The Importance of Continued Communication

In today’s economic climate, franchisors are working hard to find new ways to generate quality lead flow in an effort to drive franchise system growth. In the past week alone, I’ve counted several blog posts, headlines and email blasts dealing with franchisee recruitment. Late last week, I learned of a significant upgrade to a leading franchisor’s website, with the main focus exclusively on increasing lead generation and retention through the franchise sales process. These efforts are certainly warranted. New franchisees allow for the growth of a system and franchisors are certainly smart to focus on continued system growth even in the face of a down economy.

But the communication link must continuously transcend from franchise prospect to new franchisee. In large format franchise opportunities, where investments are generally higher and development timelines are more protracted, communication is absolutely essential. Just yesterday I spoke with a good friend who is also the leader of a large loan brokerage organization. In the span of two days, he had received calls from two franchisees looking to begin the loan process on franchises they purchased over a year ago. “They had signed-up over a year ago and had been focused on real estate and zoning matters,“ he said, “Now the real estate is in order and the permits are coming through and they’re getting into the loan process. The only problem is the 90% financing that was in place when they became franchisees is no longer available like it was a year ago. And the franchisees were unaware the rules had changed.”

It’s certainly reasonable to expect that franchisees stay well-read of franchise topics of key importance such as financing but franchisors should make a commitment to over-communicate with new franchisees that may not yet have learned “what they don’t know.” With changes in real estate, financing, operational or governmental matters happening on a frequent basis, franchisors should always set in motion the vehicles necessary to keep all franchisees up-to-speed on changing trends.

At Sunbrook, we’ve plugged into technology to aid in such communication. With internal blogs, forums and a “team room”, as well as with a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter, we are succeeding in over-communicating information to franchisees. The good news is these communication vehicles come with almost no cost and they’re user-friendly too. With integration of the systems with PDAs, text alerts and email, we’re able to provide more timely information to our franchisees across multiple platforms at a much faster pace. These same tools are out there for any franchisor to use and I recommend that each take a keen interest at increasing the effectiveness, frequency and quality of communication to new franchisees.