How We Make A Difference (FRI Blog)

Sharing FRI's Know How With Our Canadian Cousins

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:56:00 GMT

Over 300 members of the Canadian Franchise Association got the scoop at this year's annual CFA Convention, with Greg Nathan delivering hot off the press research findings from our latest study. In the closing plenary address, titled "Lifting the Lid on the Science of Franchisees Success", Greg shared the biggest predictors of franchisee success, based on franchisee profiling and performance data from over 2,000 Canadian, Australian and New Zealand franchisees.

Greg was invited back to the annual CFA Convention after great feedback from last year's presentation on "The Science of Creating Profitable Partnerships". While we were there we also ran a full day Franchise Relationships Masterclass for around 45 franchisors, thirsty for tips, knowledge and skills. A great time was had by all.

FRI Facilitates USA Franchise Law Institute Colloquium

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 06:29:00 GMT

Greg Nathan spent a day in Atlanta facilitating a colloquium of 22 of the best and brightest USA lawyers and consultants. The topic was “How can Franchise Regulation in the USA be Made More Efficient and Effective” Greg was invited to facilitate because of his skills as an outside facilitator with a broad knowledge of franchising and no agenda to push.

Here we see FLI convener, Rupert Barkoff (in blue on the left), with colleagues in a round table break out, discussing how dispute resolution provisions can be improved.

Helping Franchisors Harness the Power of "Bricks and Clicks"

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:31:00 GMT

The team at FRI have been concerned for some time about the impact the Internet is having on retail businesses in the franchising sector. So we decided to organise a one day Forum for franchisor executives on the topic of "Bricks and Clicks – Making Your Online Presence a Profitable Partnership." (Bricks of course refers to bricks and mortar retail stores while clicks refers to the internet.) Our goal was to get 70 franchise sector leaders and online retailing experts in a room together for a day to share their experience and insights on best practice in this area.

It was an amazing day and we thank everyone who attended for their openness and willingness to share, especially our experts:

Matt Foreman from Traffika, Robert Wong from the Australian Online Retail Industry Group, James Horne from Balance Internet and Stephen Giles from Norton Rose.

One of the most powerful messages was that waiting is not a smart strategy. Robert Wong said that in the fast growing world of online media and retailing, with 60% of Australians accessing the internet daily, sitting on the side and just waiting is a dangerous strategy. "If you are not swimming, you are sinking" he said.

Participants have been given access to materials from the event at our exclusive Event Resource Library.

Pilot Research Study into Bricks and Clicks

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:29:00 GMT

In the lead up to our recent "Bricks and Clicks" Forum we ran a research project in partnership with PhD student, Zhanna Kremez, from Griffith University. This involved interviews with 40 senior franchisor executives from a range of industries. Each executive was asked about current or future online sales strategies for their franchise network. We discovered some interesting trend.

For instance the bulk of franchisors were taking a "wait and see" approach, despite clear trends that consumers will increasingly use mobile devices to buy goods and services. Of the companies interviewed, 83 percent were primarily bricks and mortar networks with combined sales of $5.95 billion. Of this group, 36 percent were actively taking orders from consumers online and had been doing so for an average of three years. The other companies were at different stages of adopting online sales into their distribution model:

27 percent were currently testing their online platforms.
46 percent were still considering their options.
9 percent had decided online retailing was not suitable for their business model.

As part of this study franchisors were also asked to describe the main challenges they had faced in developing and implementing their e-commerce strategies. These were:

Deciding on pricing and revenue structures between franchisor and franchisees.
Managing the customer’s expectations between their online and their in-store experience.
Organising supply chain logistics and the reliable delivery of products to customers
Keeping up with rapid advances in technology.
Working with franchisee expectations and getting their buy-in.

When asked what had helped in the successful roll out of their strategies, the following themes emerged:

Doing through research and gathering good information.
Having a strong IT team working closely and collaboratively with the marketing team.
Adopting a methodical, careful approach to planning with solid pilot testing.
Educating and training franchisees in what the strategy means to them.
Maintaining ongoing positive and transparent communication on challenges and wins.

We thank the franchisors that helped out with this project and wish Zhanna well with her ongoing research.

How Our Merge Will Make Us Smarter, Bigger and Better

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 03:05:00 GMT

FRI has have taken a big leap forward and joined forces with Go Global to provide our clients with a rejuvenated focus and a broader team with a greater depth of experience in franchising, particularly in learning and organisational development.

