Prepare Your Franchise System for What's Next

Faster. Friction-free. Fear-free. Those are the “three F’s” author and entrepreneur Marcus Sheridan said should guide franchise systems as they respond to a rapidly changing marketplace. He brought the keynote address at the recent Franchise Leadership & Development Conference.

Sheridan, author of They Ask, You Answer and Endless Customers, outlined five trends he expects to affect businesses over the next 36 months: speed, AI recommendations, reviews, AI agents, and self-service.

“When you think about how innovation works today, most probably, you do not have to invent something new,” Sheridan said. “You just have to do the three F’s.”

For Sheridan, speed is increasingly an expectation for customers and franchisees alike. He urged franchise systems to look for delays throughout their operations, from responding to leads and scheduling appointments to approving candidates, opening locations, and training franchisees.

“You have to be constantly saying to yourself, ‘Where’s the friction? Where are we slowing things down?’” Sheridan said.

AI could eliminate more of that friction. Sheridan said traditional online searches that return pages of links will increasingly give way to AI tools that provide personalized answers, explain their recommendations, and eventually take actions for users.

Sheridan said that shift makes a brand’s visibility to AI increasingly important. Unlike a traditional Google search, AI recommendations can vary by user, meaning there is no longer a single “page one” for brands to target.

AI systems rely on a range of trust signals when deciding which brands to recommend, Sheridan said, including reviews, third-party mentions, awards and certifications, local citations, website content, and the consistency of information across the web.

To improve their chances of being recommended, Sheridan urged franchisors to provide clear answers to the questions buyers ask, including costs, comparisons, and potential drawbacks.

Reviews will become even more important in that environment, Sheridan said. He recommended creating review hubs that collect reviews from multiple platforms in machine-readable text, giving AI systems another source of information about the brand.

The rise of AI agents will push that shift further. Sheridan said brands should prepare websites for agents that increasingly will search, compare prices, make recommendations, and take actions on a customer’s behalf.

“Am I really going to hand my life over to an agent if it makes it faster, if it removes fear, if it removes friction? Yes, you will,” Sheridan said. “We all will.”

He acknowledged the tension between convenience and discomfort.

“And I’m not saying it’s great,” Sheridan said. “It might be dystopian. I don’t know, but this is where we know the world is headed.”

The final trend, self-service, extends the same idea by allowing customers to get information or take action without first speaking to a salesperson. Sheridan pointed to tools that help customers select products, schedule services, or estimate prices on their own.

“This doesn’t mean we hate salespeople,” Sheridan said. “It just means we don’t want to work with the salesperson until we’re ready to buy.”

Sheridan said businesses shouldn’t be intimidated by the changes. Instead, they should keep returning to the three F’s: “Does it make it faster? Does it remove the friction? Does it remove the fear?”