The SBA Franchise Directory Is Dead. Now What?
With the elimination of the SBA's Franchise Directory, here are 5 ways you can increase the likelihood of candidates’ loans getting approved.
Are Franchise Portals Worth It? What Are the Alternatives?
As a franchisor, it's important to increase your visibility and reach prospective franchisees. Learn more whether franchise portals are worth it and the best franchise portal options available.
6 Creative Ways to Up Your Public Relations Game
Are you using your franchisee satisfaction data in your public relations efforts? Looking for some inspiration? Get real-life examples and visuals of how creative franchisors are making satisfaction data the focus of PR and marketing strategies to get attention and edge out the competition.
4 Ways to Reach More (and Better) Franchise Candidates
Unemployment rates have dipped to some of the lowest we’ve seen in nearly two decades, which means the stream of franchise candidate leads is slowing to a trickle at the same time many brands are hoping to accelerate development to keep up with customer demand. With franchisors all competing for a limited number of candidates, development teams need to get creative to find new leads. Try some of these out-of-the-box ideas.
Forget the Stuff and Give a Gift that Matters
Looking for a way to give back this holiday season AND help inspire others to take the leap to realizing their potential as successful business owners? Consider donating to one of these entrepreneurial nonprofits.
4 Franchise Development Budget Planning Mistakes to Avoid
Despite the seemingly endless meetings and ensuing headaches that accompany budget planning, there’s no escaping it. To make this year’s planning a little easier for you, we’ve put together the four most common budgeting mistakes that franchise marketing and development teams tend to make, along with ways to fix them.
Beyond Awards: Why Data Is Even More Valuable Than the Recognition
An FBR award is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for recognition, but the data behind it is where the real value lies. Learn four ways franchisee satisfaction data can accelerate your development process.
Top 25 Franchises for Black Entrepreneurs
Black Enterprise featured the top franchises for Black entrepreneurs based on franchisee satisfaction survey data from FBR.
Seven Franchises to Consider with Black Ownership Potentially Immune to Recession
Black Enterprise magazine featured the seven most diverse franchise brands from FBR's list of the Top Recession-Proof Franchises.
How to Use Your Top Franchise Award to Stand Out at Franchise Expos
Franchise expos are the perfect place to promote your award to show candidates how satisfied your franchisees are—and why your brand should be on the top of their list.
4 Lists of Franchise Rankings You Don’t Want to Miss
Entrepreneur magazine calls out the four most prestigious franchise rankings—including Franchise Business Review's annual list of the Top 200 Franchises.
Top-Rated Franchise Opportunities for 2022 Announced by Franchise Business Review
Franchise Business Review identified the 200 best franchises of 2022. An independent survey of 30,000 franchise owners also revealed that satisfaction is at all-time high, up 3% from pre-pandemic levels.
The 3 Biggest Franchise Development Challenges for 2021
Many franchise brands are experiencing full pipelines that led to faster growth in 2020 and 2021, but others are struggling to find candidates to continue growing the brand. Here are the strategies to generate growth that franchise development leaders shared at FBR's recent roundtable event.
The 100 Best Recession-Proof Businesses to Start in 2021, According to Franchise Business Owners
Franchise Business Review has announced the Top 100 Recession-Proof Franchises for 2021. Franchises on the list were identified based on survey feedback from over 28,000 franchise owners across 307 brands over the past 18 months.
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.
What It Means to Be an FBR Award Winning Brand
Being named a 2021 Top Franchise is an objective, third-party endorsement of the franchise brands that have stepped up to provide EXCEPTIONAL support and leadership during the crises this year. Watch now to see what it means to be an FBR Franchisee Satisfaction Award Winner.
Enforcing Compliance with System Standards While Maintaining Franchise Relations
Download key takeaways from the session, Enforcing Compliance with System Standards While Maintaining Franchise Relations, at the IFA's Emerging Franchisors Virtual Conference.
The Grinches In Your Franchise System
The shopping season has officially commenced, and whether you’re a Black Friday warrior or more of a last-minute, better-under-pressure shopper, the buying experience can fuel your holiday excitement or suck all the joy out of the process. The same goes for franchise candidates in the validation process. Get the intel you need to make the franchise buying experience something to celebrate.
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.
What Candidates Look for When Choosing a Franchise
New franchisees discuss their franchise research process, what they looked for in a franchise and how Franchise Business Review’s satisfaction reports led them to Wild Birds Unlimited.
How 360clean Closed 5 Deals in 5 Months During the Pandemic
Learn how 360clean was able to reduce the average deal length by two-to-four weeks using FBR’s lead generation and validation programs, and close five deals in five months during the pandemic.
