Alex Roberts
One of the greatest challenges in franchise sales is to know – upfront — who is and who isn’t the right candidate for your franchise. Of all the thousands of leads that contact your company every year to invest in a franchise, who among them has what it takes to do what needs to be done to succeed as one of your franchisees? Who can execute the business model? That’s the mystery of successful franchise sales. Here’s a story about a franchisor that has discovered how to solve the mystery!
Providing the missing information
Historically, approximately 1 lead in 10 is a successful franchise candidate for most franchise companies. The mystifying, frustrating and expensive work is separating the one from the majority of candidates that would likely struggle, if not fail, if you accepted them as a franchisee. Every candidate who contacts you is obviously interested in your business, and most believe they can be successful owning a franchise. But when a candidate contacts you, each of you is almost always missing a critical piece of information:
- You don’t know the candidate’s skills, values and behaviors.
- The candidate doesn’t know which skills, values and behaviors are needed to succeed in your franchise.
Alex Roberts, vice president of franchise development for Service Brands, which includes the leading brands, Molly Maid and Mr. Handyman, enjoys using a tool and process that helps him and his team of eight staff quickly differentiate the best candidates. That’s particularly important for a company that sells franchises for four different brands (Protect Painters and 1-800-Dry-Clean are also part of the Service Brands franchise conglomerate) and every year receives more than 6,000 leads (including 1,000 from brokers).
“The people who contact us to invest in a franchise usually have been successful in corporate America, and they have a strong financial net worth,” explains Roberts. “In most cases, they’re sharp people. But we don’t know them. You can’t tell everything about them just by talking on the phone. We don’t really know what makes them tick. And they don’t know if they have what’s going to be required of a franchisee in our system. Until we can really communicate with them, we can’t help them understand what it takes to be successful in our businesses.”
Communication facilitates successful franchise development! And communication can’t occur between a franchise development agent and a franchise candidate until the former has collected all of the candidate’s pertinent information. Most franchisors don’t do that because they don’t know how!
Valuable insights
Early in 2009, Service Brands retained Franchise Navigator to profile and benchmark members of its Molly Maid and Mr. Handyman franchise networks. “Not all of the franchisees participated,” says Roberts. “More than 80 percent of Mr. Handyman’s 310 franchisees completed an assessment and we profiled about 60% of 425 Molly Maid franchisees. The results of the profiles for each business were amazing. There were no ‘a-ha’ moments, but we saw the results for our top performers as well as for franchisees who were struggling, and the Franchise Navigator results were dead on accurate. This became very valuable information for our franchise development and operations teams.”
Now franchise development could look at multiple candidate profiles and know in advance which ones had the right stuff and — perhaps more importantly — know how to communicate with each candidate. And for existing franchisees as well as new franchisees, the operations team would know how to communicate and connect with the franchisees to achieve more satisfying results. “We think the Franchise Navigator assessment is a better training and operations tools than it is a matchmaking tool,” said Roberts.
“Service Brands is using Franchise Navigator as a powerful tool to create the connectivity throughout their entire distribution system and to enhance the performance of individual franchisees,” explained Craig Slavin, who has spent nearly 40 years creating, growing, and managing franchise programs, and developing Franchise Navigator.
Finding the right fit
“We chose the Navigator because we want to find the right fit for our franchises so that we can grow our brands,” Roberts said. “The Navigator helps us identify the people with the right behavioral styles and attributes that are common among our more successful franchisees. To me this is a no-brainer. When we provide the assessment to our candidates they see we truly care about finding the right fit for our franchise. It gives us credibility. We’re not just looking for someone who can fog a mirror. We are looking for the right fit and the Navigator provides that information to both us and the candidate.” Upfront!
Service Brands doesn’t use the Navigator to qualify or disqualify candidates, Roberts reported. “If we get an assessment back and it’s right in our sweet spot for a successful franchisee, we tell the candidate they’re a good fit and that helps reinforce the sale. But if someone tests low for our ideal profile — let’s say they’re lower in the Influencer category (one of four attributes the Franchise Navigator measures), which we know is important if a franchisee is going to succeed at selling — we then explain those results to the candidate. We ask other questions. We learn more about their skill levels. We ask if they’re willing to improve certain skills. We also want to know if they plan to hire people with certain skills to help them operate the business.” The results of the assessment allow Service Brands to raise concerns and questions early in the sales process to help both Service Brands and the candidate decide if there’s a match.
“We use Franchise Navigator as an educational tool,” said Roberts. “It helps us understand how we’ll need to train and support a candidate, and it shows the candidate what’s necessary, too.” In fact, Roberts said candidates are never surprised by the results of their assessments. But when their profile is compared to a high performer’s profile they may be surprised when they learn how their profile does or doesn’t fit with the targeted business.
“Yes, that’s me!”
“Candidates know themselves,” said Roberts. “They know their strengths and weaknesses and whether or not they are Accomplishers, Influencers, Associators or Contributors. There’s hardly ever a surprise when they see the results. They don’t come back and say, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t score higher.’ They come back and say, ‘Yes, that’s me!’ We’ve had candidates with low scores tell us they had always thought about improving in an area — maybe it’s networking or public speaking or sales — and that tells us whether they’re willing to do what needs to be done. That’s wonderful from our perspective. All the research that the Franchise Navigator team has put into identifying these behavioral traits is right on target.”
The Franchise Navigator’s intelligence makes it much easier for both Service Brands and a candidate to mutually decide not to pursue a franchise sale. “If a candidate isn’t willing to do what needs to be done to succeed, we’re both better off not moving forward,” said Roberts. “There’s no sense investing $100,000-plus in a business model if you’re not going to do what it takes to be successful.”
Amen! Just as there’s no sense in spending time and money sifting through candidates that don’t have what it takes to succeed in your franchise.