Fran X | Tricks to Encouraging Franchise Brokers to Push Your Franchise

The Next McDonald's (Big Idea)

Reaching the Franchise Broker Attraction Tipping Point

80-20 Rule (Pareto Principle): 80% of success comes from 20% of a business's actions. We all know the rule and have seen it in action.

• So, how can you apply it to your franchise broker sales strategy?
• How do you get to the tipping point where your brand consistently attracts broker referrals and sales?
• How do you make it look easy?

The answer is that you focus on the 20%! It's where opportunity exists and while the steps involved are no secret, they are often overlooked or inconsistently applied.

How do you get there?

Below are two examples of the extra steps that you should be taking to supercharge your franchise broker development strategy:

EXAMPLE 1: BROKER NETWORKING

What Most Brands Do - They let the network initiate and facilitate the broker communications.

The Extra Steps You Should Be Taking! - Communicate with the brokers directly, reach out to them on LinkedIn, build out your own mailing lists, and engage with the broker through social media, including communications focused on supporting the broker and their efforts. Host broker paid-for discovery days at your headquarters, and networking events.

EXAMPLE 2: BROKER COMMUNICATIONS

What Most Brands Do - They over-rely on commissions and personal relationships without developing a compelling value proposition for brokers and their franchisee candidates.

The Extra Steps You Should Be Taking! - Build a robust communication hub on your website that communicates a compelling why you / why now. Build content specifically for brokers that includes a demonstration of your process and the journey that franchisee candidates will experience when referred to your brand. Build content around your management team and vision of what your brand will be like 1, 2, 3 and 5 years from now and the transformation that your franchisees will experience.

News You Can (Actually) Use

• Are you a manager or a leader?
• Youth Athletes United Acquires Another Brand

Killer Brands

Why Premium Service Brands is One of 2021’s Biggest Franchise Success Stories

CEO Paul Flick shares how several recent acquisitions, a private equity investment and an innovative new multi-brand growth initiative added up to a killer year for the multi-brand franchisor.

Premium Service Brands, the multi-brand franchisor with nine major home-service providers under its belt, is increasingly catching the eye of savvy investors in the franchise industry, and for good reason. As the home service segment flourished following the COVID-19 pandemic, Premium Service Brands sold 75 territories across North America in 2020, and the system’s year-over-year sales were up more than 35%. Now, Premium Service Brands is proving this momentum isn’t just luck — the entire system is currently up 43% in year-over-year sales for 2021.

The captain guiding this growing ship is Premium Service Brands CEO Paul Flick, who brings more than 20 years of leadership and management experience in the franchising industry to his role. We spoke with the industry veteran to get the inside scoop on how the company has growing into a thriving multi-unit franchisor, his insights on the home services segment, his plans for the future and more.

Franchisees Kicking Ass: The Franchisee Is King

The Great Franchisee: Cal Carrera, Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching, Utah

The renowned leadership coach brings 4 decades of experience to his role as one of the newest franchise owners with ILEC.

Cal Carrera has spent nearly 40 years guiding leaders to success as a mentor and management consultant. Now, the expert coach is leveraging that experience to start a new chapter in his career as one of the newest franchise owners with Intelligent Leadership and Executive Coaching (ILEC), the 15-plus-unit executive coaching franchise.

We spoke to Carrera to learn more about his career in coaching and his experience with ILEC.

1851 Franchise: Tell us your story – what did you do before franchising?

Cal Carrera: The first organization I created was when I was nine years old. I formed a 4th-grade baseball team, and we were able to beat the 5th graders. I have always enjoyed putting together successful teams, even from a young age.

I got my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of Utah. I then went on to get my master’s in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California. For 14 years I worked for Veda Inc as a general manager and grew the division by 1000% via strong marketing and strategic use of joint ventures. After that, I was on various panels and boards. In 2001, I formed The Carrera Group. The Carrera Group was a boutique consulting firm focused on providing day-to-day vision and executive leadership to small-to-medium-sized progressive clients who want to create organizations with increasing value and predictable growth.

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Yo Broker, Sell My Franchise

Top Franchise Brokers: Charlie Bever, CFE, The Entrepreneur Authority

Bever brings an extensive background in franchising and multi-unit retail management to help match businesses and business owners.

Charlie Bever is the owner of The Career Transition Authority® (CTA), an independent Affiliate with the national franchise brokerage The Entrepreneur Authority (TEA). Prior to founding CTA, Bever was the director of business development for Miracle-Ear, Inc. During his tenure at Miracle-Ear, Inc., he managed franchise sales and significantly grew the brand through franchising.

Now, as a senior franchise consultant, Bever brings more than two decades of franchising experience and uses it to help prospective franchisees find their dream business, while also helping franchisors grow their system with the right partners.

1851: What makes you successful as a franchise broker?

Charlie Bever: The number one thing is my experience. I have over two decades of franchising experience, so I can relate to the candidates I am working with. I know the process, especially when it comes to working with the franchisor. This experience makes it easy to coach franchisee prospects and set expectations. It can be hard work to go through the discovery process, but it can also be quite insightful. It puts candidates at ease knowing I have that experience. I am also a CFE, which is the highest distinction someone can have in the world of franchising.

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The Bottom Thoughts

Every single franchisor who uses the broker network wants the broker network to push their brand. Makes sense. The challenge, however, is supply and demand.

There are not an infinite number of franchise buyers -- in fact, if there were a study on year-over-year franchisees (especially first-timers), we would imagine the number would remain fairly consistent (not including the COVID of 2020).

Thus, if more franchisors are created -- or more franchisors join the inventory side of the broker network, the deals per diminishes. Thus, it is vital for franchisors to create an educational pathway for the broker community to push their brand.

We have discussed the basics at nauseum -- clear why you, why now; proven unit-level economics; a team who can process the candidate successfully; a smart incentive program; open territories; and validators.

Then, it comes to creating stories, content and resources (anyone say videos?) to give to the broker community so that they have the tools to properly communicate to their limited pool of buyers.

If you don’t do the blocking and tackling, then you are simply praying that the magical unicorn broker will push your brand. That, unfortunately is an extreme rarity.

So, in order to gain more traction with the broker community, you must facilitate a relationship and provide resources to make telling your story easy. You must be the wingman (or wingperson) to their sales process in order to get more deals done.

Take a good look in your brand’s mirror, close the gaps, and adjust your approach if you want to win more at franchise growth in 2022.