FRI has operated in the franchising sector for 22 years and has built an enviable reputation, both in Australia and overseas, for delivering unique psychological research, tools and educational programs that focus on the people issues in franchising. Go Global, which was established in 2010 by ex-Gloria Jeans Global Capability Manager, Karli Furmage, has been supporting a number of Australian franchise networks in refocusing their structures and strategies for growth. The merge gives FRI a national presence and enables it to offer a broader range of services.

To facilitate more of a national structure, Greg Nathan will be moving to Melbourne to establish FRI’s Melbourne office. Karli Furmage is relocating to Brisbane to oversee the Support Office where most of the team are based. FRI also has team members in Sydney and Perth. FRI’s corporate psychology team of Ree-Anna Chatman, Joanna Connolley and Nicole Simpson will remain with the business in Brisbane, as will Melbourne based FRI agent, Bruno Ceraso.

According to Greg Nathan, the Go Global team will bring added depth in franchise operations and strategic learning. “People such as Jason Travis, who has supported franchise operations in over 20 countries, and Rob Camm who co-founded Franchise Careers and later sold his share to go and work in the USA, will add enormous experience to our team”, he says. “Merging the two companies gives us a unique, high level blend of psychological expertise and franchise operational and strategic experience. This is going to be fantastic for our clients.”

The merged business will operate under the Franchise Relationships Institute brand, with the team continuing to offer franchisors access to evidence-based research, management tools, in-house franchise learning programs and public events. These include its patented Nathan Profiler for franchisee selection, its Franchisee Effectiveness Surveys and its popular Multi-Unit and Field Manager Summits.

The new look FRI will be jointly led by Greg Nathan and Karli Furmage with Karli Furmage heading business operations and Greg Nathan heading research and development, which is seen as critical for the company’s global strategy. As part of this leadership restructure existing CEO, Anthony Cannell, will be leaving the business. Greg Nathan says, “We were reluctant to see Anthony go as he has done an amazing job in helping us to grow the business and negotiate several important international agreements. However the addition of several new senior executives, and the fact that Anthony is based in Sydney, means we need to make adjustments to the leadership structure.”

“We are excited about the new look FRI and will continue to deliver the products and services globally that FRI is known and loved for” says Karli Furmage. “The bench strength we have added to the team now means we can provide fresh strategies and services that franchisors have been crying out for, to assist them to further grow and develop their people and their businesses.”

Field Managers — What Would We Do Without Them?

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 06:15:00 GMT

The latest edition of Business Franchise Australia features an article written by Bruno Ceraso, our Melbourne based Associate.

A role within the franchising sector that is often both under-rated in its impact and under-appreciated in its importance in the franchisor/franchisee relationship dynamic, is the role of the “Field Manager”. The field manager is also known by other titles such as business manager, field advisor, retail support or state or area manager. Regardless of the title, it is a key role that adds value to a franchise brand, provides an important connection between the franchisor and the franchise community and provides invaluable support to franchisees and their team.

Click here to download a PDF (306kB) of the article.

FANZ Conference

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:52:00 GMT

Ree-Anna Chapman, our Operations Manager recently attended the Franchise Association of New Zealand’s National Conference where she was a keynote speaker. She presented a keynote session on “Multi Unit Franchises – Factors Influencing Satisfaction”, and also ran a workshop that was focused on how to get franchisees to support change. Our New Zealand agents, David and Fiona from The Franchise Coach were also active participants in the conference.

The theme for 2011 was “Franchise Adrenalin – Energise Your Franchise”, which given the recent Christchurch earthquakes, provided a timely opportunity to both reflect on and identify ways of re-energizing franchise networks. The conference was held in Rotorua and had over 100 people attend, made up of both franchisors and service providers.

For Ree-Anna the conference provided a number of highlights. Of particular note was a session where a Christchurch based franchisor talked about dealing with unexpected events. Clearly the NZ earthquake’s have created a reality around unexpected events. He shared how it affected them, their franchisees and their network and the different things they did to support them to pull it and them all together.

Ian Robertson from Paper Plus shared a fantastic case study that looked at the brand refresh that they had recently been through in New Zealand. The impact of the refresh has been very positive on both the brand and the resulting franchisee financial results. In some areas, they have even observed significant detrimental impact of their new brand on their competitors. Ian identified that the keys to the success of the project included the initial and in-depth research, having trial stores and ensuring the clear measurement of downstream benefits.

Another highlight was Emma Hill the deputy chairman of Michael Hill talking about their international expansion and the lessons they learnt from that. The need to understand what drives customers in different markets especially those relating to cultural differences and behaviors is critical to the success of international expansion. Emma reiterated the importance of getting the right people on board.

We look forward to participating in next years conference.

