Every organization has a culture. Frequently in business, a culture is developed unintentionally, as employees watch the actions of the leader and see which activities are rewarded and which are not. I believe the best cultures are intentionally built. But building an intentional culture takes work: The leader must be focused on sharing the vision of where the organization is going, how the organization will get there, and what role each employee plays in the journey. Ensuring that the culture stays pure means hiring for attitude that fits the culture and parting ways with employees who do not fit the culture.
The BrightStar Culture
The culture of BrightStar is based upon open communication, a results orientation, and high energy and passion for making a difference in the lives of other employees, in the lives of our franchisees, and in the lives of the customers and employees our franchisees support on the front line. I believe wholeheartedly that for me to succeed, my franchisees must succeed. Likewise, I want franchisees who also want the franchisor to be profitable and successful as long as they themselves are.
Let me share a story from one of our quarterly all-system calls, which we call our “Town Hall.” We encourage franchisees to submit questions through an anonymous survey tool prior to our Town Hall call. One of the questions that recently came in was, “Will you be using our royalties to launch these future brands that you are talking about?” There was probably a system-wide and corporate-wide inhaling of breath when I read the question aloud and prepared my answer.
This is what I said.
As the sole owner of the franchise company, I could distribute profits and buy a big house or I could reinvest in the company, building new companies that could benefit our employees’ and franchisees’ future opportunities. The royalties that we receive are part of our earnings formula for which we have invested for years. We lost money for several years because of the investments we made in support of our franchisees far above industry ratios. We are in business to make money, too, as this is not a not-for-profit venture. Much like how your customers pay you contributes to your profits and your customers don’t ask how their monies are spent, we receive money from our franchisees for the licensing of our brand, systems, and for the support we provide.
It was a direct answer to a sensitive topic. The chat board lit up like a Christmas tree, with messages from many, many franchisees saying things like “Go, Shelly!”“You tell them!”“Go, girl!”
I started with this story because becoming a franchisor has sometimes been a struggle for me between following my heart and following my head. I want to give as much as possible to the franchisees to align with what is in my heart, and I worry that some franchisees question why I don’t invest every last dime on support. The franchisor must be financially sound and profitable for the brand to be resilient for the long term. And the franchisor must balance this need to be profitable with spending to ensure the franchisees have the tools and resources available to help replicate the business model. With the right heart and the right intentions—to enable the potential for a franchisee to be successful—the right tactics can be implemented to facilitate strong communication and to enable increased franchisee satisfaction over time. A franchisor enables the potential for franchisee success through a solid business model with branding, systems, and various areas of support. The franchisee adds his capital, commitment, and hard work to determine his own success in using the business model.
Establishing an Intentional Culture
How does one set out to build an intentional culture? Well, I think culture begins with heart and builds from there. If in the beginning the culture is unintentional, that is, based on the heart of the senior leadership team who know that their success is dependent upon franchisee success, the goal over time should be to make this belief and commitment intentional through specific communication of the mission of the organization, so that it permeates the entire organization.
If a strong intentional culture of shared success is the goal, how do you go about creating it? The corporate team must see that you and your senior leadership team are committed to franchisees’ success and to the continuous improvement of franchisees’ unit economics. It is important to have equal weighting annually as part of your strategic planning and budgeting process to maximize franchisor profitability and to maximize franchisee profitability. Then, you should focus on building this accountability into job descriptions, performance reviews, and bonus programs. To maximize both franchisor and franchisee profitability, there must be a culture in which new ideas, suggestions for improvement, and best practices are freely shared among all constituencies—franchisees with corporate, corporate with franchisees, and franchisees with one another.
Our corporate values, which we discuss regularly with employees, include one that is directly related to this discussion: shared success. What does shared success mean to BrightStar? Shared success requires active listening to franchisees with different backgrounds when they make suggestions for improvement or share what is working locally in their market. We have created a culture in which franchisees have a voice and an opportunity to expand their revenue sources in their market. That makes them want to collaborate with corporate to share their ideas, gain feedback, and, if the idea is successful, ultimately obtain new marketing materials to make potential customers aware of the new service.
In addition to active listening to include franchisees in the continuous improvement of the brand, we must also focus on franchisee unit economics. I recognize that I will maintain strong relationships with my franchisees only if they have the opportunity to be financially successful at a reasonable point in time (so long as they follow the business model, are in the business for the right reasons, and are giving the business their all). We set out to have a work-hard, play-hard culture that delivers results. We constantly challenge ourselves to improve franchisee revenue levels and gross margins, to optimize franchisee processes for efficiency and scalability, and to reduce the costs of items that franchisees purchase from our suppliers. If the franchisees can see our commitment to these things and a constant improvement in each area, then relationships stay strong. And strong franchisee–franchisor relationships are key to a positive, mutually beneficial, and sustainable culture.
