10 Steps to Successfully Growing Your Franchise Business
Most franchises want to grow their franchise business. Whether it be growing sales, employees, or locations, ultimately, it’s about building a bigger business. Whilst there’s a framework to growing a franchise, it’s important to note that it’s not easy. Successful growth takes time and effort.
Furthermore, achieving fast growth at the expense of operational efficiency and/or customer service can sometimes be a recipe for disaster. There’s no point building up demand for your products or services if you can’t supply these. With this in mind, your goal should be to achieve sustainable and profitable growth in your franchise business.
As a Business Coach, I work with a variety of business owners across many industries, and I understand the steps required to achieve sustainable growth. In this article, I have summarised the 10 Steps for you to follow in order to grow your franchise.
1) Understand Your Purpose
Growing your franchise will be challenging. Whilst you’ll have plenty of good times, you’ll also experience bad times, and it will be your why that will keep you going when times are tough. Your why is your purpose, or the reason that you first bought a franchise, and continues to be the reason that you want to grow your franchise today.
Constantly remind yourself of your why, as this will act like a magnet, pulling you towards it. When you are being pulled towards your purpose, the work can seem effortless. On the other hand, it can feel like a constant struggle when you are pushing hard towards an outcome that you are not truly connected to.
Regardless of the type of franchise you’re growing, you’ll need the help of those around you. Make sure you share your purpose with your employees, staff, family, franchisor, and other stakeholders, as this will enable them to also become connected to the greater purpose.
2) Goal Clarity
Get clear on what type and level of growth you’d like to achieve in your business. These are your franchise goals. I subscribe to the theory of business by design, meaning that you can achieve whatever you want in your franchise, however it starts with getting clear about your goals.
When discussing goals, I use the analogy of a GPS. To use a GPS effectively, you don’t just enter a suburb and hope that you arrive at your specific destination. Instead, you enter the street number, street name, suburb, and guess what, you arrive at your destination.
Franchise goals are exactly the same. The clearer you are with your goals, the easier it is to know if you’re on or off target. There are so many franchise goals that you could choose from, therefore decide what’s most important to your business.
Your goals could be relating to sales, growth, marketing, profit, staff, locations, customers, and so on. Regardless of which goals you decide, when you get clear on what you want your franchise to look like, you give yourself every chance of success.
3) Business Planning
Once you’re clear about your franchise goals, the next step is to create the plan to achieve these. Essentially, you want to bridge the gap between what you want and where you are today. Identify the milestones and tasks that need to be accomplished along your path towards goal achievement.
It’s worth noting, that you don’t have to have all the answers when creating your franchise business plan. Part of your planning could be to upskill yourself, join a business network community, or seek the right person/s to assist you.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Sharpening the axe is an analogy for planning and preparation. Make time regularly for planning and preparation, as this will positively improve your franchise outcomes. Plan your year, month, week, and day.
The more time you spend on planning and preparation, the more effective and efficient your franchisee will be, leading to better outcomes.
4) Follow Systems, Trust the Process
One of the best things about owning a franchise, is that your franchisor has already done the hard work for you and created the appropriate systems that deliver successful franchise outcomes.
Regardless of the type of franchise you’re involved in, there’ll be systems for every facet of the franchise model, including operations, purchasing, sales, marketing, training, and so on.
Having comprehensive systems in place means that franchisees can achieve their business goals faster, and with a lot less headaches. This means that your role is to follow the systems that are in place, as they’re there for a reason.
The second component of this step is to trust the process. This is all about believing that the franchise systems work, and consistently taking the right actions to implement these systems.
Another element of trusting the process is consistency. When I was a young boy, I remember being told about the fable of the tortoise and the hare. For those who are not familiar with this fable, it’s about a tortoise and a hare that have a race.
Ordinarily you’d expect the hare to win, however the hare doesn’t take the race seriously, skylarks, and even takes a nap. Meanwhile, the tortoise is putting one foot in front of the other consistently. In the end, the tortoise wins, with the moral of the fable being “slow and steady wins the race”.
This same message applies to success in franchising. I describe it as C.A.P.E, which stands for Consistent And Persistent Effort. When you consistently and persistently implement your franchise systems, focus on what’s within your control, and trust that success is just around the corner, you will achieve the franchise growth you are seeking.
5) Surround Yourself with the Right People
TEAM is an acronym for Together Everyone Achieves More. In sports, we constantly see champion teams defeat a team of champions. It’s critical that your franchise team works together towards the achievement of the growth goal.
Part of working together, is to ensure that you have employed the right people, in the right roles, doing the right tasks. Recruitment has a significant bearing on the future success of your franchise.