Driving Franchise Profitability — FCA NSW Conference

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 01:04:00 GMT

We attended the Franchise Council of Australia’s NSW / ACT State Conference recently. The theme was “Driving Franchise Profitability”.

Craig James, Chief Equities Economist with Commsec forced many of the participants to rethink their view on economists. Not only was Craig entertaining he was also understandable! He reiterated the need for all businesses to be continually looking for opportunities and ways of engaging with their markets more effectively, clearly while being mindful of any associated risks. He also reminded the audience of the reach and power that social media seems to have today.

Peter Ritchie, McDonalds first Australian employee and now Chairman of Mortgage Choice gave an entertaining presentation that focussed on the importance of training and staff development. He also identified the key things that he felt we needed to focus on as leaders:

Accept total responsibility for building the spirit of the team.
Be the leader your people want.
Commit to making your people the smartest in your industry.
Ensure you have outstanding, open and honest communication.
Ensure that all team members fit.
Create change.
Work at making it fun.
Take some chances.
Trust your instincts.

FRI’s Greg Nathan was another keynote speaker. Greg’s presentation was focussed on how to get franchisee support and buy in, particularly when it came to dealing with change. He identified the four areas that directly impacted the change process: strategy, structure (being task orientated), relationships and commitment (being process orientated). The relationships and commitment elements are generally the most challenging areas that we need to deal with. Greg left the audience with 10 common mistakes that can be made when implanting change:

Not being able to justify the business case for change.
Not being sensitive at how the change impacts on individual identity.
Failing to adequately pilot test.
Mistaking silence for agreement.
Not consulting with those need to make it work.
Treating communication as a one way sales exercise.
Giving up in the face of resistance.
Treating scepticism as negativity.
Not considering the ripple effect on other systems.
Covering up mistakes.

The afternoon sessions were break out groups embracing topics such as managing cash-flow and financial controls, engaging franchisees in marketing campaigns, maximising productivity and performance, and how to win franchisee trust and commitment.

An active panel discussion was also held that considered the issues with driving franchisee profitability.

The final keynote speaker for the day was Brennon Dowrick, Australian Olympian and Gold medal winning gymnast. Using his experiences training at the institute of sport in Canberra he talked about the importance of building solid foundations in everything we do. Having a solid foundation is fundamental for future success. The highlight of Brennon’s presentation was him demonstrating those foundation skills on a pommer horse! FCA’s Steve Wright took up the challenge and demonstrated how someone dressed in business attire can traverse a pommer horse! Brennon succinctly demonstrated, using sport as a metaphor, the importance of ensuring that strong foundations are built in order to be successful.

The one day conference ended with the NSW Awards Dinner, which celebrated success and achievement in the NSW franchise sector.

Learning in Action

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:41:00 GMT

FRI’s founder Greg Nathan today presented at the Franchise Council of Australia post breakfast Academy forum in Melbourne. The session focussed on “Learning and Development in Franchise systems”, and was attended by around 45 people. Adopting his usual interactive style, Greg encouraged the participants to share the best learning experiences that they had had. As a result there was some great sharing of ideas, and a very interactive discussion was had.

Our “spy” on the ground, past FCA Chairman Bob Peterson, commented “Greg definitely won the award for best presenter on the day with his natural, jargon-free style. As always the material and examples used by Greg and the FRI team are scientifically validated and offer practical solutions to real problems”.

Greg identified that the best learning sessions for franchisees and franchisors was a combination of cases studies with Q & A, and the ability to self assess.

Multi-unit Franchising Summit Taps into Aussie Mood for Business Growth

Thu, 26 May 2011 00:04:00 GMT

Multi-unit franchising is a growing element in the Australian marketplace as proved by the 170 plus franchisors and franchisees who attended the third annual Multi-Unit Summit recently in Melbourne. One of the guest speakers at the summit was David Ostrowe, who owns a chain of Burger King stores in the US.

Ostrowe told Franchising, “It was an honour and a privilege spending time with the Franchise Relationships Institute and their Summit participants. The Australian franchise landscape is poised for explosive growth over the next several years. The efficiencies of scale that can be achieved by both franchisor and franchisee will lead to a stronger national brand presence and improved profitability for all parties.”

Franchise professionals from top brands attended the summit to focus on better ways to run multi-unit operations. The event was the biggest gathering of an equal number of franchisors and franchisees from different brands anywhere in the world, according to Greg Nathan, founder of the Franchise Relationships Institute which organised the popular event.

Nathan said “There was massive sharing in good business principles and practices, particularly staff management, business structuring, financing, IT and management control systems. The support and empathy shared between people from different brands was quite extraordinary.”

