Counterintuitive pathway to gain the Power of Trust.(Fact)

Franchisors Need to Consider Low Cost High Volume Strategies - Need Franchisee Compliance

By Lance Winslow

As a former franchisor, now retired, I remember building up my company and making the perfect business model, and then I franchised it in 23 states and 450 cities. Trust me when I tell you it's the hardest job in the world. You have to be able to run the business model better than any of your franchisees, or better than any of their employees, you also have to be a strategic thinker, and lead those teams of people into battle in various regions of our country which are dissimilar. That is to say they have different market segments, weather, buying behavior, and rules and regulations. Okay so let's talk shall we?

It wasn't that I didn't know what to do, or how to do it whenever a problem arose. Very few problems were unique to me because I had experienced them in other states and cities. In fact, when the economy got tough, I knew exactly what to do; expand the business, sell more franchises, and have our franchise teams and master franchises lower the prices and go for volume. Now then, this might seem counterintuitive to many franchisees. If there are fewer customers, the last thing you'd want to do is lower your price, because if you do you go out of business, they'd think.

Nevertheless, that's exactly what you must do. As a franchisor I also realized that I needed to lower our royalty fees so our franchisees could make more money. And they needed to lower their prices so more customers would come into the store. That's what works, but it is really hard trying to convince all the franchisees to lower their prices. Although I am retired, I bet most of the franchising companies out there right now are having a tough time, as I did back then, trying to convince their teams of franchisees of their new marketing strategies to keep everyone in business.

In fact, the Columbus Business Journal in Ohio had an interesting piece recently titled; "Wendy's CEO wants more franchisee compliance with value menu," by Dan Eaton, published on November 8, 2012.

The CEO of that great franchising company is right. He needs to get all of the franchisees on the same page to keep consistency of the brand. Ray Kroc the founder of McDonald's had always done this, and even Dave Thomas who was the founder of Wendy's would agree. If you take care of your customers, they will take care of you, and you won't have to worry about the recession because you will make it through. Please consider all this and think on it.