We made a strong culture possible by encouraging open communication, soliciting franchisee feedback, establishing a Franchise Advisory Council, and recognizing the achievements of franchisees in performance and participation. Our intended culture was built upon a set of core principles—to create a model built upon shared success, in which everybody wins (and demonstrating our understanding that, if franchisees win, then we win); to create an atmosphere where we work hard and play hard and have fun; and to create a healthy environment with open collaboration and sharing of information and feedback. I have seen that providing open access to information, so franchisees can see one another’s performance and what is possible, fosters a very team-oriented culture where franchisees reach out to the top performers for help on how to improve. Franchisees will believe they can improve, which is half the battle, when they see what others are accomplishing. Franchisees also need forums in which to share information with corporate and with one another.
Open Communication
We have built a culture with open communication: in numbers, in sharing best practices, and in sharing priorities and initiatives. At BrightStar, our franchisees have protected territories, so they are not competing with one another. Therefore, we believe that enabling franchisees to see one another’s key metrics, such as revenues, gross margin, mix of business, etc., allows them to see what is possible and to seek best practices. In the beginning we allowed all franchisees to opt in to this information-sharing process, and if anyone did not want her information shared she didn’t have to participate. When two franchisees chose to opt out of sharing their information, I reminded them that they would then be denied access to the system’s numbers. Both conceded that if the only way to get that information was to participate, they would participate. We no longer offer franchisees the option to opt out. We want all prospects to understand before they join that open access is part of our culture and we will not make exceptions for individual franchisees.
Because I also have been a franchisee, I understand how lonely it can be.
I constantly asked myself questions such as these: “Am I on track?” “How do I compare to my peers?” “Who can I call when I need to speak with someone who has had a similar experience?” I wanted my franchisees to be able to compare their performance with the performances of others who had been open a similar period of time. I wanted my franchisees to know how they were performing locally, regionally, and nationally on sales and margins. I wanted to open the doors of communication so that a franchisee who was above average on sales dollars but below average on gross margin percentage would be able to identify a franchisee who was below average on sales dollars but above average on gross margin percentage. They could then share their best practices to help each other improve. This is exactly what has happened.
When I ask prospects what surprised them when they made validation calls to franchisees, I am told over and over again that our franchisees were smart, very engaged, knew other franchisees very well, knew their numbers and how they compared across the system, and generally seemed like one big family. This is probably the greatest compliment that I hear from prospects.
We started slow, initially sharing only revenue ranking, and then we worked with our Franchise Advisory Council (which I describe in more detail later in this chapter) to identify the other key metrics they felt would be helpful for franchisees to know. Automating the gathering of information is critical to enabling this aspect of a culture, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Nearly three years after we decided to gather the information, we are still working to fully integrate financial statements and accounts receivable information into the dashboards and reporting tools that our franchisees access.
Similar to how a business needs a strategic plan, a human resources (talent) plan, a marketing plan, and a technology plan, a business intelligence plan should also be in place. This plan should map out what investments will be needed over time to aggregate all pertinent information from internal and external sources, which will enable franchisees to have easier access to information so that they can make better and faster decisions to improve their business.
BRIGHT IDEA:
As you begin to plan for how to eventually enable open access to information, you will want to think about how to get key information on one common technology platform, as BrightStar has done with our investment in SharePoint, so the information is available to facilitate reporting.
Best Practices Calls
You can see we have built intentional processes and feedback loops to drive open communication across our system. With open access to information as a way to show all franchisees what is possible and who among them is knocking the ball out of the park on particular metrics, we also host monthly regional best practices calls to allow a structured way for franchisees to share what is working for them. The corporate host shares updates and improvements during the first five to 10 minutes. The host then introduces a preidentified specific franchisee to share for about 15 minutes a best practices tip for driving increased business. The remainder of the hour is an open forum for franchisees to share with or ask questions of one another.
Franchisees like to learn from one another. The reality is that franchisees will listen to one another more than they will listen to corporate. Conference calls are easy to set up because the regional field support directors will be aware of who is succeeding in their region and of the interesting niche opportunities franchisees are uncovering that will be worthwhile to share with others. The key is to make sure that time is dedicated to this great initiative.