In some cases it was even life-changing, said Nathan, citing one multi-unit operator with nine businesses who said before the summit he felt like selling up. But this all changed after a peer session in which stories of the challenges of expansion were shared by successful operators from different brands; the multi-unit franchisee realised he was heading in the right direction and now has plans to expand even further.

Announcing Greg’s Blog

Tue, 03 May 2011 07:20:00 GMT

We’re pleased to announce that FRI has launched Greg’s Blog, which is where you will find regular Greg Nathan’s Healthy Franchise Relationships Tips.

To get the latest Tips straight to your newsreader software, update your rss feed to: this feed You can also receive Greg’s Tips hot off the press and straight to your inbox, by sending your details to subscriptions@franchiserelationships.com. We’ll still be posting news about FRI events and the franchising sector under this “How We Make A Difference” blog. We hope you enjoy reading Greg’s regular tips on the new blog.

You can find Greg’s Blog here

We're MAD using Clinics, Round Tables and a Banjo

Tue, 03 May 2011 07:29:00 GMT

MAD stands for Making a Difference and it’s one of our core values. So our Chairman, Greg Nathan, was thrilled to be invited for the fourth time to conduct the full day Franchise Relations Clinic at the front end of this year’s IFA Convention at Las Vegas. Greg also facilitated a round table on Implementing Change, spoke in a seminar on Franchisee Engagement organised by the IFA’s Franchise Relations Committee, and played the banjo at the traditional Australian-USA dinner organised by Rupert Barkoff from Kilpatrick Townsend.

Over 40 Australian franchisors and advisors also attended the Convention, the largest delegation ever.

The Franchise Relations Clinic is part of the ICFE education program. Greg uses the clinic to teach the skills and principles of how to create a healthy franchising culture. Head of the ICFE, John Reynolds, says the Franchise Relations Clinic is one of their most popular programs.

Highlights from 2nd Annual Field Manager Summit

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:06:00 GMT

Here’s some exciting statistics from our 2nd Annual Field Manager Summit — 78 learning sessions attended by 309 people over six days across three States, achieving an overall participant satisfaction rating of 83%. If you attended, we hope this summary helps to keep the learning and inspiration alive. And if you were a participant you will also have access to the Field Manager Tool Shed, where we are loading up presentations, templates and proceedings. If you couldn’t make the Summit, enjoy the summary and we hope you can join us at next year’s program.

Check out this 50 second clip for a glimpse of what was going on at the Summit:

We were able to create an informal, interactive and fun learning culture. Much of this came from the superb work of our MC, Aaron Chowdhury. Aaron is our Sydney based Associate and delivers many of our learning programs. Participants almost unanimously rated his MC’ing work as excellent.

The positive feedback on the presenters has been superb, given they were virtually all franchising practitioners drawn from our clients and colleagues.

Introducing the Field Manager’s Toolshed

The Tool Shed is where we store materials collected and developed from our Field Manager professional development programs. While we don’t mean to be exclusive, at this stage the Tool Shed is just for people who have participated in one of our Field Manager Summits or training courses. To get in you’ll need the magic password (no, it’s not Open Sesame).

ENTER PASSWORD:

Best Practice Trends in Field Support

Our Managing Director, Greg Nathan, opened the Summit with a research summary that identified 12 best practice trends based on a series of interviews with the Senior Operations executives from a number of leading franchisors. These fell into four categories:

Bringing more clarity to the role.
Using more sophisticated metrics to measure franchisee and field manager performance.
Providing more consistent training and support for field managers.
Taking a more disciplined approach to local area marketing.

Greg also discussed the stressful nature of the role but how this is buffered by high levels of job satisfaction.

High Performance Franchisee Panel

We were fortunate to have nine of Australia leading franchisees participating in vigorous interviews with Julia Camm from Corven. They basically said, to add value to them, they wanted their field manager to firstly understand their goals and then deliver ideas and information to help them track their performance and keep moving forward. And they expected to be challenged, in fact welcomed it. A big thank you to Julia for gutsy facilitation and the following franchisees for so honestly sharing their hard earned insights:

Marc Benson – Boost Juice
Marlene Jones – Brumby’s
Peter Goldsmith – Fastway Couriers
Tony Zoobi – Hairhouse Warehouse
Barry Huxley – Harvey World Travel
Brad and Kate Underhill – Matchbox
Chris Vitale – Mortgage Choice
Damian Taylor – Brumby’s
Jason Le Roux – The Athletes Foot

Julia Camm talks with franchisees: from right to left, Chris Vitale, Damian Taylor and Marc Benson. Note the Twitter feed at the back.

