Engaging your franchise owners or agents to work in true partnership with your organization — to build positive relationships, to open lines of communication, and to refocus on mutual profits
The franchise owners or agents who operate under the umbrella of your organization are truly independent business people. They are self-sufficient, free-thinking and entrepreneurial in nature. They entered into their relationship with your company to pursue their dreams of a better life. They have built a personal business — and presumably personal wealth — through a combination of their own hard work and your well-designed value delivery and communications systems. They have formed with you a classic win-win: a mutually profitable partnership.
But now you sense that things are not all rosy. You have heard rumblings of discontent, from both your external partners and your internal staff. Margins are leveling off a bit. The economy is seemingly less predictable. People seem less patient with one another.
Relationships are beginning to fray and, perhaps, the feelings of loyalty and commitment have begun to erode. Perhaps you have even heard of conversations among the franchise owners discussing ways to collectively maximize their bargaining power with you by banding together — to make you "see the light." Worse, perhaps those conversations are happening and you are not even hearing about them.
Although these franchise leaders and agents are not your employees, their attitudes and success are fundamental to your own success. You have to do something.
Now what are you going to do?
Clearly, franchise owners and agents are not like employees. You can’t simply issue new policies, reorganize, and replace offending players. Instead, they are more like customers. They need to be serviced; they need to be guided. Most important, they need to be treated with the full respect that a business partner deserves and, ultimately, demands. You must quickly get the partnership back on track so that everyone can refocus on building your collective bottom line results, free from distraction.
How can Lazorpoint help?
Our specialty is helping organizations untangle the thorny "people issues" that cause distraction in every business. While our most common focus is on the employer-employee relationship, we have found that organizations involved in franchise and agency relationships face many of the same issues, with a twist. Compared to an employer, your organization does not exercise the same level of authority over your franchise owners or agents. But you are still in many ways accountable for, and dependent upon, their actions and their performance. The relationship must be managed in a more delicate and professional manner. The key is: it must be managed.
Lazorpoint assists a variety of organizations that market products and services through franchises and agents. We help them to focus and plan strategically, to build positive relationships in the workplace and in the marketplace, to open or re-open lines of communication, and to improve overall effectiveness and results. In short, we can help both you and your partners get back to building the businesses you both dreamed of building.
Let’s have a conversation about your situation. For your investment in a call to Lazorpoint, we expect that you’ll get some valuable ideas to help you get the best, and to avoid the worst, from your franchise and agent relations.
Improving Franchise & Agency Relations:
- Focus groups, surveys, and "day in the life" interviews
- Business relationship assessments
- Strategy and planning facilitation
- Communications planning
- Franchise committee facilitation
- Harassment and employee relations interventions
- Intranet and Extranet development
- Measurement and reward review
- Knowledge exchange
