C-Suite Network™

Menu
Search
Close this search box.

Author: Evan Hackel

A dynamic, innovative, thoughtful and inspiring leader with 30 years of experience in franchising, distributed networks and cooperatives. Successful history of: (i) turning around a $700 million distressed franchise system into a $2.0 billion revenue business in four years, (ii) reviving and re-energizing a $3.5 billion revenue franchisor and (iii) founding three franchise systems. Experienced corporate board member.

Currently, a consultant to some of the largest franchise systems in North America. A franchise industry leader, widely published, keynote speaker, member of the New England Franchise Association Board, and Co-chair of the International Franchise Associations Knowledge Share Task Force.|A dynamic, innovative, thoughtful and inspiring leader with 30 years of experience in franchising, distributed networks and cooperatives. Successful history of: (i) turning around a $700 million distressed franchise system into a $2.0 billion revenue business in four years, (ii) reviving and re-energizing a $3.5 billion revenue franchisor and (iii) founding three franchise systems. Experienced corporate board member.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

Pre-Onboarding Wisdom for Franchises

There is such a thing as pre-onboarding. Let me make this statement about it . . .

If you want your entire franchise to achieve high levels of success from top to bottom, pre-onboarding is something you absolutely have to do.

So, what is this activity that I am recommending so strongly, pre-onboarding? It is a process in which you enroll serious potential buyers in a program that teaches them everything about your franchise that you possibly can. You give them a complete onboarding experience, omitting only the signing of final agreements and legal papers.

Why Is Pre-Onboarding Essential Today?

In the old days, individual owners often had an imperfect idea about what they were getting themselves into when they bought franchises. They went ahead and bought anyway. Many had high expectations, became disillusioned, and got out fast.

In today’s more competitive climate, franchises realize that allowing that to happen can cause irreparable damage to the entire franchise at every level, because . . .

  • It becomes dramatically more difficult to sell franchises, because potential buyers won’t consider buying one where there is a known chance of failure. And if individual franchises are failing, make no mistake about it, potential new owners will find out.
  • Customers stay away if they see one location close, and stop shopping at franchisees that are not well run. The strength of the entire franchise brand erodes.
  • The owners of failing franchisees sell their locations at low prices, or at the bottom of the scale, their franchise agreement requires. That devalues the entire franchise, with crippling results.
  • Unskilled, ineffective franchise owners become the norm in a franchise. Again, the results of that are crippling. Poor sale revenues, low customer loyalty, high employee turnover, and other problems become the norm.
  • Communications between the franchise company and individual owners are weak because they were not established early on. In your franchise, you want to make sure that your relationship with every franchisees is strong, positive, and ultra-effective. That can’t be an afterthought. It is something you need to establish and cultivate with your owners through pre-onboarding, even before they become owners.

Some Keys to Effective Pre-Onboarding

Have your strongest potential buyers . . .

  • Visit and spend a few days working in successful franchise locations, so they see first-hand how your franchise works, what makes it successful, and more. 
  • Enroll in the same training programs that you offer do your franchise owners. 
  • Attend your annual franchise convention, where they can take part in seminars, hear talks from successful franchisees, and get an informed inside perspective on what their experiences as owners will be like. 
  • Get to know with your current owners, become part of their community, and share information and insights. This helps assure that new owners come on board with realistic expectations, and helps build a community in which all your franchisees are part of something that they see are critically important to their success and to their lives.
  • Sit down with members of your franchise’s leaders, with successful franchisees, with members of your sales team, and other important people in your enterprise.

Does offering a great pre-onboarding program take time? Yes, but in the end, it saves time because your franchise owners are more knowledgeable, more enthusiastic, more skilled, and much more likely to succeed. Plus, a great pre-onboarding program makes each of your franchise locations more profitable.

So as I close this article, let me offer one final word of advice about pre-onboarding. If you do it, and do it well, it will completely transform your franchise.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 781-820-7609. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?