System-wide Communication
In addition to these targeted best practices calls, we emphasize frequent system-wide communication to keep franchisees informed about the future direction of the system and the investments under way that will improve their results. Like most organizations, we distribute a newsletter that contains short updates. We e-mailed the newsletters until we realized that new owners would be able to ramp up more easily if they had access to our entire archive (and could search to find topics of interest). We moved to a system that hosted the newsletter, but the system required a password to log on, which created another barrier to maximizing the effectiveness of this type of communication. Investing in SharePoint has enabled us to communicate in a newsletter format, archive the newsletters, make the content fully searchable, and provide the franchisee with easy access.
Our experience with our newsletter illustrates how difficult it is for a franchisor to get everything right the first time. But if franchisors are intentional about creating a culture in which there is open, constructive communication so that the franchisees and the franchisor alike can continually improve the system, improve communications, and improve one another’s results, then the right solutions will come over time.
As I mentioned in the story at the beginning of this chapter, we also host a formal system-wide conference call four times a year that we call our Town Hall. Prior to the call, we invite franchisees to anonymously submit any questions they may have so that we can update the system on the most popular topics while providing a venue in which franchisees can have their questions answered by the appropriate senior staff member. Each of our senior staff provides an update of the past three months regarding improvement, what is currently in process, and what is targeted for the next three to six months. This information helps paint a picture of how we are constantly striving to do three things for our franchisees: (1) increase revenues, (2) reduce costs, and/or (3) enable efficiency or better information for scalability. The percentage of the presubmitted questions answered by the senior staff ’s presentations indicates how aligned we are in our efforts to meet franchisees’ needs. Anything that was not answered or addressed by the presentation is answered specifically at the end of the call.
You really cannot communicate too much. I have learned that it takes about five times to communicate a system change before it sinks in. Build in multiple forums for communicating to franchisees. The Town Hall format is a great way to move the conversation away from the tactical day-to-day (those issues are covered by most other communication methods) to the innovative changes that are coming. It is critical to prepare a system for change before it actually occurs, and having a preset quarterly call scheduled to discuss this type of information helps to prepare the system for the continuous improvement component of our system and our culture.
Anonymous Surveys of Franchisees
We anonymously survey our franchisees twice a year across such key areas as initial training, ongoing support, marketing programs, resources, etc., to determine how we are performing and what our performance trend is over time. Our anonymous surveys also ask open-ended questions about the franchisor and/or the system, including the following three critical ones:
(1) What do you like best? (2) What suggestions do you have for improvement? (3) What concerns do you have?
As I discuss in chapter 7, we use both of the franchise industry survey leaders annually, one every six months. In early January we use FBR in time for the FBR rankings used in the marketing programs of Franchise 50, a recognition and lead-generation effort sponsored for their clients who receive strong scores from their franchisees. Approximately six months later we go through the process again with FranSurvey. The FBR and FranSurvey information has been invaluable in assisting us with prioritizing what is important to franchisees as well as informing us about what issues franchisees are concerned about so we can communicate again and again on these issues to alleviate franchisee anxiety.
The founder of FranSurvey, Jeff Johnson, is great about scheduling a call with us to go over the results when the reports are ready. A former franchisee himself, he understands franchisees’ needs and is a huge franchisee advocate. But he also is very fair in helping franchisors understand the reality of the bell-shaped curve. FranSurvey gives participants a pass-or-fail grade: If 67 percent of your system is satisfied across a key set of questions, you are “certified”; if more than 33 percent is unsatisfied, you are not certified. We have worked hard to have scores in the 80s and above across the years. Being a perfectionist who has a big heart and wants every franchisee to succeed and be happy, my heart sank the first time I reviewed the report. I was used to being an A student, and I didn’t see a 100 percent satisfaction in many places. Jeff helped me get perspective: I should consider receiving above 67 percent as successful, and scores in the 80s as remarkable for a new franchisor. He also reminded me that it is impossible to please everyone. He emphasized the importance of reading the open-ended answers, communicating the survey results openly with the system, and directionally working to improve the lowest areas over time. That is what we have done, and it was good advice.
We have built the review of the survey results into a formal process. I tend to want to fix everything, but I have learned—with the help of a great group of employees and franchisees—that it is better to fix the top 10 problems at 100 percent than fix a greater number at less than 100 percent.
