As a former franchisor, I've always realized that I was only as successful as our franchised outlets. Not long ago, I was having a dialogue with one of the top business management and marketing consultants in the Greater Indianapolis Area about the need for sales training for franchisor sales staff. Leanne suggested to me that another important consideration with regards to the franchising sector and marketing has to do with the fact that;
"Many franchises fail to instruct new franchise people how to effectively market their franchises especially when there are no national advertising programs such as McDonald's and the likes. This becomes the downfall for so many small business owners."
She noted that this was her professional opinion. Well it turns out that when it comes to "Franchisee Marketing Plans," Leanne is absolutely correct, it is a huge problem. In a way it is surprising because the franchisor has generally developed a winning business model with a local marketing plan before franchising, and all of those marketing elements were the key to success which made the franchise business model even worthy of franchising and duplicating.
Just a Michael Gerber in the E-Myth points out, a franchisee needs a strong marketing program too, it should be part of the package, without it, success could be hit or miss depending on the location, demographics, and local market. Many smaller franchisors do not have National Marketing Programs, perhaps they just don't have enough units to make it work. This is especially true with franchisors that have under 300-400 units, as there just isn't enough money even if the franchisor has a "national marketing program" fee to pool the resources of the franchisees for this purpose.
When you are a larger franchisor you have more money to create a national program, smaller franchisors don't and thus, need to work closely with their franchisees in those specific areas and territories and train those franchisees or master franchisees to hold that market once they get going. Our franchise system always maintained a marketing manual for our franchisees, and modified it as we learned new strategies, as our franchisees tried and succeeded at new techniques.
Franchisors that don't have a marketing manual for in-territory marketing certainly need to develop one or hire a consultant to help them get this done, as their franchise system success clearly depends on it. And if you don't want to take it from me, just ask Leanne. Please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Franchising Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow
0 nhận xét:
Post a Comment