How Wild Birds Unlimited Partners with FBR to Strengthen Franchise Development
Paul Pickett, Chief Development Officer at Wild Birds Unlimited shares how they use Franchise Business Review's survey data and tools to attract qualified franchise candidates, speed up their validation process. and assist with multiple store development.
6 Ways to Attract More Multi-Unit Franchisees and Close the Deal
What’s always been common practice in food franchising—requiring franchisees to commit to opening multiple units as part of their franchise agreement—is now becoming common outside of food. But attracting multi-unit franchisees and keeping them happy isn’t as easy as just changing your franchise agreement. Here are six tips for attracting multi-unit franchisees and ensuring your system is set up for success.
Cultivate a Data-Driven Organization from the Top Down
When you survey your franchisees, it's critical to share it with your entire executive team if you want to truly cultivate a data-driven mindset in your organization. The insights we collect on our surveys can help every team in your organization identify priorities, track their progress and meet their goals. Find out how each of your teams can benefit from having FBR walk them through your data together.
The ROI of Franchisee Satisfaction Surveys
Franchisee satisfaction is a primary indicator of long-term system growth and success in measuring the health of any franchise system, but if you're wondering what the ROI of franchisee satisfaction surveys is, read on for 8 ways you'll get a return on your investment of time and money - and drive franchise system growth.
How Innovation Can Drive Sales and Profitability
In these live case studies, learn how forward-thinking brands are using operational innovation as a differentiator to bring in more candidates, award more franchises, and ultimately, drive unit-level profitability.
Bringing Your Ops and Development Stars into Alignment
Operations and development don’t always go hand in hand. In practice, however, these two functions need to be closely aligned to create a positive and profitable culture. This session brings together brand leaders from both sides of the house to share strategies and best practices for aligning their teams.
Why Franchisee Satisfaction Is a Critical Element of Your Validation and Growth Strategy
FranNet hosts Franchise Business Review to help franchisors understand why franchisee satisfaction is a critical element of their validation and growth strategy. Hear from leading franchisors who are using franchisee satisfaction data to speed up the validation process and help brokers close more deals, faster.
TWO MEN AND A TRUCK: Making Moves that Delight Customers and Franchisees
CASE STUDY: Learn how Two Men and a Truck uses a data-driven approach to providing top-notch franchisee support and, in turn, attracting high quality leads.
15-Minute Franchise Crash Courses
Want to learn how some of the most successful companies in franchising achieving top performance? Watch these free franchise crash courses for practical tips and real-life examples you can easily implement in your own system.
How to Use Social Media to Attract Franchise Candidates
Social media has become an indispensable tool in franchise recruiting, with more and more franchise organizations using social platforms to attract new franchisees. With the ability to hone in on the exact type of operators they want to bring on board, franchise organizations are able to save time looking for the right qualified candidates. Meanwhile, prospective franchisees are using social media to research brands. Learn best practices for using social media not just to build brand awareness, but to attract and qualify franchisees.
TWO MEN AND A TRUCK: Thinking Outside the (Moving) Box
Read this case study to see the creative approach the TWO MEN AND A TRUCK development team took to differentiate the brand, attract quality candidates, and accelerate the sales process.
Takeaways from the 2018 Star Awards
Each year, Franchise Update invites franchise brands to compete in the Star Awards, which recognize franchising’s top sales teams at the annual Franchise Leadership and Development Conference. Find out which of the winning brands excelled in franchisee satisfaction and what the research revealed.
[FREE PLANNING TOOL] Research Supplier Checklist
This handy checklist is a free tool to help you compare the services and benefits of survey providers - either internal or third-party - to make sure you’re getting the most for your investment of time and money.
Creating a Content Marketing Strategy to Attract More Franchise Candidates
Content is an important piece of a successful marketing strategy; by now, most marketers know this. But in the content age, the internet is flooded with information. As a franchisor, you are not only competing with the other franchise brands in your space, you are competing with all the content producers who are fighting for a spot on page one of Google. So, how do you create a successful content marketing strategy that will attract more candidates?
5 Must-Have Resources for Emerging Franchise Brands
We’ve pulled together this list of the top 5 must-have resources for emerging brands, full of the best practices we’ve collected over a decade from franchisors who are growing their brands strategically while maintaining a system of highly satisfied (and profitable) franchisees.
The Tipping Point: Best Practices for Closing Franchise Deals
You’ve nurtured ideal franchisees all the way through the sales pipeline; now all that’s left is to sign on the dotted line. This webinar will take you through practical strategies for closing franchise deals, including using discovery days and shadow programs, why you should reveal the good AND the bad to candidates, tools (checklists, templates, FAQs) to speed up validation, and how to deal with candidates who sabotage the validation process.
