How Franchisee Networking Facilitates Systemwide Success

Franchisors can provide franchisees with a variety of tools to help them run their businesses, but ultimately, no one understands what happens at the unit level quite like the franchisees themselves. For this reason, it is imperative that franchisees maintain regular communications with each other and share best practices. In doing so, they not only support their individual franchisees, they can also help boost the franchise system’s overall health. 

Pet Butler franchisee Scott Cockrell attests to the importance of communication among a brand’s franchisees. Cockrell started franchising with Pet Butler in 2007 and owns and operates one franchise in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2017, Pet Butler was acquired by Spring-Green Enterprises. One major improvement resulting from the change, Cockrell said, is better communication among franchisees. 

“One of the big struggles I’ve had over the years was the inability to communicate with my peers and to see how others are doing,” Cockrell said. “Quite honestly, for a number of years, it felt like I was just on an island in Alabama by myself.”

Since the acquisition, Pet Butler franchisees get to use an internal software package called Knowledge Base. Cockrell described it as a “fantastic tool” that allows franchisees to input best practices for easy sharing among franchisees. If one franchisee is especially adept at doing commercial quotes, for example, franchisees can use Knowledge Base to reach out directly to that person and gain advice, Cockrell said. 

“That stuff is archived for the entire system, so anybody who wants to can go in and search for a particular topic — it’s available for all of us to see,” Cockrell explained. 

Cockrell said the new resource is helpful in a variety of ways beyond just tapping into the best-equipped franchisee for any given task.

“Education is key. A lot of us have been doing this for a long time, and we have a lot of experience. For us to be able to share our experience with the new franchisees as they come on board is a real big asset for them.”

NuVinAir franchisee Jonathan McMahon, who owns and operates the brand’s Northern Virginia-based franchise, said franchisee collaboration can be especially helpful at the beginning of a franchisee’s journey with a brand.

“No matter what business or franchise you decide to start, it’s always a struggle to find success at first,” McMahon said. “Informing consumers where you are and what you do can sometimes be the most difficult part. With a playbook of best practices designed by your predecessors, the learning curve is faster and your path to success is fast-tracked. There won’t be a novel written about your new area or territory, but with an outline, you can focus your efforts and know which categories deserve the most time, attention and resources. Insight like that can mean the difference between failing and building a legacy franchise business.”

The advantage of the franchise model, McMahon said, is that everyone is on the same team and collectively pushing the brand higher as a group. 

“This type of familial relationship breeds true honesty and assistance when it’s utilized correctly,” McMahon said. “Like with most franchises, NuVinAir Global’s franchisee network is full of varying backgrounds, areas of the country and experience levels. We build off each other’s individual strengths and perspectives to shape our local business strategies.”

NuVinAir helps support conversations between franchisees, in part, through regular conference calls. 

“Every two weeks, the NuVinAir Global Executive team hosts a franchisee conference call to keep us abreast of the status of national deals, as well as share any updates on procedures, training and upcoming improvements in technology, CRM and products,” McMahon said. “Separately, the franchisees host biweekly conference calls with nationwide sales managers to review sales strategies, success stories, lessons learned and objections.”

At portable toilet franchise Royal Restrooms, franchisee networking and collaboration is essential to prevent issues at the local level, according to founder and co-owner David Sauers. 

“Without collaboration on the corporate level, there will be much overlap of effort at the local, franchise level,” Sauers said. “We don’t want to constantly be recreating the wheel. By sharing data, experience, expertise and results, the local offices are able to perform better.” 

The brand encourages collaboration among franchisees and even goes so far as to connect franchisees and facilitate those conversations, Sauers said. 

“One way the Royal Restrooms leadership team supports conversations between franchisees is to constantly be in contact with them themselves,” Sauers said. “The leadership team must know what issues each office is facing so that they can put offices in contact with others who are facing the same issues, have experience with those issues or can serve as mentors. The leadership team must be the facilitators of communication.” 

To this end, franchisees are encouraged to network at the brand’s nationwide franchise conference, which takes place every other year. 

“This is an opportunity for the franchisees to gather together to exchange ideas, chat with vendors and air grievances,” Sauers said. “Like-sized franchises are encouraged to question each other while gathering information from larger ones and offering advice to smaller ones.”

Beyond benefiting franchisees, communication and networking are crucial to a brand’s overall success, Sauers said.

“By sharing each franchise’s best practices, not only are the franchisees capable of growing, but the entire company is stronger,” Sauers explained. “By learning from each other’s victories and mistakes, they are able to combine a vast amount of experience everyone is able to benefit from.” 

Sauers, McMahon and Cockrell agreed, the bottom line is that franchisee-to-franchisee support is just as important as any tool a franchisor can provide. When franchisees can tap into each other’s knowledge, everyone wins.