“We’re looking for entrepreneurial spirit. For somebody who wants to work side by side with a protected brand and promote our name – a brand advocate”


“I think if you place your focus on your people, you’ll be on the right path to success”


earnestness, that willingness to tell us what there is locally, and driving the brand for us locally, that’s what makes all the difference and that’s what we’re looking for. When we’ve been at The National


Franchise Exhibition, that’s what we want to get across. We don’t need someone with loads of money – that’s okay, we’re not worried about that. We’re looking for those people who are really going to give it 100 per cent, that’s what’s important to us.


Mark: I’m looking for somebody who’s going to operate as a true partner – no lone wolves! Somebody who’s going to represent the brand really well. And also someone that’s going to bring some knowledge of their own to Vodafone. Some of the stuff that we’ve learned from our external partners has been great. We’ve managed to do some interesting things, such as our bonus scheme, because we’ve learned how to operate a little bit differently inside franchising


because people brought outside experience in.


Also entrepreneurial spirit, absolutely, and somebody who wants to work side by side with a protected brand and promote our name as well – a brand advocate. You can work really hard in retail and


achieve nothing or you can work that little bit smarter – and that’s what you get with a partner agent. They really put a lot of thought into how they are going to do that. We don’t want any of them to burn out or not have the right resources. What we do want is for them to make money, and be able to have enough energy to give back to the business as well, and part of that is absolutely about striking a work- life balance. That means they need to have some good-calibre colleagues and a store manager beneath them, and they work really hard on getting their people plan right and that’s what allows them to strike that right balance. That’s what we stress to new partner agents – you’ve got to grow your people to grow your business – it’s very


straightforward. We want to invest in people, and when you’re part of the Vodafone family, we want to reverse engineer that talent from partner agent back into the Vodafone machine and then back out again.


Lee: I think everyone’s completely different, but yes, it’s: “What can the external investors, from every walk of life, bring to the party?” They need to meet the criteria of being a good ‘shopkeeper’ because that’s key. Have you got the experience to run your own business, and if you haven’t, can we help? Because we’ve got a good team of regional managers out in the field to help with that. Ultimately, for me, it’s about the culture – are they a good cultural fit? Would that person fit into our organisation, would they have the right relationship with me? With the regional managers? With the teams at HQ here? Are they the right person for us? The true entrepreneurs are good at running their own business but they need to learn about telecoms, so that’s where


à


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