Wooing the Sophisticated Multi-Unit Franchisee
Today 55% of the franchise industry is controlled by multi-unit unit operators. But landing a multi-unit operator can sometimes feel like reeling in a whale. This webinar will help you better understand what sophisticated multi-unit candidates look for when seeking a brand and how they evaluate it. You’ll learn tips and techniques for adapting your development process to multi-unit candidates and how to make your brand more attractive to the lenders that finance them.
Attracting Better (Not More) Candidates: Finding the Right Franchisees
Everyone wants more leads, but increasing the number of leads coming in doesn’t do you any good unless they’re quality leads. Listen to franchise development experts share their experience about what works best, tactics for marketing your brand to candidates, how to get more referrals, and how to convert more leads by being transparent throughout the sales process.
How to Convert More Calls to Franchise Applications
Today’s franchise candidates are coming into the development process more educated than ever before, and savvy franchisors understand that the importance of an effective first call with a candidate has never been greater. The good news is that advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI)– specifically phone call speech-to-text and natural language processing – can unlock opportunity from these conversations to improve results in first-call conversion, and carve out a bigger piece of the shrinking pie of qualified candidates.
6 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand with Franchisee Satisfaction Data
With the proliferation of franchises, it can make it even more difficult for a brand to differentiate itself to potential buyers. Franchisee satisfaction is what can set your brand apart. Candidates want to know what it’s like to be part of your system, and when you can show that your franchisees are happy and would do it all over again, you send a powerful message that your brand is committed to their success. Learn six ways to use franchisee satisfaction data to capture more leads and close more deals.
What Your Franchise Broker Needs to Know About Franchisee Satisfaction
Franchise brokers can be an important part of your franchise recruitment strategy, but most franchise brokers are working with a hundred or more brands. So how do you make sure your broker is recommending your brand over others when talking with potential leads? Find out how your franchisee satisfaction data can be the silver bullet to get your broker sending more candidates your way.
5 Creative Ideas for Discovery Days
Discovery days are an integral part of every brand’s development process. FBR's President & COO Michelle Rowan shares shares the top five creative ideas shared by leaders from: Smoothie King, Mathnasium, College Hunks Hauling Junk, Right at Home, and InXpress in FBR's Development Webinar Series.
4 Ways to Attract More Multi-Unit Franchisees
Attracting multi-unit franchisees isn’t as simple as just saying you want them. Michelle Rowan, President & COO of Franchise Business Review shares four ways our most successful clients are bringing more multi-unit owners into their system.
How Crunch Fitness Sold 900 Units in 8 Years and Became a Best-in-Category Franchise
FBR’s CEO, Eric Stites, recently talked with Crunch’s CEO and Founding Partner, Ben Midgeley, about fanchisee-franchisor relationships, being “unamazonable”, and creating a culture of listening.
10 Tips and Tricks to Crush Your Franchise Recruitment Goals With Data Storytelling
Sales is all about storytelling: Connecting with your audience on a human level. And while data - cold hard numbers - may not seem like it gives your audience the warm and fuzzies, data is actually a powerful storytelling tool. These tips and tricks will show you how to leverage franchisee satisfaction data at every stage of the sales funnel to meet and exceed your franchise recruitment goals.
5 Tactics to Make Discovery Day More Effective
Discovery days are an integral part of every brand’s development process. They are a way to set appropriate expectations and expose candidates to what it’s like to be a part of your franchise brand. Here are five ideas to make your discovery day more effective and make sure the candidates you choose will turn out to be successful franchisees.
Find Your Perfect Franchisee Match
Is your current lead strategy getting you a million first dates, but no commitment? Do your leads seem great online but turn out to be duds? Are they putting out the vibe that they’re interested but never return your calls? Take our two-minute quiz to find out if your lead strategies are getting you to the final commitment ceremony or you’re losing out on great relationships.
Quiz: Find Your Perfect Franchisee Match
Is your current lead strategy getting you a million first dates, but no commitment? Do your leads seem great online but turn out to be duds? Are they putting out the vibe that they’re interested but never return your calls? Take our two-minute quiz to find out if your lead strategies are getting you to the final commitment ceremony or you’re losing out on great relationships.
How to Use Satisfaction Data as Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy
We all know the adage that “content is king,” but not everyone takes it to heart. Learn three ways you can use franchisee satisfaction data as part of a solid content marketing strategy to bring in more candidates and close deals more quickly.
Data Sharing as the New Franchise Industry Standard
Franchise candidates today expect transparency. They want access to data early on when researching franchise opportunities. In under five minutes, FBR President & COO Michelle Rowan shares TWO tips for leveraging franchisee satisfaction data online to give candidates the information they expect - AND speed up your development efforts.
Highlight Your Franchisee Satisfaction Reviews Online to Influence Candidates
It’s no secret most people read online reviews of a product or service before making a purchase. While most franchisors expect and encourage franchise candidates to contact their existing franchisees as part of the validation process, more and more are starting to realize they need to have reviews of their system online to grab candidates’ interest in the first place.
