ease of obtaining financing? After all, it's not just franchisees researching a brand; lenders are, too...

Benchmarking the good, the bad, and the best practices
Results from the 2016 Annual Franchise Development Report (AFDR) were unveiled in October at the 17th annual Franchise Leadership & Development Conference. The 2016 AFDR is based on responses from 134 franchisors representing 51,004 units (48,431 franchised and 2,573 company-owned).
Participants in the survey consisted of franchisors who pre-registered for the conference and completed an online questionnaire. Responses were aggregated and analyzed to produce a detailed look into the recruitment and development practices, budgets, and strategies of a wide cross-section of franchisors. The data, with accompanying commentary, provide the basis of the 2016 AFDR.
Highlights from the report were presented in a 90-minute general session...

In my 30-plus years in franchising I have often wondered: What is the "DNA" of a franchise sales superstar? Is it a natural selling talent fueled by tremendous drive? Is it pure luck based on representing today's hottest franchise? Are service brands easier to sell than food brands (which must deal with the greater complexities of real estate, multiple employees, and back-room food prep)?
After much pondering, I enlisted Rebecca Monet, president and chief scientist of Zoracle Profiles, to help shed some light on my questions. We all know that making the right hire for your brand can catapult growth--and that poor to mediocre hires cost many thousands in lost time, marketing dollars, and royalties.
For our research project, 40 seasoned, successful sales professionals were invited to participate in an emotional and social intelligence assessment that has an 87 percent accuracy rating...

It is the dream of many franchisors to take their concept into other countries. As in the U.S. and Canada, the lifeblood for expansion is generating leads from various sources, processing them, and signing a franchise agreement. And that is where the similarities between processing leads in the U.S. and abroad end.
As seen in the accompanying chart, getting an international lead from a broker, an Internet lead site, or your franchise website is only the start of a long and potentially expensive process and journey to signing a licensee agreement in another country, involving many, many steps. The authors of this article, with a combined 80-plus years of taking U.S. franchise brands global, aim to help you fully understand the difference between getting, processing, and signing U...

When it comes to being a "STAR" franchise development player, the best keep winning--and they keep working to get better.
Franchise Update Media honored the top performers in franchise sales and development at its annual STAR Awards dinner, a highlight of the Franchise Leadership & Development Conference, held Oct. 14-16 in Atlanta.
The STAR Awards (Speaking To And Responding) recognize brands for overall development performance and in the key areas of franchisee recruitment, online sales follow-up, telephone responsiveness, website effectiveness, social media, and franchisee satisfaction.
"Franchise Update Media and the STAR awards are the only kind of awards in our particular part of the industry," says Pete Lindsey, vice president of franchising at Sport Clips, a 2015 STAR Award recipient...