A key member of my senior team takes the write-in results from the suggestions for improvement and areas of concern questions and categorizes them by themes. For us the themes may be unique, such as licensure/regulation, national accounts, business mix, technology upgrades, financial systems, searchable resources, etc. The themes then receive a number for the number of times the theme was mentioned in the responses to these two questions. This list is then sorted from highest to lowest number, and the top 10 are prioritized with an action plan of projects and/or initiatives that can improve the results in the next three to nine months. This list is then shared with the Franchise Advisory Council to validate the priorities and to obtain their participation as we work in the upcoming months to drive improvement.
I mentioned above my knee-jerk impulse to fix all of the items that franchisees provide feedback on. I always want to say “yes,” but have realized that, over the past few years, the times I said “no” or “not now” were the best decisions I made for the benefit of the brand and the system over the long term. Staying true to the brand positioning and differentiators is absolutely the right course.
As you launch your franchise system, obtaining information from your franchisees is critical for continuous improvement and for prioritizing the improvements needed. Surveys are a high-value, low-cost method to allow franchisees to have a strong voice in letting you know how you are doing, what needs to be improved, and what to be cautious of. Obtaining survey information from franchisees regularly allows you to have the confidence in moving forward because you are aware of what you are doing well and what areas need improvement. Diligently focusing on franchisee feedback allows you to proactively address any potential negative issues that could harm you as franchisees talk to prospects during the validation phase.
BRIGHT IDEA:
The time you spend to publish the survey results, to review the feedback, and to prioritize an action plan will pay dividends in three critical ways—franchisee satisfaction, improved system results, and improved franchisee validation.
Franchise Advisory Council
All of the forums of two-way, system-wide communication are indispensable in building an open, engaged culture. In addition, it is extremely helpful to have a group of trusted franchisees to use as a sounding board for new ideas and initiatives and to make the corporate team aware of issues that we should be focused on. At a certain stage of growth, a franchisor will normally establish a Franchise Advisory Council (FAC) to provide this type of resource. The International Franchise Association (IFA) website (www.franchise.org) offers excellent advice about forming an FAC. Instead of repeating what you can learn there, I will share my experience and point out what I would have done differently.
The IFA tools for establishing an FAC are great when applied to systems above 100 to 200 units, but they may need to be modified for a smaller system. In a brand-new system, franchisees are also new, which means they are focused on building their business and covering payroll. Knowing now what I didn’t know then, I would start with a more informal group of two or three as part of a President’s Council and work up from there. On reaching 50 franchisees, I’d have done better to establish the more formal FAC but limit the elections to those franchisees in compliance with brand standards, with more than 18 months’ experience, and with the requisite infrastructure. That way, I would have just six franchisees on the FAC until we reached 100 to 150 franchisees, at which time I would expand the group to 12 members.
AVOID THIS PITFALL:
If I could do it over, I would first identify the franchisees who had built enough of an infrastructure to be able to commit the time to this activity and only invite those franchisees that had the bandwidth to participate on the FAC—even if this meant forming the FAC with a smaller group of franchisees.
An FAC can be exceedingly helpful when employed strategically. For the first couple of years, I informed our FAC of major new initiatives and waited for their input before rolling the initiatives out to the entire system. The council also helped provide feedback and input as to tactical issues of concern to them or their fellow franchisees. In late 2009 (after four years of franchising), however, we had a breakthrough in our system when we moved the conversations with our FAC to a more strategic level—sharing our vision of the future without already having the action plans for realizing the vision. We then worked with them to prioritize the list of 12 projects (given resource constraint parameters) they had identified, narrowing it down to the five or six with the highest ROI for the franchisees. Together, the corporate team and the FAC communicated to the entire system the priorities for the upcoming year and stayed true to what we had agreed were the critical initiatives.
Your takeaway is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to forming an FAC. In your initial stage of franchising, an informal structure with a couple of franchisees to leverage as a sounding board will be much more effective and simpler to implement than a full-blown FAC. You then can evolve the number of representatives and the strategic nature of the conversation as you evolve the franchise system. As the franchisor, you will be the decision maker, but you do want the valuable input, buy-in, and leadership of an FAC.
Recognition
Often a franchisee is willing to talk about issues with a fellow franchisee, and the Franchise Advisory Council provides the vehicle to do this. Franchisees also want to be recognized among their peers. We have quarterly award programs that publicly (via e-mail) recognize franchisees for reaching new business milestones. A franchisee who reaches a new level of billable hours in a quarter receives a plaque to hang in his office. We make the final night of our annual conferences a night of celebration in which we recognize top performers—among our franchisees’ teams at the Branch Leadership Conference and among our franchisees at the Franchisee Conference. In addition to the public recognition at the conferences, the award winners receive plaques for their offices to commemorate their accomplishments.