 

 

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Why Training Is the Key to Getting the Most from Millennial Employees

I’m a baby boomer-aged guy. When I look back at the first jobs I took when I was fresh out of college, I realize that overall, my demands and expectations were ridiculously low by today’s standards. I took a job, got a copy of the employee handbook, took it home, and read it while I ate dinner. Training, if there was any, was minimal. In my first weeks on the job, I actually expected to feel ignorant and unskilled. It seemed normal for me to bumble around and make mistakes while I learned the ropes.

And when it came to getting ahead in my new company, I expected to discover the secrets of success through trial and error. Nobody ever told me, “Here’s what we expect from you” or, “Here are the skills we want you to show us if you want to move ahead.” They only told me, “You just made a mistake, don’t do it again.” And every now and again, somebody would call me into an office and say, “We’re giving you a promotion,” usually without telling me why. I went home and celebrated with my family. But why had it happened?

In short, working and building a career in those days was more like toiling away in a black box – and people did it happily, without thinking anything was wrong.

Millennials Have Far Different Expectations

Boy, have things changed. Today, most millennial workers would object strenuously to the same kind of conditions that I accepted in my early years, and thought were normal. And if today’s millennials take a new job and discover conditions like those in a new workplace, they are going to start looking for new jobs in a matter of hours.

Ample research documents these changing millennial attitudes. One major study from Gallup, “How Millennials Want to Work and Live,” reports these findings:

  • 60% of millennials say that the opportunity to learn and grow on the job is extremely important. In contrast, only 40% of baby boomers feel the same way.
  • 50% of millennials strongly agree that they plan to remain in their jobs for at least the next year. That might sound like a big percentage, but 60% of members of all other groups plan to stay in place for at least a year. Baby boomers and others are planning on sticking around, while millennials are weighing their options.

Learning and Training Are Key to Retaining Millennials and Maximizing their Productivity

Findings like those – and you can easily find other research that reports similar findings – document that millennials are more likely to be engaged and to stay on their jobs if they can learn.

In the companies that I have led, I have seen the realities that underlie those statistics. I have also seen first-hand that training is the key to building the kind of work environment that millennials value.

Here are some of the new realities that I have seen, and my beliefs about why they are happening.

  • Millennials like to feel capable and confident in their jobs. When I was their age, I was happy to look like a rookie in my early days on a job and to learn needed skills along the way. Millennials do not feel that way. Many think of themselves as leaders – or as leaders who are waiting to be discovered. They want to look good and thrive on being able to confidently contribute from the first day they arrive on the job. The right kind of training – both for new and current millennial employees – makes that happen.
  • Millennials are usually skilled students. They like to apply the learning skills they built while they were in school. To them, learning feels as natural as eating three meals a day. As the Gallup study found, they are eager to learn. In contrast, getting baby boomers to believe in training can be a harder sell. They tend to view training as a burden, something they have to endure. Millennials say, “Wow, when can I start?”
  • Millennials are tech-friendly. Most of them love to be trained on their mobile phones and tablets, which are the most powerful training options available to many companies today. The result is better knowledge transfer, even to groups of employees who work in multiple or far-flung locations. Baby boomers, in contrast, are more tech-resistant. They are likely to freeze and resist when they hear they are going to be taking company training on their smartphones.

Training Is the Place to Build Millennial Productivity and Retention

A lot of training focuses on teaching needed skills. It should. But training can accomplish a lot more than that if you use it to establish some of the following things that many millennials are looking for:

  • Mentoring relationships with their supervisors. Gallup found that 60% of millennials feel that the quality of the people who manage them is extremely important. With that in mind, your training for new employees can set up mentoring, not reporting, relationships between them and their managers. Explain how often check-ins and job reviews with their managers will happen, and what they will cover. (I am a firm believer in frequent check-ins between managers and the employees they supervise, not pro forma reviews that happen every so often.)
  • A sense of belonging on an energized and innovative team. This is a bit of a contradiction, but at the same time millennials think of themselves as individualist entrepreneurs, they also expect to be part of an interesting team. Letting millennials get to know their teammates during training, and fostering a sense of team/group identity, can help convince them that they have joined the right organization.
  • A well-defined career path. I am a big believer in creating a personalized career development plan for new employees. (The exception being seasonal or other short-term employees who will probably not remain in your employ for long.) Another idea? Enroll new employees in management training programs from their first days on the job. In retail, for example, you can enroll them in training that will enable them to manage their own stores in two years, or after another stated period. Millennials like to know their next steps as they build their careers, and training is a fine place to explain them.

