Five Tips for Emerging Brands
Grow your brand the right way. Learn what top emerging brands are doing to grow their brands and cash in on franchisee satisfaction--and how you can, too.
Research Supplier Checklist
Make sure you’re getting the most for your research investment. Ask research firms the right questions and compare them equally to find the best one for your franchise system. This handy checklist will help you track the services offered.
Donatos’ Missing Piece of the Pie
Learn how Donatos partnered with Franchise Business Review to improve performance, grow their system, and improve franchisee satisfaction.
[whitepaper] A Crash Course in the World of Franchising
This industry primer was created to introduce newcomers to the world of franchising, with tips and pointers to help get up to speed quickly on everything franchising.
[whitepaper] Five Strategies for Turning Low Satisfaction Scores into a Win
Learn five key strategies to effectively use your survey results to strengthen personal connections with your franchisees, build a culture of transparency, and get franchisees excited about their future with the brand.
[whitepaper] Top 10 Roadblocks Standing in the Way of Franchisee Satisfaction
Download Franchise Business Review’s Whitepaper, Top 10 Roadblocks Standing in the Way of Franchisee Satisfaction and learn how to identify and overcome the most common obstacles to building a franchise system full of satisfied, growth-minded franchise owners.
BEST PRACTICE: How Marco’s Pizza Has Achieved Revenue Growth of 23.5%
Marco’s Pizza opened 113 stores in 2015, with revenue growth of 23.5% over the previous year. President and Chief Operating Officer, Bryon Stephens, shares some of the strategic revenue boosting approaches the brand has taken.
For the Win: Coaching Techniques to Boost Franchisee Performance
Effective coaching is a crucial tool for boosting performance. If you want your franchise “team” to take their performance to the next level, these four tips can help you show them how to get there.
10 Things Your Franchise Field Reps Should Be Doing (But Probably Aren’t)
When planned and executed properly, these visits can be a valuable link between the corporate office and your franchisees. Learn 10 things your franchise field reps should be doing to make sure everyone involved--franchisees, field reps, and franchise leadership--are getting the most value from field visits.
What’s Even Better Than Watching Cat Videos? The 2016 Ops Series!
The Ops Series brings together some of the most experienced and innovative franchise executives in the business today. With five action packed sessions, you’ll get smart on how to improve performance, increase profitability, and drive bottom line results.
Five Strategies for Turning Low Satisfaction Scores into a Win
Learn five key strategies to effectively use your survey results to strengthen personal connections with your franchisees, build a culture of transparency, and get franchisees excited about their future with the brand.
Leverage Survey Data to Boost Your Brand’s Culture, Media Presence, and More
Franchisors that lead their sectors proactively seek feedback from franchisees, customers, employees and/or candidates because they understand doing so positively impacts their bottom line. Read on to learn a few ways to leverage survey data that you may not have considered.
FBR President Shares Best Practices for Using Surveys
Listen in to this Boefly webinar to hear FBR President and COO Michelle Rowan and other franchise executives share best practices in franchise surveys.
The Missing Piece of Your Corporate Culture
Franchise brands with strong cultures have extremely high satisfaction and engagement among their franchisees. But cognitive culture is only half the story. Research cited by Harvard Business Review article points out that emotions are central to building the right culture.
Work Keeping You Up at Night? Rest Easy with the 2016 Ops Series
We talk with franchise executives day in and day out about how to improve franchisee satisfaction, and the most common [...]
Franchisee Vision Plans: The Most Effective Tool You’re NOT Using
Most franchise companies have a crystal clear vision of where they want to go. But the mistake many franchisors make is not requiring their franchisees to have their own vision. Implementing a franchisee vision plan program is the most effective way to set expectations and align franchisees’ goals with the goals of the organization. Learn how to start putting vision plans to work in your organization with these free resources.
eBook: How to Design an Effective Franchisee Vision Plan Program
This eBook is a must-read for any franchisor that wants to increase franchisee satisfaction and improve performance across your system.
3 Simple Steps to Building in Transparency (and Keeping Franchisees Satisfied)
Learn three steps you can take to build in transparency to keep existing franchisees satisfied and engaged, and attract new franchisees to your brand.
FBR Staff Picks: Recommended Reading
How does Franchise Business Reviews’ staff stays inspired and motivated? Check out our latest list of great reads. CEO Eric Stites recommends Making Idea Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality. According to productivity expert Scott Belsky, no one is born with the ability to drive creative projects to completion. Execution is a skill that must be developed by building your organizational habits and harnessing the support of your colleagues. Read on for more inspiring titles.
