Even though the franchise industry recorded a revenue of over $159 billion in 2020, it has been considered as one of the most “difficult trading environments” particularly for franchises that are experiencing some form of elevated growth.
While there’s no formula for success in the franchising world, it is true that every stage of the franchising lifecycle will come with a significant number of obstacles you will need to avoid and hurdles you must jump over.
The manner in which you respond to the challenges and hurdles in your franchising life acts as a great determinant of whether you will get the success you desire or not. Whether you are a franchisee or a franchiser, you must embrace a few beliefs and value systems that will propel your venture to the right levels of success.
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Here are the 3 key factors of running a successful franchise location.
Set Great Standards
The franchisor in your franchise agreement must ensure that all franchisees establish a strong business form.
However, this will never happen in a vacuum. It is your obligation to set the strongest standards that will guide your stay in the industry. From dealing with essential customer data to the day-to-day operational standards, you must ensure that there’s no room for error if you want to run a successful franchise location.
Take a better chunk of your time to decide what you expect from the franchise location and lay the path that will lead you towards full realization of the standards you’ve set. Embrace all regulatory protocols, in-store standards, marketing ethics and digital customer safety if you want to outshine the others in the value chain.
Take Employee Development As An Opportunity Rather than a Cost
Having the right bunch of employees is key in establishing a successful franchise location.
In essence, you will never get an employee that meets your franchise location’s needs 100%. Instead, it is your role to develop the staff you need out of the people that come to seek employment in your franchise location. This reveals the real essence of training your employees.
Initial training acquaints your employees with the basic skills they will need to drive the venture in the direction you want. Don’t take this as a cost to the franchise location. Instead, you need to take employee training as the investment you will use to grow a successful venture. Embrace a program that fosters both initial and ongoing intermittent training.
Maintain Strong Relationships
Your franchise location greatly depends on the ties it establishes to operate as a strong entity. This explains why you must value the relationships you establish among each member of your value chain. After all, your franchise location would never have existed without these stakeholders.
You will only develop the art of establishing long-lasting partnerships with your chain of consumers, suppliers, staff and competitors by embracing good relationships.
Whether you are running the biggest franchise location in the hood or a startup, it is a great idea to embrace a support team that will check and attend to all sorts of relational questions on a regular basis.
Go ahead and establish a team that will ensure that every stakeholder’s concerns are heard and dealt with. Look into ways of establishing channels that will enable inter-stakeholder connections and real-time conflict resolution.