Yes, training is important to millennials. But I encourage you to think of it as more than a chance to teach skills. Millennials are the most energized, skilled, and capable generation ever to enter the workforce. Train them well and they will become your organization’s brightest future.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel, the creator of the concept of Ingaged Leadership, is a recognized business and franchise expert and consultant. Evan is also a professional speaker and author.  Evan is Principal and Founder of Ingage Consulting, a consulting firm headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts. A leader in the field of training as well, Evan serves as CEO of Tortal Training, a Charlotte North Carolina-based firm that specializes in developing and implementing interactive training solutions for companies in all sectors. To learn more about Inage Consulting and Evan’s book Ingaging Leadership, visit Ingage.net

 

 

 

 

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

The Astonishing Benefits of Mentoring Your Franchisees

I am sure you are already doing everything you can think of to support your franchisees and assure their success. You are training them and their staff, offering them marketing support, inviting them to join supportive franchise counsels, and doing so much more.

But chances are there is one more activity you should be engaged in, one that might not be on your radar . . .

You should be mentoring your franchisees

What Is Mentoring?

In the context of non-franchise businesses, mentoring is usually a one-on-one relationship between a more senior employee (the mentor) and a more junior employee (the mentee) with the goal of helping the mentee contribute more, experience faster career growth, and benefit the company.

In franchising, mentoring usually means having someone from the parent franchising company forge that same kind of relationship with a franchisee to help him or her grow, achieve greater levels of success, and contribute more to the overall franchise system.

Yet a franchising company can facilitate other kinds of mentoring relationships too, usually with very positive results. The owner of one a highly successful franchise location can mentor a new owner, for example. Or a firebrand new owner who is achieving meteoric success quickly can mentor new owners, or even established owners who might have hit plateaus in their growth.

If you are creative and take stock of where your franchisees are in the life cycle of ownership, you will be able to identify many opportunities to use mentoring to build success.

Mentoring Is Far More Powerful than You Expect, Two Experts Say

I always believed in mentoring and tried to mentor others to help them achieve success. Yet my understanding and commitment to mentoring were deepened recently when I moderated a Training Unleashed Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm, two highly successful entrepreneurs who believe that the more you mentor others, the more success will come back to you. That outlook will bring greater levels of success to your franchise too if you mentor franchisees.

Kevin was one of the original sharks on the hit television show Shark Tank. He is also recognized as the man who invented the infomercial. Mark, who calls himself a “serial entrepreneur,” has built successful companies in more than a dozen countries, from retail to wholesale to manufacturing and real estate.

They believe so strongly in mentoring that they made it the focus of their new book, Mentor to Millions: Secrets of Success in Business, Relationships, and Beyond.

Both men explain that their success was transformed when they were working with the son of Zig Ziglar. Zig was a visionary business thinker who believed “you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

In a franchise, the potential returns from active mentoring individual owners are immense, because of the inherent structure of franchises. Whether you mentor a franchisee to improve his or her customer service, selling skills, marketing programs – or any other aspect of the business – you cause a quiet revolution to start right there in your franchise system. That revolution can ignite a spark of change that can trigger growth anywhere in your overall franchise system.

You never know just where! The positive mentoring outlook you start can transform the culture of your entire organizational system. There is no predicting just how extensively your mentoring efforts will repay you. As I say, even a tightly targeted mentoring relationship focused on improving a few activities can result in immense system-wide improvements.

The more you support franchisees through mentoring, the more your franchise will succeed. This is more than theory. Get started today and see how far you can grow.

 

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel, a 35-year franchising veteran is a nationally recognized expert and speaker on franchising. Evan is founder and CEO of Ingage Consulting, and CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company. Evan is an active advisor in the C-Suite Network. He is also author of Ingaging Leadership, and host of “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business. Contact him here, follow him at @ehackel, or call 781-820-7609.