We also have a President’s Circle group that recognizes the top performing franchisees in the system, and this group is recognized with an amazing incentive trip. Thanks to some great advice from Dave McKin-non, founder of Service Brands, we have made the year-over-year dollar increase a major focus so that newer franchisees have an opportunity to attend. We have also limited the number we recognize to the top 4 percent of franchisees or to 10 franchisees, whichever is smaller. We award one spot with the top revenue-producing office, we award a second spot with the top revenue-producing multi-unit owner, and all other spots are for the franchisees with the highest year-over-year increase in revenue dollars. Limiting the trips to a group of no more than 10 franchisees with their partners, the brand president, and J.D. and me makes it more special and intimate for everyone.
We didn’t start offering incentive trips until 2010—but once we were able to afford this recognition we added it. We wanted them to be recognized for their achievements as the best in the system, and they and their partners were rewarded with a trip to a five-star resort with first-class air-fare, so the franchisees feel truly pampered and appreciated.
Recognition doesn’t have to cost anything. In the early stages, public e-mails are free and are a proven motivator of franchisees. As the system grows and money can be allocated to recognition programs, I recommend that you make this investment. Recognition drives and often increases levels of performance. I believe the investment pays for itself many times over.
Additional Suggestions
You should recognize that franchisees will develop their own collective culture for their organization. It is important to create a framework in terms of the vision, mission, and values the brand stands for so that there is consistency in the heart and passion behind the brand in every market around the world. We provide franchisee staff with on-boarding and orientation materials, including videos, to ensure that the message of what BrightStar stands for remains strong and consistent. With a strong foundation, franchisees will build their own local culture around their work style, energy level, etc.
In addition to the ways of building an intentional culture outlined in this chapter, there are a few other observations from BrightStar’s history that have impacted our relationship with our franchisees—both in terms of trust and accountability. The areas that had the most impact relate to voluntary changes to the franchise agreement, to franchisee conferences,
and to the communication of new programs. (These circumstances may never happen to you, but in case they do, you’ll learn the valuable lessons prior to embarking on the specific situation described.)
During the recession of 2008 and 2009, we voluntarily reduced performance requirements for franchisees on their initial locations (low enough to ensure that the majority of actual average and median levels for compliant franchisees were higher than the minimums) and suspended minimum performance requirements on additional locations for our multi-unit owners. This means that although we had a contractual right to collect minimum performance royalties, we chose to abate the financial opportunity for ourselves and have franchisees invest their money in themselves as long as they were following the model. We felt that if they were doing their best—following the model—and couldn’t achieve certain levels of performance that the majority of franchisees achieved before the recession, we would do our part to ride out the economy with them, with all of us suffering a little. We also invested in the BrightStart and boost programs so that we could all enter 2010 stronger.
We communicated the concessions early to reduce franchisee stress. At the same time, we communicated that with the BrightStart investments made in increased head count, increased travel, and increased technology, we would need to restart minimums on additional locations at the beginning of 2010 as though it were day one for these locations, and that first locations would be accountable for minimum performance levels once again. We offered to work with franchisees who could not access capital to open their additional locations to provide an opportunity for them to sell these locations (many could be sold for much more than the franchisees paid for them).
We also sought opportunities to create a win-win for franchisees and for us. When we began looking at international expansion (which we will discuss further in chapter 13), we wanted to create an opportunity to share this exciting opportunity with our franchisees. Knowing that the sale of a master franchise would bring in an up-front cash infusion, we communicated to the system that once we sold our second master we would voluntarily change the royalty payment terms for our older franchisees to the current standard and create a two-week royalty holiday for improved cash flows (the original contract remittance was 15 days and had evolved to 28 days). When we signed our second master in December 2010, many franchisees got to celebrate their temporary cash flow improvement. Even those newer franchisees that already had the longer remittance term were positive about the change; they expressed how rare it was for someone to voluntarily make a change that pushed 101 percent of the cash flow benefit of the second master fees back out to the franchisees.
The message is that we let external factors and a desire to do the right thing dictate terms that were different—and more favorable to the franchisees—from what was in the franchise agreement. At the same time, we were clear as to how long this would last and what the expectations would be after this period of time. I would love to say that every franchisee used the time and concessions to get their houses in order, but at the end of 2010 a few were still surprised by the change in expectations. That said, generally all franchisees recognize and communicate that we are fair and that they know we are aligned on the importance of a win-win relationship. Of course we are. Franchisees must win for the franchisor to win.
