As the popular saying goes: “your network is your net worth."
In other words, the success of your franchise hinges on the relationships you build with everyone in your network - particularly your franchisees.
These units orchestrate your day-to-day operations and shape your customer experiences. They’re more than just a point of sale; they’re the living embodiment of your brand. So it’s crucial that you foster strong, mutually beneficial partnerships with them.
In this article, we’ll help you do just that.
The responsibilities of franchisors vs franchisees
Before you can work on strengthening your relationships, it’s important to go back to the basics. What are your roles and responsibilities in the franchise system? What do your franchisees expect from you and vice versa?
As a franchisor, you’re the architect of the overall business model. You define the product and/or services, the buyer market, and the operations manual. You’re also responsible for:
- Defining legal and compliance procedures.
- Steering the overarching marketing strategy.
- Plotting the franchise development roadmap.
- Controlling the franchisee recruitment, onboarding, and training pipeline.
- Providing support for franchisees and their employees.
Franchisees, on the other hand, play a more hands-on role. They oversee unit operations, manage employee recruitment and retention, and spearhead local marketing efforts.
To summarize: you sketch out the blueprint, your franchisees bring it to life.
But that doesn’t mean you should leave them to their own devices. As the architect, you must provide building and maintenance support throughout your partnership.
With that in mind, here are 10 tips to help you establish and maintain good franchisor and franchisee relationships.
10 tips for establishing and maintaining a successful franchisor and franchisee relationship
1. Finetune your franchise contracts
Franchise disclosure documents (FDD) are a notorious sticking point. So much so, that over half of franchises believe that simplifying their FDD format could help them to accelerate growth.
If your FDDs are too complex or hard-to-navigate, you could ruin the relationships with your franchisees before they’ve even begun.
So, to optimize your FDD documents, store them in a modern franchise management software (FMS). Accessible via mobile devices, an FMS allows your potential franchisees to access up-to-date contracts - and any supporting materials - whenever it suits them. In addition to this, built-in AI policy management applications can help them better understand complex legal clauses.
All in all, this can speed-up the franchise sales process, accelerate growth, and mitigate any legal misunderstandings. It’ll also set a positive tone for the rest of your relationship.
2. Simplify your operations manual
By simplify, we don’t mean dumb-down or reduce in size. After all, this is everything pertaining to your franchise business - it’s impossible to summarize it all in just a few pages.
However, there are ways you can help your franchisees to navigate this information.
Similar to your FDDs and agreements, we’d recommend housing each chapter, process, or procedure in an AI-powered policy management tool. With acknowledgement capture and helpful AI assistants, you can ensure your franchisees read and understand every word of your manual. (Without getting frustrated!)
3. Standardize franchisee onboarding and training
Your franchise should operate like a well-oiled machine.
Consider McDonald’s as a prime example. No matter where you are in the world, every McDonald branch operates in a predictable way. Red and yellow branding, quick service, perfectly salted fries - you know the drill. It’s this consistency and reliability that makes it such a strong business model.
But reaching this level of success requires standardization. Every McDonald’s franchise owner and their employees receive the same training, and this should be the case for your franchisees, too.
The best way to create, distribute, and track this training is via a learning management system (LMS). An LMS empowers you to build engaging courses, learning pathways, and self-service experiences that employees can access from anywhere.
There’s no dependency on in-person coaching sessions or long training manuals. Simply create the training, watch your franchisees enroll, and monitor their performance via native analytics.
The result? Your franchisees will have the confidence to perform at their best, and you can sleep easy knowing you’re giving them the best support possible.
4. Automate operations where possible
Speaking of standardization - don’t forget to automate your repeatable processes, too. This not only avoids errors and inconsistencies, but can alleviate stress and resourcing challenges for your franchisees.
Consider streamlining the following processes using a no-code automation platform:
- Requesting branded marketing materials.
- Filing a dispute or complaint.
- Logging health and safety assessments.
- Submitting evidence for an audit.
- Capturing customer complaints and reviews.
- Handling invoices and royalty management.
All in all, this eases up some pressure for your franchisees and can make your life much easier.
5. Set up a franchise advisory council
Franchise advisory councils (FAC) are groups of franchisees that meet to discuss risks, successes and ideas, and provide feedback to the franchisor.