 

 

 

Categories
Growth Operations Personal Development

Customer Service Essentials for Food Service Workers

As we recover from the pandemic, restaurants of all kinds are paying special attention to keeping their patrons safe and healthy. Of course, they should be doing everything they can.

But at the same time, those businesses cannot overlook the need to provide excellent customer service. If anything, providing top-notch service has become even more important in a time when clients are feeling insecure about returning to restaurants, even coffee bars and food concessions of all kinds.

Why do your food-service employees need good customer service skills? It is because there is wisdom in the old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Unfortunately, the opposite is also true – where food is concerned, you never get a second chance to correct a bad first impression. Customers who have had negative experiences will not come back, will say negative things about you to potential customers, and will post negative reviews online. The damage can be hard to undo.

Food service workers are a critical, front-line point of contact between your business and your customers and clients. And that is true if your employees are waiters in your restaurant, attendants who oversee a breakfast room in your hotel, staffers who whip up specialty blender drinks in a juice bar in your health club, or drivers who deliver food to your customers’ homes.

It takes exceptional food service workers to make a great impression on your clients and customers. And because few people are born with great natural customer-service skills, your training program should cover these essentials:

  • A positive and energetic attitude. Some individuals naturally possess great personalities, but such people are rare. And even if you are lucky enough to be training people who do, their skills can still be improved through training. Your trainers should be energetic presenters who model the kind of attitude that you want your trainees to project. And your training materials – no matter if they are delivered in a classroom, in a computerized training room, or on tablets or smartphones – should be engaging, positive, and upbeat. Bright graphics, interactive quizzes, and embedded videos can go a long way toward cultivating the right attitude in your trainees.
  • Specific skills to greet customers. All your food service workers should be trained to make eye contact with arriving customers and to welcome them enthusiastically with the right words (“good morning,” “good afternoon,” “good evening,” or just an energetic “hello!”). They might also need to learn to deliver standardized company-specific greetings (“Good evening and welcome to John’s Pub”) in an assured and polished way.
  • All people who work with or around food need to hit this target. Clean hair, hands, and clothing are essential, and your training should reinforce your specific expectations and required cleanliness routines. We will explore this topic in greater depth in the later chapters of this special report.
  • An appropriate appearance. Your requirements will vary according to the nature of your foodservice or restaurant and of the job. If you operate an upscale restaurant, the hosts and hostesses who greet patrons need to dress fashionably – and possibly elegantly. If you are training workers for the food concession in a health club or spa, they can dress in a way that is similar to your patrons or in branded apparel. If you operate a restaurant that has a bar on its premises, your bar staff should understand exactly what you consider appropriate to wear and what you do not. Training is the place to spell out all the specifics.
  • Multitasking skills. Foodservice workers often face the challenge of serving multiple clients and, at the same time, making each of them feel that they are experiencing excellent personal service. This is true in a restaurant where waiters and waitresses serve three, four, five tables or more at the same time, but equally true in more foodservice settings than you might expect. If you are training baristas for a coffee bar, for example, they should understand how to make multiple patrons feel well served while they are placing orders, waiting for their orders to be delivered, and while other patrons’ orders are being taken and filled. Dealing with customers in such settings requires specific people skills that can be taught in training.
  • Stress management. Let’s face it – virtually all restaurant and foodservice jobs are stressful. You need workers who know how to stay composed when they are multitasking, handling the complex tasks of preparing and serving food and sometimes dealing with displeased customers. That is why your training programs should teach specific skills for coping with stress on the job.

 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

If Your Train Them, They Will Stay

I believe one key to building retention, performance and satisfaction is to tell job applicants what will be expected of them if they come on board – and even to tell them during interviews. “Why wait until the first job review and then tell employees what they haven’t done right?” Evan wrote in a recent article.  And we couldn’t agree more.

It makes sense to utilize the earliest opportunities to explain the behaviors, attitudes and accomplishments that your organization values. For example, you can tell job applicants, “We value and reward people who can quickly apply creative solutions to customer issues, who are eager to contribute new ideas and solutions and above all, who demonstrate a strongly positive attitude toward each other and our clients.”

