Franchise Leadership and Development Conference Profile: Steve Cox

By BRIAN DIGGELMANN For three days in October some of the best and brightest minds in the franchising community will assemble in Atlanta for the 14^th Annual Franchise Leadership and Development Conference. Experts from over 40 industries will gather to discuss the current state of franchising and how to take their businesses to the next level. We asked five franchise development professionals from attendee brands to share their wisdom and insights into how development strategy has evolved over the past twelve months and where their companies are headed. Not many franchise executives started at their brands as franchisees. Even fewer remain franchise owners. Steve Cox holds that unique distinction as Vice President of Franchise Development at i9 Sports. Cox left a 15-year career in sales management to open an i9 Sports youth sports franchise in 2007. Today he still runs his Central Ohio league while overseeing the development of the rapidly expanding brand. How has the last year been in terms of development? We’ve seen it going in a positive direction but we’ve worked a lot harder to make that possible than we did a year ago. Candidates are a lot more discerning and want more information before they’re ready to engage. Having a content-heavy website has been one focus for us. Along with that is making sure we are visible to the candidates we are looking to target with pay per click programs driving traffic to our website. We’re also taking much less of a shotgun franchise approach to franchise development. In other words we’re going after specific markets so we can get to our ideal franchisees in those markets. What has your strategy been for reaching prospective franchisees in individual markets? We are in the process of making the search engine optimization and pay per click programs we already have in place geographically targeted. It’s also advertising in some areas where we haven’t before, like LinkedIn. We started doing a pay per click program through LinkedIn that’s geographically targeted, and that’s yielding good results for us. We're reaching out to our i9 Sports customers in those areas and even doing some direct mail pieces. Has there been a significant change in the quantity or quality of inquiries in recent months? I would say versus the same time last year the number of inquiries is pretty flat, but we are getting inquiries into the areas we are targeting, which is what our goal was. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s a mixed bag at all times. You’re always going to have to weed through a lot of candidates to find the quality candidates, and that hasn’t changed. Finding qualified candidates - and I don’t just mean qualified dollar candidates, but candidates who are capable of successfully running an i9 Sports franchise – is always a challenge and something we’re always trying to be better at. You mentioned using LinkedIn to connect with potential franchisees. Is i9 Sports active on any other social channels? Our best candidates have always been people who were already involved with the program on the consumer side of the business - parents who have kids in our leagues. We have a very robust national Facebook page on the consumer side and we are using that platform more and more to get the word out about our franchise opportunities. It’s tough to judge the exact results yet, which I think is true of most social media, but we are actively using that channel. Have you seen franchisees or prospective franchisees running into any unique challenges? A lot of it is timing – having people who are in a position where the timing works well for them. Another challenge is marrying up the geography. What we’re finding in the last three or four months, and I think this just has to do with a lot of people being displaced in the work world, is that people are looking to get back home closer to family. It’s a great goal but it’s also very challenging to do, especially when you want to do that and open a business at the same time. We have seen that dynamic a lot recently, and it’s a tough barrier to entry for people. Have you had an increase in multi-unit agreements? Within our own network of current franchisees we are having more franchisees who own multiple units. We’re still not a model that is really set up for multiple units right out of the gate. Our model is more owner/operator today, but we do have a lot of current franchisees who are now acquiring additional territory. As a family-related franchise opportunity, do you have a lot of couples opening franchises? Our ideal candidate is a 30 to 40-year-old mid-career executive, usually with one or two kids, looking to get some work-life balance back. Most of them have a spouse who is also employed outside the home and who will stay employed outside the home. Usually it's a dual-income family and it will stay dual-income while the business gets up and rolling. What are your top-performing franchisees doing that is making them more successful? Our very successful franchisees have done a great job of building out their territories. We can have multiple storefronts inside of one of our territories. The franchisees who have done well have been able to do that through hiring and managing staff effectively while still providing a great customer experience. We’ve worked really hard in the last 12 months to help all of our franchisees do a much better job of staffing, training and providing the experience without them having to be directly involved in every aspect of the business. What has been a learning experience so far this year? We switched to the FranConnect system in an effort to get good content out there. Probably the biggest learning experience we’ve had has been twofold. One is what information to distribute online and how to package it. The other is how to organically drive people to our website. Frankly, what we didn’t do a great job of at first was making sure that what was on the FranConnect system and our virtual brochure complemented the website. They were designed separately and didn't have a message that flowed from one to the other. That’s a lot of what we’re working on now. What’s on the horizon for i9 Sports? We now have a database nationwide of over 600,000 people who are part of the i9 Sports program and I would love to see that cross one million in the next year. It’s been a great year in a tough economy, especially our growth on the consumer side. Why are you attending the Franchise Leadership and Development Conference? I’m a franchisee and have been for 5 years, so I have that side down fairly well. But I’m one year into franchise development so when it comes to being a franchise executive I have so much to learn, particularly in lead generation. Finding and getting qualified people to have a conversation with - that’s my one key that I will be focusing on. We're also always looking for ways we can improve and enhance the sales process when we do get qualified candidates.