SPECIAL REPORT
“Recruiting a franchisee is like recruiting a key employee. The fact that they have money in the bank and can buy a franchise is not enough. A lot of franchisors have made the error of recruiting someone who, in time, damaged the brand overall because they failed in their own right...”
n From previous page.
You could increase your marketing spend or at least your marketing activity. There are two areas which I think worthy of consideration. First there are a lot of good trade magazines out there. If you have a series of success stories to tell about how printwear benefited clients in a particular sector, you can sell that through a national magazine. People like to buy from companies with expertise in their field. Negotiate with sensitivity and you could get some editorial coverage to go with your ad spend. A second option is to be highly selective. Instead of targeting thousands of potential customers, target a small number and do a very focused job on each one. Find out the names of the various potential decision makers in a business and send each a printed shirt. You can download their logo from their website and then vary the message: corporate for the MD, sales for the sales director, return on investment for the finance director.
This approach is highly personal as well as professional. With some diligence it can be made more personal still. Study that website and find out what products and services they are selling hard then show how printwear is ideally placed to improve such sales. The advantages of this approach for a decorator are several: it gets the product into the prospectʼs hands; it shows your quality; itʼs extremely unlikely to arrive with a competitorʼs pitch; people like being treated as special!
Share knowledge
Link with other people in the marketing business. This tends to scare people a bit: you have to share customers. But unless you seriously think you can deliver across the full range of marketing services, you can miss out. This process is cost free too. Share knowledge, customers and broad business activity. The magic word there is ʻshareʼ. As they say in America, letʼs all get rich together. A few phone calls to designers, website designers, PR agents, event managers and so on will turn up an appropriate group of small businesses, quite possibly sole traders. In all likelihood you will have contacts with some relevant people already and they, in turn, will have others. The down-side is do you trust them and do they trust you? Without that itʼs a non- starter. Equally, there may be a nasty suspicion that you will do all the work and they will make all the profit. The upside has a number of benefits. You could share
| 26 | December 2012
advertising or exhibition space and costs. You look and operate like a full-service agency without the structure and cost. In fact a group of specialists with an informal working relationship can be very attractive to clients. You could recruit a new salesman (or two!). Itʼs an obvious route to growth, in some ways. Itʼs also a route to increased costs without the promised return. Can you find a sales agent, someone who will kick the door open so you can go in and sell? I am told by sales trainers that there are lots of highly experienced sales people who canʼt get an appropriate job due to ageism (illegal, but try proving it). Equally, look at buying in the services of a telemarketing agency. This is an efficient business approach because you can increase, reduce or stop the amount of service you get.
Sales leads
Before you consider either of these routes, address a few practical issues. First, do you waste leads? Not us, I hear you cry. I bet youʼre wrong. Business advisers Baker Tilly say that as many as 97% of sales leads are not converted. Imagine if you wasted 97% of materials! Next put your sales presentation under serious scrutiny. It should be short – no longer than 25 minutes. It should talk about the customerʼs needs, wants and opportunities far more than your own brilliance. It should get the key selling message(s) in early – leave your killer point to the end and the customer may well have switched off.
Do you understand how your customers buy? Notably, do you know how long the process is? Many of those 97% wasted leads happen because the salesman gave up. Whilst some purchases have a finite time-scale, eg product for an exhibition, most donʼt and an idea that everybodyʼs keen on can slip down the agenda. Itʼs the salesmanʼs job to bring it back to life. Serious growth can be achieved through franchising your business model. It could, indeed, make you very wealthy. The basic structure is consistent throughout. The franchisor (you) grants a licence to the franchisee (the would-be printwear businessman). That entitles the latter to trade as their own business under your brand and following a proven business model.
The franchisee receives a full package enabling someone to enter a business and succeed without specific experience, skills and knowledge of it. For that you, as franchisor, charge an up-front entry fee.
Said package typically includes technical training, business skills training, sales advice and marketing support. The franchisor can turn their local, carefully built brand into a regional, national or international business. But it must be done properly. It is essential to recognise that franchising is not an easy solution. The British Franchise Association (BFA) stress a key point: this is not a route to fix a bad business. It is not a nice easy commercial option that will inject income and so solve a weakness elsewhere. Instead, it is a long-term commitment on both sides. Itʼs a well-proven growth strategy, too. It demands continuing investment from the franchisor as well as the franchisee. The franchisee will want to know if their investment of time and money will make them the income they hope for. As franchisor, you should want to know if they will boost the brand.
Recruiting a franchisee is like recruiting a key employee. The fact that they have money in the bank and can buy a franchise is not enough. A lot of franchisors have made the error of recruiting someone who, in time, damaged the brand overall because they failed in their own right. A successful franchise proposition must, above all, be proven. I would say that that means a business has expanded from its first site or moved into a different business route – classically the internet – and proven successful in the second. In this business sector, I would call that essential. It must also be saleable. If there is no after-market for a franchise, the franchisees will rapidly become aggrieved when they wish to recoup their investment, classically on retirement.
If you can confidently tick most of these boxes, it is well worthwhile contacting the British Franchise Association – the bulk of serious franchise based businesses are members.
Franchising o Talk to the BFA. o Talk to other franchisors. o Think long-term. o Offer creativity and skills. o Expect to teach people.
Free o Talk to local contacts and ask for contacts a little further afield.
o Ask everyone you meet for their business.
o E-mail every business quoted in the local press.
o Offer clients a gift for an introduction to their customers.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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