Why Aren’t You Asking Your Franchisees These 5 Questions?

Cameron Herold  is one of the most sought-after business minds in North America, the founder of BackPocketCOO, and the former COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Cameron is an author, speaker, executive coach, and beloved 15Five advisor.  

You poured your blood, sweat, and tears into creating a successful business. You built a brand, secured your intellectual property, and grew a healthy customer base. Are you going to just let someone take all of that away from you?

Franchising is not as sinister as all that. But it is a symbiotic relationship that requires trust, mutual agreement, and open communication. If your franchisees succeed, you will succeed. Period.

Check-in with your franchisees at least twice each month, and preface your questions with a conversation that you aren’t just spying on them. Inform them that you want to help them to succeed and you know that the experiences they share are valuable to anyone else who holds a franchise license. They may do business in different markets and they may never meet, but they aren’t separate entities. They are a community.

This process can be overwhelming if you have a large network. Email, the most common communication platform, is an inefficient way of managing responses. I’ve found that automated feedback software is the simplest, fastest way to manage communication and gather info around the needs, wants, and ideas of franchisees.

Ask these 5 questions to learn about your business from the people who live it every day. By implementing what you learn with every other franchisee, you can increase profitability and encourage others to buy-in to what you have created:

1) How can we support you in achieving your goals?

Start with this question so that the franchisee will know that your intention is to offer support, and that you want them to succeed. By inquiring about their goals, you can see how realistic they are being. Gently realign them towards something attainable or provide more useful performance metrics.

Many people decide to buy a franchise because they lack the experience or acumen to build their own business from scratch. Not only can you share general entrepreneurial expertise, but you built this very business from scratch. Who is better equipped to guide their decisions about advertising, sales, hiring, or choosing a property to lease?

2) What are your suggestions to preserve the franchise values and company culture?

Company culture is not just a catch-phrase, and your values are far more than a list you put on your wall. Your culture is a living, breathing organism. Customers feel it when they walk through the door, they can read it in an email and hear it on the other end of the phone.

When a franchise has a grand-opening, the event is accompanied by an initial burst of energy and excitement. Employees and managers follow beliefs like “put customers first” or “be yourself”. Over time and with employee turnover or other business challenges, culture can take a nose-dive. Asking this feedback question preempts that.

3) What challenges are you facing, and how can we help?

People will not readily share this information for fear that it will erode your faith in them. By asking this you open the door and let them know that they are safe to walk through it.

Always respond by acknowledging their candor and you will encourage more sharing in the future. Then let them know that you are on the same team. Blaming them for an oversight is not going to improve the situation, it will just sour the relationship and make it more difficult for you to provide support.

4) What are some best practices you can share with other franchisees?

You may have created a successful business from scratch, but factors can arise that you didn’t have to consider at the early stages. Markets shift, competitors arise, societal trends evolve… Who better to inform you about these changes than the people who are offering your product every day in different locations across the region or country?

And since everyone likes to share their brilliant ideas, give people a platform to speak them. You will strengthen relationships while learning practical information that you can share company-wide.

5) What ideas and suggestions do you have for improving the business as a whole?

The form of the question is almost as important as the substance. You could ask “do you have any ideas or suggestions… ?”, but that will not yield a response. Asking more directly says, “I know you’ve been kicking around some ideas for awhile, now is your chance to share them.”

You ask this question because each franchise is uniquely customer-facing. Some customers will call the customer support hotline, but far more will have a conversation at the store that you will otherwise never hear: “Hey Jerry, if you redesigned your parking lot like this you could fit 10 more cars” or “I went to a restaurant in Dallas last week that serves almost the same sandwich, but they added this one ingredient that made it so much better”.

Those who buy into your franchise, get the advantage of building an enterprise while mitigating risk. They adopt your proven business model and don’t have to build awareness, since your brand is (hopefully) universally recognized. Of course all of that comes with operational guidelines, set-pricing, and other restrictions.

Asking questions on a regular basis lets franchisees know that your brand also comes with concern for their success and the support to help them achieve it.

 Image Credit: Matthew Hutchinson

What questions do you regularly ask employees or franchisees? What was the impact?