What do you do if your franchise growth is stagnant and unorganized?

Don't shy away from the hard truths. Conduct a ruthless audit of your franchise operations. Analyze sales figures, identify underperforming locations, and pinpoint weaknesses in your support systems. This might feel uncomfortable, but in my experience, honest assessment is the first step to crafting a winning strategy. Tip: Gather data on marketing efforts, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency across your franchise network. Look for patterns and identify areas where individual franchises or the entire system needs a boost.

From experience I would say it is important to understand why and where you want to go. To do this you need to develop a growth strategy. Based on what you discover, you should create a clear and actionable plan to drive growth. Its it a market issue, is it marketing and sales or is it training and support. Get to the core issue and develop a plan of attack!

Las cosas que tuvieron exito en el pasado, no me aseguran exito en el futuro. infinidad de veces hemos escuchado a empresarios, que no quieren cambiar porque asi hicieron siempre y les fue bien. Lo que no logran ver son los acelerados cambios del mercado, que impactan en sus resultados, pero le atribuyen a otra infinidad de cosas. Revisar los planes es fundamental para que el negocio no quede en el pasado

Es importante revisar sus procesos, y trabajar sobre la automatizacion de los mismos. Hoy en dia estas herramientas otorgan precision para la toma de decisiones. No es lo mismo tomar decisiones a tiempo, que ir con los metodos tradicionales que muchas veces no llego a tiempo

Franchisees crave a smooth-running system. Analyze your operations and identify bottlenecks that hinder efficiency. Can you simplify your supply chain to reduce costs? Are there areas where technology can automate tasks and free up valuable time for franchisees to focus on customer service and sales? Streamlining operations empowers your franchisees to excel. Tip: Invest in a robust project management system to ensure clear communication, efficient task delegation, and that everyone within the network is on the same page.

As a franchisor, your organization should have well defined systems to maintain engagement between corporate staff and franchisees. This could be regular one-on-one coaching calls, peer group facilitation, franchise advisory councils (FACs), regional operations summits, etc., but engagement is beneficial for the entire organization. Franchisees are on the front lines of the business and are able to share firsthand experience on areas that are lacking, falling behind or are in need of innovation. They are also well equipped to bring new ideas to the franchisor that can potentially benefit the entire system.

Your franchisees are the cornerstone of your network's success. Cultivate a culture of open communication by hosting regular meetings (physical or virtual) to address concerns and exchange ideas. In my experience, fostering a collaborative environment where franchisees feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute their expertise leads to a more invested and successful network overall. Tip: Establish a communication platform specifically designed for franchisees to share best practices and learn from each other's triumphs and challenges.

One franchise system I work with focuses on the middle third of its owner group. The internal coaches help get the newest, or bottom third, franchisees up and running in the early years. The top third owners may support each other with facilitated mastermind or performance groups. In this case, the franchise system invests additional advanced coaching and skills training for the middle group to grow them into the top-performing group.

I recommend commercial dashboard system from companies like Align Technologies and FocalPoint coaching for use within the franchise system and multi-unit franchise groups. These systems are based on Verne Harnish's Scaling Up methodology, but systems based on EOS (Entrepreneur Operating System) are equally good. I hope this is useful.

Evaluate franchise owners for multi-unit skills. I start with Zoracle to get an objective profile of owners and work with franchisors or aspiring owners to build scaling-up plans that involve strategic planning, team assessments (Positive Intelligence), and training programs (time mastery, coaching/corrective action conversations and sales skills to name a few.) Hope this helps.