Coffee and Analytics: Why Franchise Growth Leaders Need to Stop and Smell the Roses

Welcome to Q2 2023.

At this point in the year, a typical phrase is “boy, does time fly fast.” The challenge is that this statement never (or rarely) changes. Time does move fast — too much to do, not enough time. Thus, the saying, “look around and smell the roses,” is absolutely more valuable to us as humans (life is short because time moves fast) and to us as franchise growth leaders, as we tend to not do that often enough — celebrate the culmination of the little victories.

In fact, in franchise sales and growth, you are only as good as your last deal — meaning, short-term memory loss is prevalent, not just in franchising, but in any sales industry. And, “sales cures all sins” is the easiest way to turn around disappointment from leadership in you not hitting your sales numbers.

This month’s letter is all about celebration, reflection and focus — finding the little victories, adding them up, celebrating them and building upon them.

First, CELEBRATION

We have always encouraged our clients to release good news every quarter. This habit is essential to franchise growth for a few reasons:

1. Even if you didn’t hit your sales goals, it gives your business and your team an opportunity to find the roses to smell — I promise you have them.
2. It is a lot easier to grow when you have a happy mindset, thus, even if the rocks you set out to crush in Q1 weren’t crushed, you can still find wins.
3. Wins drive people to want to be a part of your mission. Thus, building a piece of content and placing it on the wire (PRWeb) can have an impact on the ghost leads flying around the internet.
4. While I don’t believe that all news is good news, good news is good news. How many units did you sign? How many units did you open? Any franchisees expand? New products launch? Sales volume increases? Record sales for an existing franchisee? New staff on your team? New website? Social campaign? You see, if you look around, you can find cool things worth celebrating.

Second, REFLECTION:

1. If you didn’t hit your goals, what do you wish you did differently in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023?
2. What is the number one thing (not leads — think what comes before leads) that you can do in Q2 to change that narrative?
3. How’s your foundation looking? Any cracks? Your website — does it have a why you/why now? Any future enhancements to the business model worth exploring (can start talking about that in your Q1 release, too)?

And, now, FOCUS:

1. In today’s world, your competition is not just another company that sells burgers, it is all brands with similar investments because the franchise broker world has changed the candidate’s buying process. When looking at data, many didn’t know what they wanted to buy (especially outside of food). Thus, look at 3-5 similar investment models and compare.
2. What you spend in Q2 will likely define the outcomes for 2023 — 6.4 months from impression to inquiry. If deals are slower, ramp up spend in Q2 (decrease in Q3) to get that snowball moving.
3. Existing franchisees expanding is BIG news — and will drive more deals to future franchisees. Why? They know the secret (money) and their expansion could be the single most valuable thing to franchise development.
4. We have a client who looked under rocks (previous development team’s) and found 100 deals. Want to know what he did? Ask me.

Go crush Q2. Micro your vision to a 90-day sprint. Stack up a bunch of little wins. What you do in this quarter will define your 2023. Don’t play not to lose — play to win, NOW.