2011 AFDR Review Highlights; 2012 Survey Now Starting Up

The Annual Franchise Development Report (AFDR) from Franchise Update Media Group is a comprehensive research guide to sales and lead generation performance in franchise recruitment. The report drills down to industry categories, investment levels, and recruitment budgets; provides marketing costs information; reports the top-producing sales and lead sources; reveals performance evaluations of franchise websites and follow-up to prospect inquiries; and analyzes current and historical industry growth trends.

The data and analysis in this 150-page report have been helping franchisors for years to benchmark their sales performance, accelerate system growth, increase selling performance, and make smarter, more cost-effective advertising and marketing decisions.

We continually seek ways to further raise franchisor awareness of development standards, and to create additional benchmarks that will continue the evolution of best practices in franchise recruitment. We welcome your comments--and participation--to help us better shape the 2012 report.

Data gathering for the 2012 AFDR has just begun. To participate in next year's AFDR, contact Therese Thilgen at thereset@franchiseupdatemedia.com. All data is aggregated and kept completely confidential.

Selected Highlights from the 2011 AFDR:

Survey Participants
126 franchisors representing 46,091 units:

• 42,563 franchise units
• 3,528 company-owned units

Growth Plans for 2011

• 3,850 more franchise units (3,100 franchised)

Franchisors Exceeding Goals

• 21% are in food
• 47% are in service
• 11% are in retail food
• 21% are in retail non-food

• 89% planned the same or higher 2011 expenditures

• 74% have $100,000+ investment requirements

• 5% decreased sales staff in the past 12 months
  (27% of those below sales goals decreased sales staff)

• 78% reported business conditions at the unit level as good

• 0% reported business conditions at the unit level as poor