Moving from Data-Driven to Insight-Driven: Uncovering the Gold in Your Data Mine
The ultimate goal of surveying your franchisees is to gain objective insights into how to improve operational performance to get better results. In order to do that you need to pull out the gold hidden inside! These 10 ideas for digging into your data will help you understand what drives your franchisees’ behaviors and beliefs, and apply metrics to improving franchisee relations.
10 Ways to Combat Franchisee Disengagement
Franchisees typically tend to disengage somewhere around five years into the business. Follow these 10 tips to keep your franchisees satisfied and engaged long term, and drive growth for your system.
Franchise Buyers Increasingly Care About Franchisee Satisfaction
All franchise buyers do varying degrees of due diligence before investing in a brand. The difference is that today more and more prospective franchisees are looking at franchisee satisfaction data in addition to financial benefits, lifestyle, and the training and support they’ll receive. See what current franchisees have to say about franchisee satisfaction as a key factor in choosing a franchise.
Young Franchise Brands: Your Franchisees Want Better Tech
Newer, smaller franchise brands typically don’t have a ton of capital, so investment in powerful software platforms can be extremely difficult to finance. At the same time, steady, sustainable growth of the brand depends on franchisees being successful and validating well for interested candidates. So do you invest beyond your means to streamline unit-level and brand growth, or do you stick with inefficient systems until there’s enough capital to spend on better technology?
Five Easy, Low-Cost Ideas to Boost Growth through Franchisee Satisfaction
Try these five easy, low-cost tips to start increasing franchisee satisfaction, and maximize your franchise system's growth and revenue.
5 Ways to Prevent A Viral Customer Service “Fail” in Your Franchise
As a franchisor, it can be especially difficult to maintain the highest level of customer service at all your locations since your franchisees have a great deal of autonomy. Here are five key things you can do to protect your brand.
Don’t Cut Corners with Customer Satisfaction
Depending on a particular brand’s needs, “free” can actually carry a much, much larger cost than one of the price-tagged alternatives.
5 Simple Ways to Wow Franchisees
Raise the performance of your franchise system with these 5 tips.
How to Drive Franchise Profits Via Customer Satisfaction
As local business owners, your franchisees are often buried in the day-to-day details of running their businesses—hiring, payroll, sales, customer service—meaning they typically have time to pay attention to customer satisfaction. Make it easy for them by providing them with customer satisfaction data that relates specifically to their location.
Whitepaper: The 10 Roadblocks Standing in the Way of Franchisee Satisfaction
Download Franchise Business Review's whitepaper, Top 10 Roadblocks Standing in the Way of Franchisee Satisfaction and learn how to identify [...]
How Three Top Franchises Use Their Franchisee Satisfaction Data
http://vimeo.com/135080066 The data provided by Franchise Business Review gives franchisors a wealth of insights that help them grow their [...]
The Most Important Franchise Operations Tool You May Not Be Using
In June 2015, over 100 franchisors learned how to run their brand more successfully via Franchise Business Review’s 2015 Ops Webinar Series. They benefitted from the insight of 15 respected franchise industry leaders who shared their experiences, expertise, and favorite resources during five online sessions. Throughout the series, one idea kept that regardless of the session topic was...
3 Steps to Peer Group Success
By creating a culture of professionalism, collaboration and accountability, peer groups can help franchisees achieve measurable results and take their [...]
McDonalds Illustrates the Need to Strategically Respond to Franchisee Satisfaction Data
If McDonald’s current relationship with its franchisees is not enough for you to invest in understanding what the majority of your franchisees are happy with and what they are not pleased with, consider the many system-strengthening benefits satisfied franchisees deliver.
How Donatos Became a Top 40 Food Franchise
A few years ago, our company made a decision to conduct our own in-house Franchise Partner Survey. The rationale was [...]
GAINING TRACTION: 5 Steps to Drive Franchise Performance and Profitability
Having a strong culture of transparency is critical for the long-term success of your franchisees and your system as a whole. Franchisees can easily get distracted as their business grows, which will ultimately stall their growth. Being 100 percent transparent as an organization will keep you and your franchisees laser-focused on things that really matter.
