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Seven Critical Core Values of a Successful Franchisee: Attitude towards employee involvement Positive attitude for success Independence Sales orientation Responsiveness to customers Social orientation Personal drive The most important core value in predicting how a franchisee or owner/operator will actually perform is their attitude towards and about their employees. What this means is that if a franchisee or owner/operator really believes that employees are a valuable asset to the business rather than an expense, the business will tend to do well. Intuitively, we all know this is true. You know that if you treat your employees right, your employees will treat your customers right. Managers who prefer to manage using participative rather than autocratic decision-making styles tend to have lower staff turnover rates. This stability leads to higher profits since training costs and other employee related expenses, can be reduced greatly. The stability that results is also beneficial because customers like to come back to stores and deal with the same serve staff that has given them great service in the past. The second most important core value is the owner/operator's attitude for success. Individuals who believe things will work out for them and have a positive attitude towards life, success and business, tend to do well. We all know people who have had all the opportunity in the world, but because of their poor attitude and their tendency to always see the clouds rather than the silver lining, do poorly. People with negative attitudes are forever looking for reasons that things won't work out rather than looking forward to make them work. People with negative attitudes do not accept responsibility for their own successes or failure. If the franchisor had made sure that the franchise candidate had the right attitude when they were sold the franchise, the franchisee would not be in the situation they are in. The third core value is how independent the candidate is. The more independent the individual is, the more entrepreneurial they are. Quite often you hear people talking about franchisees as entrepreneurs. If you really look at the type of person it takes to be successful in most franchise situations, what is really needed is an entrepreneur, in other words, someone who is creative but needs to work within a system. When selecting franchisees that are too entrepreneurial, you will run into at least one of the following problems. Either they get bored and attempt to find excuses to get out of the system or they stay and start changing your system. These people can absolutely drive you nuts because they believe that they know better than you do how to run your business and will change it to suit them without consulting with you. Of course, the more units a franchisee owns, the more entrepreneurial the franchisee needs to be. However, there are still limits. The individual must still feel conformable working within the system. The last thing you want is for someone who owns two or more locations to suddenly veer off in a direction totally different from the rest of the company. The fourth most important core value is sales orientation or, as it is commonly referred to, "local store marketing". Franchisees or owners/managers need to feel comfortable selling and marketing their products and services. They enjoy talking about their business and the products they sell to strangers in their normal day-to-day life - both inside their business and outside. These people need to feel comfortable seeking out new ways to market their products. On initial examination, it seems strange that the next core value is rated no higher than fifth. Most people's reaction is that being responsive to customers should be the most important factor. The reason that being responsive to your customers is not given a higher rating is because typically it is not the franchisee or owner/operator who deals with the customers on a continuous basis. It is the employees. Sure the owner/operator needs to have the initial respect for the customer, but this really becomes more of an employee training issue. After all, someone who doesn't care or respect customers will have a hard time training their employees of the customer's importance. The sixth core value is how comfortable the franchisee is when dealing with a lot of people on a regular basis. Those who don't enjoy this constant interaction tend to become stressed. This often leads to rudeness to customers, employees, or even the franchisee's family. Needless to say, being rude to your customers or employees is not a great way to build a business. Of course, it is possible to be too outgoing but the penalties of being introverted are too great to make worrying about a candidate who is too gregarious of much concern. It is far better to select someone who loves to talk with everyone than someone who needs a lot of quiet time. One caveat though; when selecting candidates who are introverted, it is sometimes possible to compensate for this by making sure that their partner (or future employees) complement them and take over the role of dealing with customers and/or employees the majority of the time. Finally, is the candidate's level of drive for success. What should be explored here is the candidate's identification with achievement-oriented characteristics that are indicative of success in business roles. Basically, we are looking at characteristics such as need to achieve and work ethic. The candidate needs to have a strong drive or work ethic level. We have all heard of people with high drive levels that end up going nowhere. That's because although they put in the initial effort that is needed to become successful, they just end up alienating their employees, customers and friends because they are always pushing others to keep up with them. Without the moderating influence of believing that customers and employees are critically important in their own right and they will have important things to contribute to the business owner's success, all the drive in the world won't get them where they are going. These are the people who need to learn something extremely important, and that is PEOPLE MATTER MOST! No matter what business you are in or what products or services you sell, without treating people with the respect and trust they deserve, long-term success will be a very elusive thing. |
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