Training Offers an Opportunity to Set Motivational Expectations

The training you deliver to new employees offers an opportunity to teach not only skills but what is valued in your organization. Here are some opportunities . . .

  • Talk about the values and behaviors that bring success in your company.
  • Discuss your company’s vision, mission, and values. As an exercise, Evan suggests having each employee explain, in his or her own words, just what the company vision is.
  • Use videos and other engaging content that teach compelling lessons about your company’s values. You can tell the company story and profile top executives, customers, and employees who are really getting the job done.
  • Explain advancement opportunities and career paths within your organization. Spelling out this information motivates employees much more effectively than letting them discover “the ropes” after they come on board.
  • Use games, exercises, and break-out activities that encourage trainees to think about why they are performing activities, not simply trying to learn the steps you expect them to take.

To learn more about providing great training, be sure to check out the course Customer Service Success.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel, a 35-year franchising veteran is a nationally recognized expert and speaker on franchising. Evan is founder and CEO of Ingage Consulting, and CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company. Evan is an active advisor in the C-Suite Network. He is also author of Ingaging Leadership, and host of “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business. Contact him here, follow him at @ehackel, or call 781-820-7609.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Great Delegation Strategies for Franchise Success

All successful business people have to learn to delegate. But I would argue that delegation is especially critical for franchise owners who want to own more than one franchise location, and who would like to see all their franchisees succeed and grow.

I would also argue that many franchise owners have an especially difficult time learning to delegate to others. Many tend to fall into a pattern like this . . .

An owner starts by buying one franchise and works extra hard to make it successful. That owner learns that in order to succeed, it is necessary to stay on top of every detail of running the business. That owner can have a very difficult time transitioning from being the owner of just one location to being the owner of several or many. And similar difficulties can emerge even in one location if it starts to grow.

One supervisor cannot be hands-on in multiple locations, or in one location when it reaches a certain size. At a certain point, the owner has to hire competent employees, trust them, and delegate responsibility and work to them.

That poses a contradiction for many owners because the same style of supervision that brought success earlier on has to be left behind.

Steps to More Successful Delegation

First, have a clear vision and expectation of the roles you are hiring for. Perhaps you’re hiring a person whose job will be to open up new locations. Or perhaps you’re hiring a person whose job will be to hire and help you staff up – in other words, to be your HR manager. Or maybe you’re hiring someone who will be a retail and sales manager. To succeed, you need to hire people who have the experience, aptitude, and skills to handle the specific tasks you need done. You can then delegate those tasks to them and loosen your control over many details. You can then stop micromanaging and start to concentrate on bigger issues of expanding your business.

As the expression says, you can stop working in your business and start working on your business.

Second, hire people who can be delegated to. Does their experience indicate that they have been in the past, and that they are open to input and suggestions? During interviews and screening, do they demonstrate the kind of a cooperative, personable and enthusiastic attitude that tells you they will be open to being delegated to?

Third, hire people who understand and communicate well. You can get a sense of this in interviews. When you explain a current challenge or set of expectations, is the candidate quick to understand and grasp the essence of what you are saying? Is he or she able to listen well and ask questions until a solid level of understanding is achieved? Pay attention to this issue. Hiring managers and then having to explain things repetitively to them is a frustration that can convince you that it is necessary to micromanage. And that is something to avoid.

Fourth, provide excellent training in the critically important skills the job will require. Often, franchise owners like to hire managers and other employees who have lots of prior, applicable experience. Those owners expect that a new employee’s previous experience will take the place of training – in essence, that the employee will arrive on the job “pre-trained.” There may be some truth in that. However, it is always more effective to carefully define the skills your new hires should have, develop metrics to measure them, and to train those abilities.

And Think about Relatability

As you meet with possible hires, ask yourself, “Is this someone I can relate to . . . someone I can see working with closely in the years ahead?”