Getting Franchisees Engaged, Productive and Profitable
Franchise Business Review founder and CEO Eric Stites offers one simple idea to get franchisees engaged, productive, and profitable.
Franchise Business Review Launches National Search for Top Franchises
Register now for Franchise Business Review's 2015 Franchisee Satisfaction Awards, part of a national project that looks at franchisee satisfaction among the country’s most popular franchise brands.
Don’t be a Dummy
No matter how “good” your system is, there’s a little bit of dummy in every organization. If any of these sound like someone you know, now is the time to address it – they could be holding you back from being truly GREAT.
Improve Franchisee Relations One Note At A Time
A common complaint from franchisees is that their franchisor doesn’t listen, the corporate office is out of touch, and they don’t feel part of the larger brand. There are a lot of big picture things you can do to change this, but there’s also one seemingly small thing that can make all the difference: A handwritten note.
When the Shoe Fits
In running, it’s not about what sneakers do for you in those first few miles. The first 5k isn’t nearly as important as Mile 25 of a marathon. The ultimate question is will the shoes get me through the long haul? The same is true in franchising.
Complainers Among Us
There’s no doubt we’ve all worked with a complainer or two—that person who spends all his time griping about a situation rather than doing something to improve it. Complainers may hurt your brand in more ways than you know.
Your Bottom Line Doesn’t Matter As Much As You Think
Ten years ago, franchisors spent more time looking at their bottom line than that of their franchisees—thinking as long as their numbers looked good, individual units would follow. Today, we know that’s not true.
Let Your Franchisees Teach Your Franchisees
We hear it time and time again: Franchisees learn better from each other. So, when a franchisor has a best practice to share, an improvement to make, or a new process to implement, they get better results when the news is delivered by franchisees.
Long Run Leadership
Being a runner from Boston, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d have done if I’d been crossing the finish line at 2:50 p.m. on 4/15/13.
Jimmy John’s Greatest Mistake
The passion of Jimmy Liautuad is palpable. He’s got a big personality, and as he shared at Franchise Time’s Finance and Growth Conference in March, he’s had a great ride as CEO of Jimmy John’s Gourmet Subs—a brand he started back in 1983. But it hasn’t all been roses.
The Five Most Important Things We Learned at IFA
Our team spent most of last week in New Orleans at the IFA Convention, so I asked them to dig out from their beads and give me the best tip they took away from being there. Just like the conference itself, there’s something for everyone in their responses.
Compete Locally to Succeed Nationally
Local efforts can have a big impact on a franchise system as a whole, including its unit profitability, storewide sales, and overall brand growth. If you’re not already, you may want to consider what (or who) is actually driving your local efforts.
Item 19: Uncluttering the Debate
It’s no secret that the Item 19 is a hot-button issue in franchising. While the majority of experts vote in favor of it, there are still many who argue that an Item 19 is not absolutely necessary. Who's right?
The Best Conference Tip I’ve Ever Gotten
The best conference tip I’ve ever gotten was from Susan Black-Beth at the IFA Leadership Luncheon in February. I always walk away from conferences with a few (soon-to-be-forgotten) great ideas, but Susan’s hit home and I’ve been thinking about it—and working on it—ever since.
Would You Trust You?
If by some unlikely twist of fate, you were instantly transplanted from the home office to ownership of your own franchise unit, how would you feel about the direction of the company? What thoughts would be crossing your mind as you read the latest memo from the executives? Would you trust you?
Your Franchise Is Social, Even if You Are Not
Social media is a funny thing. In the business world – and perhaps more so in the franchising world – [...]
The Silent Killer
A few months ago, I wrote about complainers and their negative effect on a franchise brand. Since then, I’ve been [...]
Survey Spotlight: FASTSIGNS
Catherine Monson and Mark Jameson of FASTSIGNS discuss the benefits of surveying franchisees with a third party. Did you use [...]
Survey Spotlight: MOOYAH
MOOYAH CEO Alan Hixon discusses his franchisee satisfaction survey and the importance of treating franchisees like customers. Did you use [...]
What Your Franchisees REALLY Want (and Expect)
Eric Stites (our fearless CEO) moderated a franchisee panel at the Faegre event earlier this month and it seemed to [...]
Franchise Leaders Speak Out: Strategies for Building Strong Franchisee Relations
It’s no secret that good franchisee relations lead to franchisee satisfaction, which leads to generally strong businesses. Satisfied and engaged [...]