In this article Tech4T Sales Director, Dimitrios Kyprianou, explains how some principles borrowed from the marketing community can help franchise businesses develop winning strategies.
Congratulations on a job well done, you’ve successfully sold your territories to budding franchisees. It’s time to sit back and reap the fruits of your labour…or is it? Franchisors are increasingly becoming aware that to secure long-term success they must commit to building deeper, more nurturing relationships with franchisees, long after the initial territory has been sold.
The franchisee is your number one brand advocate, the manner and the efficacy of how they operate will ultimately determine what people think about your franchise brand and more importantly, how effective your performance will be within a given territory. Using the 5 P’s of Marketing – People, Price, Place, Product & Promotion, Tech4T can quickly evaluate how well equipped our franchisors actually are to drive their business forward.
The single most important aspect of any business is the People within and the customers and prospects it wishes to serve. Yet many organisations today lack the systems and tools required to capture even the most modest of information from the people it touches within a territory. [pullquote style=”right” quote=”dark”]The franchisee is your number one brand advocate[/pullquote]
Having systems in place to capture customer information in the field which can be later used for marketing and performance analysis is critical; a basic system need not cost the earth.
Franchisors often talk of “right-sizing” a territory to calculate its Price and value. Like any good relationship, having the right foundation is key. Hand-drawing a territory on a map or using inaccurate or aged data to calculate territory size and boundary is not going to help your franchisee get off to a good start.
We’re spoilt for choice in the UK with a wealth of geo-demographic data available to provide insight into a territory and a robust postcode system that with the right tools allows us to pinpoint our customers and prospects. Sharing this information with the franchisee can help them understand their potential territory worth and may just deliver that spark of inspiration.
The Place in which franchisees operate is a dynamic and constantly changing environment and let’s not forget, also the place in which your franchise competitors operate.
The franchisee is the infantry on the ground, the franchisor is command HQ and together you can make each other’s lives much easier if you collaborate and share information.
Imagine a snapshot picture for your franchise showing locations of customers and prospects within a territory all categorised by worth and potential.
And remember those demographics? Use them to your advantage to identify areas where you have achieved low penetration but customers and prospects share similar characteristics – chances are share of wallet is going to a competitor.
Organisations built around a field sales force are increasingly reaping significant efficiency benefits mapping customers and prospects in relation to each other and then calculating the optimum call frequency, visit schedule and route plan. 25% gain in some cases.
With the right systems in place, some logic and some analysis, we can turn our attention to our Product and customer spending patterns.
Borrowing a simple tool that the supermarket giants have been using for years – a basket analysis – can reveal instant cross and up-sell opportunities for a franchise.
The basket analysis tells you who is buying what, when, in what quantity and with what frequency.
This simple yet highly effective analysis tool is vital to creating truly great Promotions allowing the franchisee to tailor offers to meet the needs of the individual rather than a clumsy one size fits all approach to marketing their services.
In the case of a cleaning company wishing to target an elderly demographic, tailoring the message using the right imagery and a tailored reassuring message based on quality and a CRB checked workforce will have far greater impact than a blanket leaflet with a generic message.
I leave you this quote from the late, great sales guru Zig Ziglar (yes that is his real name!) – You can have everything you want in life if you help other people get what they want.
You can have everything you want in life if you help other people get what they want.