Don’t lower your standards for the sake of filling a role, as this will probably not end well. Instead, get clear on the description of the vacant role, and find the right person to suit.
Invest in training your team, so they can constantly perform at optimum levels. A lot of franchisees won’t invest too much time into their staff because they are fearful that they might leave.
The problem with this approach, is that these staff might stay, and be undertrained. To achieve your growth targets, your staff need to be proficient in their roles, therefore invest in their development.
Team isn’t just internal to your franchise, it also applies to your broader team of the franchisor, suppliers, investors, business coach, and other stakeholders. Ensure that you have a partnership approach with all stakeholders, as everyone has a role to play in the performance of your franchise.
6) Create Awareness
You need to let people know about you and your franchise. Awareness is another word for branding or marketing, and without awareness you’re trying to sell a secret.
There are so many ways that you can create awareness for your franchise, such as advertising, social media, internet search engines (ie. Google), email campaigns, networking, referrals, cold calling, and the list goes on.
The other element of awareness is to be consistent with your communication. We all have busy lives and it’s unrealistic to expect your prospects or customers to think of your franchise business without a ‘gentle nudge’ from you.
The aim is to be ‘Top Of Mind’ for your prospects and customers, so that when they are ready to purchase the products or services that you sell, they think of your franchise ahead of your competitors.
7) Practice Customer Centricity
Your customers’ perceptions of your franchise can make or break it. Provide quality products and services, and your customers will tell their family and friends. Conversely, if you mess up their experience, they’ll probably tell the world even faster.
Without customers you don’t have a business, therefore sustainable growth is reliant on making your current and potential customers happy with their experience. One way to grow your franchise, is to turn your customers into ‘raving fans’.
A raving fan is created by constantly exceeding their expectations, and providing them amazing value. These are the type of customers that keep returning to purchase your products and services time and time again.
8) Learn to Love Sales
Most franchise owners have an aversion to sales that stems from the negative connotations associated with ‘slippery, manipulative salespeople.’ The reality of being an effective salesperson couldn’t be further from this association.
The fact is that we are constantly selling and negotiating in all facets of our lives, not just at work, ie. where to go for dinner, which channel to watch, why your team will win the game.
To be a great salesperson you need to first ask plenty of questions and listen to the needs of your prospect or customer. You then must evaluate how your products and services can fulfill this need.
Another trait to being a successful salesperson is enthusiasm. If you can’t be enthusiastic about the product or service you sell, then why would I buy from you? Learn to get excited by the prospect of seeing your customer or prospect.
Lastly, you need to keep going. Sales is a marathon, not a sprint, therefore don’t be discouraged by rejection. Rejection is inevitable. Instead, view this as an opportunity to improve, as you have a franchise growth goal to achieve.
9) Work on Your Inner Self
When I refer to your inner game, I’m referring to what’s going on insideyour head. To successfully grow your franchise requires some knowledge and skills, however the largest contribution of success comes from your mindset, psychology, and attitudes.
In order to grow your franchise, you’ll have to adopt a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset means that you’re prepared to tackle challenges and learn from them, therefore improving your skills, talents, and intelligence over time.
A characteristic of a person with a growth mindset is that they see opportunities everywhere. Even in times that seem dire and catastrophic, having a growth mindset will enable you to have a different perspective.
Viewing mistakes as feedback is another characteristic of a growth mindset. Every time you make a mistake you learn something, which is feedback. The more you try new things, the more mistakes you will make, but the closer you will be to getting it right.
Resourcefulness is also a key characteristic of a person with a growth mindset. Regardless of where you are or what’s happening, always look for a solution by asking, “What else can I do?”
10) Master Your Time
As a Business Coach, the most common reason (excuse) I hear for not doing something is, “I don’t have enough time.” Whilst I understand why this could be genuine on some occasions, the reality is that we all have 168 hours in every week. It’s just that successful franchise owners know how to master their time.
The first step to time mastery is to understand how you’re currently spending your time. Are you being busy? Are you operating in a constant stage of ‘urgency’? Do you suffer from procrastination? Or, are focusing on important tasks? Are you being productive, spending your time on growing your franchise?
In order to find more time, I encourage you to consider the ‘ates’:
- Eliminate: Say “No” to things that aren’t propelling your franchise forwards
- Automate: Leverage technology and invest in automation
- Delegate: Let go of tasks that you’re not good at or are essential, but not important
Summary
Growing an outstanding franchise business is possible in any market by following the steps outlined above. Remember that growth won’t be easy, and it requires time, patience, and consistent effort.
With this being said, growing a successful franchise will be incredibly rewarding, and have a positive contribution on so many lives.
