It can take a lot of work and patience to find the right franchisees. You might have to find and interview 10 before you find one that fits the bill. Maybe it’s 100 before you find one that is the right fit.
It’s easy to focus on this aspect of growing your franchise. It’s obviously very important to bring in the right people. But the other side of that is also making sure that you retain your best franchisees. You don’t want to forget about them and focus too much on the new.
Here are some thoughts on the situation.
1. Learn Their Aspirations
Ask questions about what your franchisees want for the short and long-term. Learn what they aspire for in their lives. Professional and personal. Figure out how to align your franchise opportunity with their aspirations. Do they want to grow with more franchises? Do they want to eventually not run the day-to-day of their franchises? It could be a number of things, but do what you can to figure it out so they aren’t looking elsewhere for what they need and want.
2. Listen To Them
Most people want at least one or two people in their lives that is a good listener. Someone that will listen without distraction. Someone that will listen and ask questions. Someone that will listen and support and validate. This type of person is very important for most of us. And when we find that person we don’t want to let them go because they make us feel good and wanted and important.
3. Thank Them
Most of us want to feel that we’re doing a good job. It can be implied. Especially in the work space. But we often feel disrespected and unappreciated and things like that. Especially if we only hear about the negative and not the positive. I see it often in the blogging world. A writer writes a 1,000-word post and it’s all great except for one sentence that needs to be tweaked. They only hear about the change. Repeat that over hundreds of posts and it all adds up to a lot of negative.
Make sure you’re thanking your franchisees regularly and for the little but important things.
4. Help Them Make More Money
Many franchisees are there to make money. Most are happy to make more money. Do what you can to help them figure out how to make more money. Help them grow their existing franchise. Help them buy into more. When you help people achieve their financial ambitions you often earn great loyalty. If only for the fact that they know they can depend on what you’re offering.
5. Positive Energy
People want to be around positive people. Sometimes we want to bring others to our pity parties. To our complaint parties. But mostly we like being around positive people. It’s true for friendships and all kinds of relationships. And it’s very true in a franchise situation. It obviously depends on the quality of your franchise and its ability to make money. But people will want to stick with you if you’re positive with them. If you help to bring joy and hope to their lives. Nobody thinks about the grass being greener if it’s already very green on this side of the fence.
Conclusion
These are just simple things that can help keep your best people on your team. Obviously compensation comes into the mix. But treating people in a good ways goes a long way. But it can certainly be easy to take a relationship for granted. Make sure you have a process in place for checking in with people and assessing how things are going. And then taking action before it’s too late.