One way to increase the likelihood of productive, long relationships is to consider offering very promising employees an opportunity to work their way toward limited partnerships in your franchise.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 781-820-7609. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

Younger Generation Leadership Strategy: Invest in Great Training

Ideas from my new book Ingaging Leadership Meets the Younger Generations

Copious research documents the fact that younger generations like to learn. After all, they grew up attending schools and college; learning is part of the way they interact with the world.

One major study from Gallup, “How Younger Generations Want to Work and Live,” reports these findings:

  • 60% of younger generations say that the opportunity to learn and grow on the job is extremely important. In contrast, only 40% of Baby Boomers feel the same way.
  • 50% of younger generations strongly agree that they plan to remain in their jobs for at least the next year. That might sound like a big percentage, but 60% of all other groups plan to stay in place for at least a year. Baby Boomers and others are planning on sticking around, while younger generations are weighing their options.

Findings like these document that younger generations are more likely to stay Ingaged in their jobs if they can learn. Yet not all training takes place in a traditional classroom or corporate learning center. Here are some forms of training that appeal strongly to younger generation employees:

  • Bite-sized training on mobile devices. I have observed that younger generations, especially, like training that is delivered to them on their phones. Even more so, they like training that is delivered in short sessions—the kind they can complete while at lunch, on break, or even at the gym.
  • Mentoring relationships with supervisors. Gallup found that 60% of younger generations feel that the quality of the people who manage them is extremely important. With that in mind, your training for new employees can set up mentoring, not reporting, relationships between them and strategic managers. Explain how often check-ins and job reviews with their managers will happen, and what they will cover. (I am a firm believer in frequent check-ins between managers and the employees they supervise, not pro forma reviews that happen every so often.)
  • Being part of an energized and innovative team. This is a bit of a contradiction, but at the same time, younger generations think of themselves as individualist entrepreneurs; they also expect to be part of a great team. Letting younger generations get to know their teammates during training, and fostering a sense of team/group identity, can help convince them that they have joined the right organization.

Yes, training is important to younger generations, but I encourage you to think of it as more than a chance to teach skills. Younger generations are the most energized, skilled, and capable generations ever to enter the workforce. Train them well and they will become your organization’s brightest future.

Action Step: Review your training activities and materials. Ask yourself and others whether they are outdated, or new enough to appeal to your younger generation workers.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a franchise industry leader, a widely published writer, a keynote speaker, a member of the New England Franchise Association Board, and Co-Chair of the International Franchise Association’s Knowledge Share Task Force.

 

A consultant to some of the largest franchise systems in North America, Evan is also Founder and Principal of Ingage Consulting, a consulting firm focused on improving the performance of franchises and all business organizations. By building cultures of partnership and common purpose within organizations, Ingage Consulting has established a record of helping a variety of organizations dramatically improve performance. In addition, Evan serves as CEO of Tortal Training, a firm that specializes in developing interactive eLearning solutions for companies in all sectors.

 

Before founding Ingage Consulting, Evan worked at CCA Global Partners for twenty years. At CCA, he was responsible for four business divisions with over 2000 units in four countries that generated more than $5 billion in sales. He also founded CCA’s departments in marketing, national programs, and training. He led the company’s effort to buy and turn around a franchise organization from bankruptcy. In four years, he grew the troubled franchise from 250 locations to a very successful with more than 550 locations.

Evan received an MBA from Boston College and a BA in Economics from Colorado College. He is a current and former board member of several organizations, cooperatives and groups to which he lends his expertise. He resides in Reading, Massachusetts with his wife, Laura, and three children.

 

 

 

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

The Whole World Has Changed. Now What?

By the time you read this article, hopefully most issues around the pandemic will be resolved. If not, please save this message for when the crisis has passed, and you are ready to get back to business.

For businesses that made it through this very tough time, much opportunity awaits. It is likely that many of your competitors did not make it. If so, your opportunity to grow market share will be unparalleled. The country will likely be in recession, but your larger slice of the market should more than make up for it.

The opportunity to sell franchises may never be better. Why will it be a great time?