Franchisee conferences are a great way to collaborate, share best practices, and get everyone aligned and focused on winning together. It is probably obvious that franchisee conferences are an efficient way to share information. The benefits of getting everyone together go far beyond this; every attendee leaves energized and renewed, and ready to go make things happen.
BRIGHT IDEA:
It will serve you and your franchisees well if you set a requirement in your franchise disclosure document that all franchisees must attend the annual conference.
Making attendance mandatory was one of the best pieces of advice I received early on, and if a franchisee couldn’t attend she would still pay the registration fee (to cover your budget related to room and meeting space forecasts).
The second part of the advice that I received related to franchisee conferences was to actually charge a registration fee! A fitness franchisor who had never charged franchisees for attending the conference initiated a $300 hospitality fee one year, whereupon the whole system revolted. As a franchisee in two hotels, I know that registration fees in the hospitality industry commonly cost about $1,000 or more per person. If the conferences are great—with good content, networking, and entertainment—the registration fee is justified. Learning from the fitness franchisor’s misstep and attending the hotel franchise conferences made it easy for me to decide to establish a registration fee from the beginning and disclose it as required in our FDD.
The conference is not a moneymaker. In addition to all the time the staff spends working on it, we still financially contribute over and above the registration fees and exhibitor fees collected. Building the registration fee expectation allows us to put on a better event with a higher ROI for our franchisees. The greatest cost to the franchisees is the time away from their business and their travel costs, so a registration fee to guarantee that the event is worthwhile is a small price to pay in the big scheme of things. I also believe that by having to pay a registration fee, the franchisees come to the conference with the expectation of getting more value for the cost and are more engaged in the learning and networking to ensure that it happens.
I wish I could get a do-over of our 2009 Franchisee Conference. I explained two of the large investments we had made to improve our system—BrightStart and an online learning management system—to the room full of franchisees. These initiatives would help new (or future) franchisees, so our franchisees who had already invested with us pointed out that the programs wouldn’t help them with their businesses. In my five years of leading the organization, it was my biggest miss, and the months following were my hardest time in our professional history. Our franchisees felt from my speech that I had lost touch and was more focused on adding new franchisees than on supporting them. This couldn’t have been further from the truth, but I needed to show them. I engaged our employees and our Franchise Advisory Council to help me.
AVOID THIS PITFALL:
One of the hardest and biggest lessons learned was that the way new programs are launched—and, more important, how they are communicated—can greatly impact the culture.
I knew we had already spent a lot on the employee additions and on the technology for BrightStart, so I needed to figure out how these programs could help existing franchisees too. This led to the boost program described earlier. Likewise, I knew that the online learning management system was built to help new franchisees hit the ground running faster and to ensure that all classroom attendees were at a similar learning level, regardless of background, before attending. The investment had been made in the content development and the technology, so how could it be repurposed to help existing franchisees? We quickly saw that helping established franchisees use the training would benefit them. It would work to assure them that their team was up to date on new programs and to help when they added or replaced team members. Again, the investment was 99 percent there, so we worked to add access and to split the curriculum by role; we also added content that would specifically help existing franchisees. Within six months of the September 2009 conference misstep, we were back on a well-aligned plan forward, with key initiatives benefiting all franchisees. This experience taught me a huge lesson.
BRIGHT IDEA:
Stay conscious of ways to adapt new programs to assist both new and existing franchisees—it doesn’t cost appreciably more, and the benefits to the culture are huge.
Closing Thoughts
Most cultures evolve over time unintentionally, and the end result may not be desired. You now have a road map of items to consider in forming a strong culture with your franchisees based on open access to information and strong communication. Showing franchisees that corporate is committed to their success and to listening to their input builds a strong win-win culture. In addition, when franchisees see strong ongoing corporate commitment to the franchisees’ results, then the culture is collaborative. If all of your communication venues—including surveys, best practices calls, the Franchise Advisory Council, and recognition programs—are at least partially about improving franchisees’ unit economics, then you have probably anchored your system in a positive and intentional culture.
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We talked about how the best intentional culture aligns the win-win, shared success for franchisor and franchisees, recognizing that the positive effects of successful and happy franchisees are contagious. In the next chapter, we will focus on how to specifically improve a franchisee’s unit economics—one of the key elements in keeping your franchisees successful and happy.
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