When you buy a franchise, you are really not buying a business.
You are buying a system for operating a business.
One of the most overlooked pieces of evaluating a franchise is how well the system is documented, how often is it updated and equally important, how accessible is the documentation.
Why is this important?
Most franchise companies use paper manuals – enormous 3-ring binders – that help you get your business off the ground. They may be broken into several smaller binders and labeled Operations, Marketing, Accounting or Grand Opening. These critical documents explain in detail how you open an office, ramp it up, generate revenue and at the end of the day, turn a profit. Following the ‘system’ in a franchise company is the quickest path to becoming a Top Performer.
Not following the system is almost always the quickest path to becoming an Under Performer. Remember, a franchisor doesn’t make money if you don’t so they have a vested interest in making sure you have a well documented, step-by-step procedure to becoming profitable.
Or at least they should. The truth is how do you know before you buy?
At Showhomes Home Staging, my company, we stopped using paper manuals all together. We use a very sophisticated and secure online manual that serves out information in the way you want – always accessible, searchable and secure. Our franchisees can use keyword searches to get basic questions answered, can access documents and can even suggest changes when they come across a hole so our documentation stays sharp 100% of the time. When we add new content, our franchisees get notification emails and have to check off they’ve read the new content so no one gets left behind.
On the franchisor side, we track how often every user accesses the manual, have metrics for how many pages they access and understand how long they spend on each page. This way we know what our franchisees want to learn and what parts are in use so we can always adapt. It also helps us understand what questions franchisees are interested in so we can develop more of what they want and need.
When I ask other franchise executives what percentage of their franchisees access their manual on a regular basis, the number is always shockingly low: 5-10% or less. That means a stunning 95% are not using the system documentation to help them make better decisions day-to-day. Think about it – a huge 3-ring binder is likely to sit on a shelf, gathering dust. Most franchisees have a need to access it but the format makes it difficult. As a result, they ask other owners or call their operations staffer with basic questions, over and over.
Does this hurt the franchisee? You better believe it! When that operations person – the most important person on the corporate team – is answering basic questions, they are not thinking proactively about how to help you grow. Face it – there are only so many hours in a day.
Because we pay attention to this, we know that 35-40% of our franchisees access and use our online manual on a regular basis. We know who does and who doesn’t and this helps our operations and field staff help franchisees grow. It makes for more specific conversations and because our documentation is online, it allows us to leverage the content whenever and wherever we are. Most importantly, it gives our franchisees the ability to help themselves 24 /7. We’d like that number to rise and because we measure it, it will.
Whatever franchise you look at, make sure to ask about the system documentation. Go beyond looking at the table of contents in the FDD. Ask franchisees if they use it on a regular basis and if it helps them run a better performing business. Ask if it is online – in today’s online world, it should be.
We used Kit Vinson from http://www.franman.net/ to help author our manual and port it online.--
Thomas Scott
VP Marketing and Systems Development
Showhomes Home Staging
http://www.showhomesfranchise.com/
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