  • Real estate will be abundant and cheap, unlike before the crisis, when good locations were hard to find and expensive.
  • A lot of displaced senior executives with capital will be looking for opportunities.
  • Finding qualified talent will be easier than it was before the crisis when the labor market was much tighter.
  • You will have less competition, because some of your competitors will have closed.
  • There will be pent-up customer demand.

You need to be ready though. That is a challenge because, before the crisis, we didn’t realize that things were about to break.

Here are some new realities to think about:

  • Get your onboarding systems ready, because now is the time to think through the process and revamp.
  • Look at your leader lead training and see what can be shifted to lower-cost virtual lead training. People will be more open to it and at the start of the recovery, people will still have fears of flying.
  • Create a powerful online franchise university. Online universities have been growing in importance and there will be greater interest and willingness to use them.
  • Encourage your stronger franchisees to buy or take over weaker ones. The presence of more multi-unit franchises will encourage more growth franchise-wide. Plus, your stronger franchisees are capable of restarting your weaker locations.
  • Look at upgrading your staff. You will find that experienced people will be available who worked in other franchises. Look to hiring and training them now.
  • Train your franchisees and their staff. Doing so will give you a competitive advantage just when you need it the most.
  • Look to help your more successful franchisees grow. Support your known top performers as they add units or buy up weaker players.
  • Make sure your supply line is in place. Not all your suppliers will be recovering or coming back strong from the crisis.
  • Develop new marketing. Focus on making people aware that you’re back in business, better than ever, and ready to do business.
  • Look for new efficiencies. During the crisis, you might have found out that working remotely works. Therefore, this may be a chance for you to reduce overhead and enable more staff to work from home. And offering good employees the option of working from home can help improve employee satisfaction and retention.

A New Beginning . . . Where Do You Want to Go?

Planning is key. Start with the end in mind and focus on where you want your franchise to go. Now is a great time to be bold, because people will be more open to new ideas than ever before. Tap into the collective knowledge of the whole system.

No one wished for this pandemic. But there is light at the other end of the tunnel – and opportunity.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel, a 35-year franchising veteran is a nationally recognized expert and speaker on franchising. Evan is founder and CEO of Ingage Consulting, and CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company. Evan is an active advisor in the C-Suite Network. He is also author of Ingaging Leadership, and host of “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business. Contact him here, follow him at @ehackel, or call 781-820-7609.

 

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Don’t Let Great Younger Generation Ideas Slip through Your Fingers

An executive I know hired a young woman for his marketing department and put her to work managing some current campaigns. He found out 18 months later that she was a bona fide expert about marketing on social media—she practically lived on social media. She could have brought so much more to her new employer from day one, yet that extra value went completely untapped for a year and a half.

Call that knowledge loss, call it money wasted, or call it something worse. Whatever you call it, it’s bad. How did it happen? Since I don’t work for that company I can’t say for sure, but it was presumably because the top executives there were all Baby Boomers. It likely never occurred to them that a new younger generation worker had ideas they needed to hear.

Is your management failing to acknowledge the contributions of younger workers? If it is, here are some steps to take to be sure you’re discovering and tapping into the unique insights and skills your younger workers possess.

• Strategy One: Uncover hidden skills during the recruiting process. It’s a mistake to screen job applicants by only saying, “Here’s what you’ll have to do on the job…can you cut it?” Instead, ask questions like, “We’re recruiting a team to market our new app—what do you think we need to do?” Or, “We are currently using the XYZ platform to track ad usage in our franchise locations—do you know of anything better?” To use a Zen kind of paradigm, be the student, not the teacher. The things you learn could be very valuable indeed.

• Strategy Two: Invite comments and ideas during new employee training. Training is an ideal time to ask new hires important questions like, “How strong do you think our brand is” or, “Do our competitors do something better than we do?” If you ask questions like those, you let new employees know that you are a company that values honest and open input, and training is the place to do it. After an employee begins working for you, he or she may want to communicate big ideas only to a supervisor, where they could potentially die. Or worse, he or she might never voice those big ideas at all.