Setting up an FAC is a brilliant way to gain qualitative insights into unit operations and boost collaboration. It can also demonstrate to your franchisees that you value their ideas.
This may be why 78% of brands that have a positive relationship with their franchisees also have a franchise advisory council.
6. Open up communications
Two-way communication is crucial for strengthening your franchisor–franchisee and franchisee–franchisee relationships.
But not all communication methods are effective. For example, adopting a disparate communications tool, separate from your project and procedure information, is inconvenient. There’s little data to contextualize conversations, and franchisees may tire of jumping between platforms.
Equally, you want to avoid any tool that’s clunky and inaccessible. Remember: communication should be quick, easy, and mobile-friendly. (Especially if your franchisees don’t have access to a desktop.)
With that in mind, we’d recommend adopting a mobile-friendly franchise management software that contains a comprehensive franchise intranet.
This will help you to combine your knowledge, processes, and policies with your communications. That way, you and your franchisees will have everything you need to communicate effectively.
Consider the value of Claromentis’s communications tools:
- News and blogs. Write or generate engaging articles for all or some of your franchisees, depending on the permissions you set. You can use these tools for sharing business targets, highlighting unit successes, or unveiling new logos and marketing campaigns.
- Comment threads. Native to many Claromentis applications, comment threads encourage franchisees to provide feedback and support.
- Discussion rooms. Build collaborative forums for franchisees to share ideas and nurture relationships with one another. This can be particularly useful for giving your more mature franchisees the ability to mentor newcomers.
- In-system messaging. For more 1:1 communications, shoot a direct message via our convenient in-system messaging tool.
7. Get together in person
According to research by Harvard Business Review, 95% of professionals believe that face-to-face meetings are key for building and maintaining long-term business relationships.
So, while it may be easy to rely solely on digital comms, don’t neglect in-person visits.
Organize annual meet-ups, field visits with representatives, and even regional events to provide plenty of opportunities for face-to-face conversation.
8. Collaborate year-round
Inconvenient email chains and intermittent in-person meetings aren’t real collaboration.
To work effectively with your franchisees year-round, find a portal that:
- Consolidates your franchise documents, brand assets, policies, contracts and more.
- Logs a clear version and audit history.
- Provides a document management system with check-in/check-out editing.
- Encourages franchisees to comment and suggest changes.
- Contains a project management tool for assigning franchisee tasks, such as submitting financial reports and organizing promotional events.
9. Gather feedback via surveys
Looking for a smarter way to glean franchisee feedback? There’s no need to wait for your annual or bi-annual FAC meetings. Collect ideas throughout the year with online polls and surveys.
These may focus on individual issues, such as finding ways to overcome the current labor shortages, or more broader topics. For instance, you could ask your franchisees to suggest future product or service improvements.
This feedback might unearth ideas you hadn’t considered before. It’ll also make your franchisees feel like a valued part of the overall business vision.
10. Celebrate your franchisees
Validation is a powerful motivator.
By regularly recognizing franchisee achievements and rewarding successes with badges, incentives, and financial rewards, you can build loyalty and drive healthy competition within your network. This is crucial for strengthening your partnerships and bringing your franchisees together.
Set up your franchise network for success
Visualize your franchise as a building; each room represents a franchisee, and every brick an employee. Though this building may be able to take some damage, its structural integrity depends on its stability as a whole.
Every component plays an important role. And all it takes is one fractured relationship or a franchise dispute to crumble this foundation to dust.
That’s why it’s not enough to simply plan and build a franchise - you need to keep up with its maintenance, too. And part of this maintenance lies in nurturing your franchisor and franchisee relationships.
This is where Claromentis can help. Unlike many other competitors on the market, our end-to-end franchise management solution combines powerful intranet, e-learning, and business process automation capabilities. Allowing you to share knowledge, empower your franchisees, enforce compliance, and streamline your operations.
It’s good for you, good for your franchisees, and good for your business.
Want to take a look at our FMS up close? Schedule a live demo with one of our experts today. We’ll take you on a feature-by-feature tour, answer any questions you may have, and even give you access to a personalized portal to test out for 30 days.
