Your Franchisees Are Trying to Tell You Something...

When's the last time a franchisee actually changed your mind about something you as a franchisor had already decided? I'm gonna get into that in this episode.

I recorded the main part of this episode last week when I was in Florida, so we'll go back to that episode here in a second.

I'm at the lake right now recording this intro, and that's a question that's been sitting with me since I hit record on the, the last episode.

This one is about seeking first to understand, then be understood.

If you ever read the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you'll get that quote, and that's a book that I read in college twice, uh, in my business classes, and I've, I've always remembered, uh, so many different things about that one book.

It's probably the book that's influenced me more than any other book as I, as I think about it.

Um, but that's still the thing that most franchisors get backwards.

It's really hard to, uh, to do that, and because most of the time franchisees aren't going to have advice, aren't going to have things that are going to, uh, uh... you're going to take and have it impact your system as a franchisor for many different reasons, and a lot of good reasons of, of why.

But I think franchisors should still do that, and I found a way early on in my franchising career.

I learned it from, uh, from a brand that would go through an exercise at their annual convention and have, like, 300 complaints from franchisees.

Just get in front of franchisees, and franchisees would just be going at them with all the complaints, you know, AKA, uh, things to consider, things to- way to improve the system.

But they were all really things that they see as wrong in the system or things the system, the franchisor could be doing better.

I'm gonna go through that exercise and let you know how we did that and, uh, what the outcome of that was.

So let's jump into it.

[upbeat music] Representing Franchise Secrets, Eric Von Horn.