For your franchisees to recommend your brand to potential franchise candidates, they need to have a positive experience during your collaboration. This depends on their engagement with your brand, your concept, your network management, and your teams. So, how can you build franchisee loyalty?
To begin with, why build loyalty among your franchisees?
Congratulations! You’ve already done a great job with the recruitment of your franchisees. Now that you know franchising is a successful business model for your brand, you want to keep growing.
Did you know that your current franchisees are perfectly capable of bringing you strong new franchise candidates? Word of mouth is indeed a proven and highly effective practice when it comes to network development.
So, how can you encourage your current franchisees to bring you those valuable candidates? It’s simple: if they are satisfied with your network, word of mouth will (almost) take care of itself, and your franchisees will become your best ambassadors.
For your franchisees to recommend your network, you must therefore build their loyalty. However, this cannot be done in the traditional way, as with your end customers. We’re going to suggest several strategies to implement. Be careful! To effectively retain your franchisees, we recommend putting ALL of them into practice.
1. Offer personalized support
Franchisees turn to this business model because it allows them to start their own business while being supported.
Why? Because the franchisor has a duty to lend a helping hand to all their franchisees.
To help you develop your brand, you will need to rely on network managers, for example. They will allow you to delegate this task. As true specialists, they will be attentive and efficient in providing the necessary support to your franchisees — whether they have general questions, face challenges in managing their store, need help improving sales performance, or require assistance with a tool, piece of equipment, or method specific to your brand. The network managers will assist you in internal management between the head office and the franchisees.
Having dedicated staff for your franchisees will help them feel confident and, above all, properly guided to lead each point of sale to success. It is therefore crucial both for uniting your franchisees and for ensuring the overall success of your brand.
Dans ce même raisonnement, il est également essentiel que vous proposiez à vos franchisés au moins un programme de formation. En effet, même si ces derniers ont de l’expérience dans le secteur d’activité de votre enseigne, ils doivent être formés au fonctionnement concret de leur futur métier. Nous vous recommandons d’inclure dans cette formation des points techniques, d’autres en management, ainsi qu’une partie sur un aspect plus commercial.
2. Develop a relationship of trust
Through partially personalized support, you will build a relationship of trust with your franchisees. However, to achieve this, it is important to put additional elements in place.
As explained above, as a franchisor, you are not leading a team of employees — you are leading a team of independent entrepreneurs.
Therefore, in the way you communicate with them, you must show them that you respect them as the business owners they are. This goes hand in hand with transparency. You must be transparent with your franchisees, particularly regarding the overall performance of your network: successes, failures — you must be ready to openly discuss these topics with them.
They will feel recognized, involved, and valued within your network
To strengthen this aspect, we recommend organizing events and activities. Your network managers can support you in this area. This will help create a friendly atmosphere where each franchisee has the opportunity to meet others and share experiences. Whether through conventions or training sessions bringing together all network members, you’ll be able to manage your franchise network effectively and fairly.
3. Offer prospects for development
In networks that do not offer franchisees opportunities to grow, franchisee engagement with the brand is generally lower than in those that do.
So, how can you enable your franchisees to grow professionally within your network?
You will need to carefully study the solutions available to you, as some may be difficult to implement depending on your industry.
The most well-known solution: multi-franchising
Here’s how it works: for your top-performing franchisees who wish to grow further within your network, you can offer them the opportunity to open multiple franchise locations. Of course, you’ll also need to support them as much as possible to ensure the success of this project.
Here is a list of some advantages that multi-franchising can offer your brand:
- The ability to expand your brand image in an additional geographical area,
- Strengthen your brand while limiting setup costs, as it is less expensive to help an existing franchisee grow than to start from scratch with a new candidate
- Simplify the management of your network, as you will have fewer contacts to deal with, both for yourself and for your network managers.
To structure multi-franchising, you can adapt your concept into several entities — for example, one division specializing in services and another focused on product sales.
mples of different solutions, all equally effective
If the multi-franchise option seems too complicated to implement, don’t worry! There are other solutions that can be just as effective in helping your franchisees grow professionally within your network.
You can, for example:
- Allow your franchisees to become ambassadors of your brand: they can take part in trade shows or interviews. This will give them the opportunity to gain recognition and visibility by representing your network.
- Integrate them as much as possible into your processes: for example, during your training programs, you can set up training units where new franchisees can benefit from the expertise of your more experienced franchisees.
All these elements help to strengthen your franchisees’ engagement with your network. Even if they don’t directly bring you new franchise candidates, they will at least be more likely to renew their franchise agreement!
And remember, the well-being of your franchisees within the network will always impact the success of their point of sale and consequently, the success of your brand.
To set up the structure and resources needed to retain your franchisees and build a united network around a shared mission, you can rely on tools such as Cerca!
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