• Strategy Three: Get some reverse mentoring going. Reverse mentoring has become popular in many organizations. The idea of reverse mentoring is usually to have an older executive mentored about technology by a younger, tech-savvy employee. I would recommend widening that lens and having younger generations and other young workers keep your senior executives up to speed on things like marketplace trends, new products that have entered the marketplace, and news about “hot” competing companies. The wider you can cast your net for ideas from young employees, the more you benefit.

Reward the big ideas and information that younger generations bring. If an employee delivers a valuable piece of information to you, offer recognition, feedback, or increased responsibilities. Treat it like gold. If you don’t, that bright young mind is likely to think, “Why should I tell my company anything? They ignored me the last time I did.” It’s up to you to offer the recognition that keeps information flowing.

Remember that younger generations have ideas, information, and skills that you need. Are you listening to them? If you aren’t—let’s face it—the fault lies with you. Open the doors, let the information in, and watch your company improve in ways you could never imagine.

Action Step: Meet with your divisional and departmental managers and ask them to help identify younger generations who have specialized knowledge that may benefit your organization.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

Why Training Is the Secret to Achieving a Franchise’s Goals and Vision 

What is your vision for the future of your franchise? Could it be something like one of these?

  • You have built a successful business of your own, and now you want to see it become a franchise and bring success to other people.
  • You have created a product or service that has the potential to change the world, and you want to put the power of a franchise behind it.
  • You want to make an inspiring contribution to improving people’s lives with a franchise that centers on health, exercise, and nutrition.
  • You want to build a blockbuster franchise that will provide long-term security to your family.

Whatever your dream is for your franchise, I want to tell you a secret . . .

You are going to achieve that dream by training people

Training is the secret. It alone will empower your franchise to achieve critical building-block goals like these:

  • Grow more quickly by improving employee performance in critical functions.
  • Build profits by increasing sales, as measured by average sale size, closing rates, and repeat business.
  • Satisfy customers, as evaluated by your Net Promoter Score and other measures.
  • Cultivate an inspiring brand that communicates your unique promise and helps it take life in the marketplace.
  • Create a company that is known for customer and employee safety.
  • Sell more franchises,because potential buyers want the security of joining a franchise that offers training that assures their success.
  • Open new franchise locations more efficiently and quickly, and with greater success.
  • Sell more by learning to use the marketing and advertising tools that your franchise provides.

How Can You Develop and Deliver Training that Hits those Goals?

Identify the jobs and functions that will bring you the biggest payback if you train the people who perform them. Consider working with a team of experienced training designers who know what kind of training will improve those functions, and who also know how to deliver it.

But in this article, I would like to focus on another critical strategy that has the potential to make your franchise vision take flight . . .

Use a modern Learning Management System (LMS) 

A full-featured LMS lets you take control of your training processes in ways that were impossible only a few short years ago. It puts you in control of what is happening in your franchise-wide training by allowing you instant access to a range of statistics like these:

  • Training penetration How many of your employees in each location have started training programs? How many of them have completed training?
  • Training participation How many employees do you have who are taking training, how many of them have completed certification programs, and which of those employees are contributing most to sales and profits?
  • Training effectiveness Which of your training programs is creating the greatest levels of improvement in employee performance, which can be measured by online customer reviews, repeat business, and other measurables?
  • Training delivery What percentage of employees in every location are taking live training, computerized training in your company training center, or training on their phones? Which of those groups is most likely to complete training and achieve measurable performance improvements?
  • Training’s impact on the bottom line Which of your training programs are increasing sales and profits in locations where they have been used . . . and which are not?

If you measure factors like those before and after training, you can gain a deeper understanding of the impact that your training is having on your profits and operations.

Your LMS Can Energize Communications Too

Your LMS can automate training in amazing ways, offering new communications options that can include:

  • Short weekly or monthly podcasts of key information that are emailed to all current and potential franchisees.
  • Emails that remind employees to use the skills they learned in their training.
  • Fun games that work like Jeopardy and other popular game shows that are emailed to all current and potential franchisees.

Training Is the Secret to Making Your Vision Come to Life

There is no mistake about it . . . training is the key to making your dream take life in the real world. Put the power of a modern LMS to work for you and see how high it can fly.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 781-820-7609. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?