Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue II, 2015 | Page 82

BY DEBBIE SELINSKY

OUTSTANDING
IN THE FIELD

Getting what you need, when you need it

W

hat franchisees want from corporate field support is pretty
straightforward. Basic expectations include great products, marketing
and brand support, ongoing training, site
selection, purchasing power for goods and
services, and participation in product and
program testing. While those are the table
stakes, what makes systems really successful
and builds strong relationships between
franchisor and franchisees is communication, consistency, and listening,
“For our organization, what’s most
important is for our field consultants to
communicate the same message,” says
Spencer Smith, CEO of the Smith Group
in Cortez, Colo., which operates nearly
50 Aaron’s stores and 3 Rent A Wheel
units across 8 western states. “We have 46
Aaron’s locations, so we have 5 different
field consultants from Canada to Mexico.
We sometimes face the challenge of not
having continuity of message. Consistency is key.”
Finding the best ways to communicate,
however, can be a delicate balancing act.
“The challenge is finding the sweet spot,”
says Smith. “I’ve experienced both undercommunication and over-communication,
where there’s so much white noise coming
at us, especially in the email age, that the
sweet spot seems to swing back and forth.”
Don Davey, who operates 16 Firehouse Subs in Florida and Wisconsin and
has signed a 10-year deal as an area developer for 42 more in his native Wisconsin,
believes successful communication often
comes down to good listening. “It’s very
important for the franchisor to listen to
the franchisees. After all, we’re the guys out
there who’ve invested money in this brand

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and are living and breathing it every day.
At Firehouse, I don’t have a lot of complaints. They’re good at listening to us.”
Consider when Firehouse Subs corporate asked franchisees to increase their
marketing spending by 2 percent. “That
2 percent came from our pockets, so we
challenged corporate to help us offset the
increase with cost savings elsewhere—
maybe with better vendor pricing for food
or software. So they set up a profitability
committee and squeezed out that 2 percent
in cost savings. That’s how responsive they
are,” says Davey, a retired NFL player who
received Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine’s
MVP Influencer Award for Former Pro
Athlete in 2014, and was named the IFA’s
Franchisee of the Year in 2013.
Brooke Wilson, who with her husband
Les owns nine Two Men and a Truck

Spencer Smith

franchises in North and South Carolina,
Maryland, and D.C., says their business
relies heavily on ongoing training, as well
as on regular communication with the corporate field support teams to share best
practices across the network. “A benefit of
being part of a franchise system is that no
challenge is unique,” says Wilson. “We all
deal with the same struggles and achievements, so sharing processes and methods
that have proven successful eliminates trial
and error and makes sense for everybody.”
She and her husband were named the IFA’s
2010 Franchisees of the Year.
Ideally, field consultants and franchisees move in lockstep. But franchisors
and franchisees are sometimes in different businesses, says Wilson. “As a system
grows, the disconnect between corporate
and local franchises can become more distant. Two Men and a Truck International
and many other franchise networks have
implemented strategies to limit the disconnect. Our FBCs spend a lot of time
in franchise facilities and talking with
franchisees and staff in an effort to really
understand day-to-day operations, challenges, and successes.
“In addition, an elected representative
body of franchisees regularly participates
in business planning and policy up date
discussions with corporate, thereby providing opportunity for franchisee perspective at the corporate level. Although
these measures aid in communication and
mutual understanding, it’s also important
that both the franchisee and franchisor
acknowledge each other’s position and try
to view circumstances from both perspectives. We do share the common goal of a
successful, growing, and profitable brand,

MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE IS S UE II, 2015

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