Monday Motivation: Quotes from Successful Franchisors
Successful franchisors make growing their franchise brand look easy, but it rarely is. How do they do it? For a little inspiration, read advice shared by franchisors at leading brands.
We Asked a Franchisee How He Chose a Franchise Brand: Here’s What He Said
Franchise Business Review interviewed Chris Willems, who recently invested in a 2 Men And A Truck franchise. Chris shares how Franchise Business Review’s research played a major role in his due diligence process and ultimately led him to select Two Men And A Truck from the 10 brands he was considering.
5 Tips To Help You Close Deals at Franchise Trade Shows
Franchise trade shows continue to prove to be the #1 approach to engaging and establishing relationships with qualified prospects in the franchise industry. They offer franchisors the opportunity to meet face-to-face with thousands of qualified prospects in one location. And now more than ever, prospective franchisees want, and need, to look someone in the eye and discuss their investment options. Learn how to make the most of franchise trade shows and close more deals.
Infographic: What a Typical Multi-Unit Franchisee Looks Like
This infographic captures data from Franchise Business Review’s franchisee satisfaction research on the top 50 multi-unit franchises for 2017. The research is based on surveys of 9,125 multi-unit franchisees representing 317 franchise brands.
Awarding More Franchises to Top Performers
Learn how successful brands "sell franchises" differently and tips for tweaking your development process to recruit more star performers.
Quiz: Do Your Franchisees Love You?
Do you really know how your franchisees are feeling… or saying to your franchise candidates? Take this two-minute quiz to find out if your franchisees really love the brand or if you’ve still got some work to do.
New Ideas to Close More Franchise Deals
Closing deals with prospective franchisees doesn’t have to take up valuable time and resources. In this 30-minute webinar, learn five tips for closing deals more easily and efficiently.
High-Performing Business Development for Franchisors
In this special report, franchisors share their development challenges and how they’ve addressed them to improve performance. In addition, it features practical advice and tools to help you attract better candidates and close more deals with the right franchisees.
Turbocharge Franchise Development by Inspiring Financial Confidence
Learn how one pizza franchise brand turbocharged franchise development and achieved a 14-times higher lead-to-sale conversion rate by partnering with Boefly.
SPECIAL REPORT: High-Performing Business Development for Franchisors
In this second installment of FBR Research Insights, franchisors share their development challenges and how they’ve addressed them to improve performance. Get practical advice and tools to help you attract better candidates and close more deals with the right franchisees.
Three Ways to Make Your Item 19 More Meaty
More than ever, savvy franchise buyers are honing in on your FDD’s Item 19. After all, it’s the closest they can get to answering the almighty question, “How much money can I expect to make?” Following these three tips can make your Item 19 accurate, precise, and engaging.
BEST PRACTICE: Recruiting Franchisees from Within Your Company
There are many advantages to recruiting franchisees from within your company. Randy Shacka, who began working at TWO MEN AND A TRUCK as an intern and is now its president, shares his thoughts about doing so.
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.
Your Sales Team Is Throwing Away Leads
Research shows that 71% of the leads generated on the Internet are wasted simply because companies wait too long to respond, 46 hours and 53 minutes on average, and sales reps typically make only 1.3 call attempts before giving up and moving on. Learn how to get your sales team converting more leads, faster, with these simple tips.
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.
The Perfect Time To Reach Candidates
Search activity ticks up Sunday evening, specifically between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm ET, as denoted by the brighter red markers in the graphic. It then continues for all of Monday’s typical waking hours, peaking for the day at around 1:00pm ET, when the greatest number of North Americans across the four time zones is taking lunch.
3 Ways You Are Wasting Money
Prior to spending the bulk of your budget on advertising, online lead generation, or attending shows to generate interest from potential franchisees, it's crucial to address things your franchisees aren't happy about. Why? Because your franchisees’ feedback can make or break a deal when trying to bring a new franchisee on board.
Four Ways to Attract More Multi-Unit Franchisees
Every franchisor wants to attract a “certain type” of franchisee, and lately, the type of franchisee every franchisor seems to want is a multi-unit franchisee. But attracting multi-unit franchisees and keeping them happy isn’t as easy as just changing your franchise agreement.
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.
Can Your Candidates Network? Find Out Now
It doesn’t matter if your concept is a soccer camp or a sandwich shop, franchisees spend countless hours “selling” themselves at family functions, after church, even in line at the grocery store. Here's a quick and dirty trick to find out how natural networking is for your franchisees-to-be.
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.
A Picture Says 1,000 Words About Your Business
What do your pictures say about your business?
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.
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?
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 [...]