Meet+franchisees+where+they+are+in+the+franchisee+lifecycle
Published September 3, 2019

Coaching for the Franchisee Lifecycle: Meeting Your Franchisees Where They Are

But first, meet franchise operations thought leaders in New Orleans

For those of you who haven’t heard, the International Franchise Association (IFA) launched a new conference for franchise operations professionals last year. It was not only a tremendous success, but it was tremendously valuable.

The agenda for this year‘s Franchise Operations Conference is looking to add even greater value. This year the content gets deeper to provide even more tactical ideas – like the session, “Meet Your Franchisees Where They Are – Training, Coaching and Professional Development During the Stages of Your Franchisees’ Life-cycle.”

One of the biggest challenges for franchisors we see in our research is keeping those tenured franchisees engaged and breaking them out of their performance plateaus.

Eric Stites, FBR’s founder and CEO, wrote about this not long ago. The number one thing you can do? Get inside their heads. By that we mean, survey your franchisees, dig into the data, compare what different segments of your franchisees are saying (or not saying) about training and support. If you have low response rates among your tenured franchisees, that, in and of itself, is telling.

Instead of trying to guess what franchisees need, or relying on the voices of a few vocal franchisees, look at what the data is telling you and use that to guide your next steps – I promise, you’ll have much more success.

Just ask the panelists at the session: Pat Perkinson from Wild Birds Unlimited, Kathleen Kuhn from Master Home Services, and Brett Shraier from Flyfoe and MaidPro. They all use their franchisee satisfaction data to make continuous improvements to their training and support for franchisees.

I hope you’ll join me at this year’s event, September 25-26 in New Orleans. It’s an incredible learning opportunity, designed to leave you with practical takeaways you can start implementing in your own system right away. You won’t want to miss it.


Franchise Business Review is proud to be the Premier Sponsor of the International Franchise Association’s (IFA) Franchise Operations Conference. Join us in New Orleans for this highly anticipated event focused on the part of franchise success that is often overlooked: operational excellence for sustained growth.

Sessions will include panel discussions, networking, roundtables and team exercises with tangible solutions that you can take back to your system.

About the Author: Michelle Rowan

Michelle is the president of FBR, the former Chair of the International Franchise Association’s Women’s Franchise Committee. and a Certified Franchise Executive. She is the recipient of the 2022 Crystal Compass Award, has facilitated CEO Performance Groups and Executive Networking Groups and is also a mentor of UNH college students. When she is not at work she is usually reading, playing outside, or hanging out with her husband and daughter.
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