Dealing with Challenging Franchisees

In our field manager training workshops the hottest topic people inevitably want to talk about is “Dealing with challenging franchisees” So the aim of this session was to explore strategies for dealing with the following most common types of challenging behaviours:

Overt aggressiveness “Get out of my business!”
Despair and pessimism “It’s no good, I am going to fail”.
Disengagement and apathy “It’s probably best if you just leave me alone”.
Playing political games “Don’t worry — I’ll take it up with the CEO over golf”.
Testing your knowledge “What would you know?!”
Covert non-co-operation “Maybe — leave it with me and I’ll think about it”.

Throughout the Summit we experimented with several techniques to involve participants in exploring how they might tackle these types of situations. These included workshopping the scenarios and using live role plays on stage followed by open forum discussions. There were many positive comments on these sessions and their practical applications.

Face off! In this role play, Ree-Anna Chatman is playing a field consultant engaging a challenging franchisee played by Jason Travis.

Tackling the Challenges of the Job

All participants then moved into round table discussions to explore solutions to 14 hot topics such as “Running effective regional meetings” or “Delivering tough messages.” Notes from these round tables will be gradually posted in the Field Manager Tool Shed over the next few weeks.

Alan Minshull from Eagle Boys holds forth in a round table discussion.

Break out Specialised Seminar

After lunch people had a choice of attending two of eight concurrent seminars. These were delivered by either subject matter experts or field manager practitioners.

Here’s an interesting phenomena. The least popular sessions in terms of numbers of participants, turned out the be the most popular sessions in terms of satisfaction ratings. These were “Engaging with Franchisees from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds” and “Establishing Financial Performance Groups.” We figure these two topics were a little ahead of their time. However the presenters, Chris Young from Resurg and Patrice Sew Hee from 7-Eleven have kindly made their presentations available for the Tool Shed.

Julie O’Shea shares some tips and secrets for turning around franchisees in trouble.

The Field Managers Guide to Social Media

Karli Furmage from GoGlobal completed the first day with an enjoyable presentation on “The Field Managers Guide to Social Media”. Karli encouraged us to put our toes in the social media pool by trying out some of the more common applications such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Her keynote presentation had some great images and was chosen from thousands of presentations to be featured on the public Slideshare site (you can download Karli’s presentation and her Masterclass slides from www.slideshare.net/tag/fms2010).

Operations Managers Leadership Dinners

In the evening a special dinner was provided for Operations Managers, with assistance from the National Australia Bank. These were exciting events where participants shared their aspirations as leaders and listened to two inspiring speakers:

Dr Sam Prince, a medical doctor and philanthropist, who is also the franchisor of Zambrero Fresh Mexican Grill, shared his amazing work providing health and education resources to Indigenous Australia and developing countries around the world.

Mike Tregurtha, Director of Operations for a major telco Retail Channel shared his strategies for realigning the needs of the telco management and its licensees, which have resulted in a marked improvement to licensee satisfaction.

We are particularly grateful to Darryn McAuliffe from NAB for hosting these events.

Dr Sam Prince tells a group of operation executives his vision for eradicating scabies from the Australian Indigenous population.

Masterclasses a Real Hit

The four Masterclasses on day two of the Summit were extremely popular with most averaging over 90% in participant satisfaction.

Thanks to David Campbell, Therese Watson-Weir, Greg Nathan and Karli Furmage for leading these stimulating and highly practical Masterclasesses.

Neuro-science of Coaching Included in Field Manager Program

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:20:00 GMT

We are excited! The program for this year's Field Manager Summit is finalised and it has some great inclusions, such as Masterclasses on the Neuro-Science of Coaching and Social Media for Field Managers. We hope to attract everyone back who came last year plus a host of fresh faces. Click here to see the full program.

Other hghlights include multiple break out sessions and round tables on current hot topics and a special leadership dinner for operations executives on how to bring the best out in field managers. Click here for full details.

International Franchise Research Conference Best Ever

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:06:00 GMT

Over 60 academics from 16 countries came together this week at the University of NSW to share findings on a wide range of franchise research topics spanning marketing, legal, HR and economic issues. The Franchise Relationships Institute was pleased to be a sponsor of this 24th International Society of Franchising Conference (ISoF) which attendees agreed was the best ever held. In addition to rigorous discussion and the presentation of some ground breaking studies, we all had a ball.

At the opening dinner, Greg Nathan played the guitar and was joined by a talented waiter in the restaurant, who entertained participants with some excellent singing and led a singalong of Australian songs!

As part of the program Greg also facilitated a panel on "Franchising in South East Asia" with a diverse team of representatives from China, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia and India. Each of these countries has a unique approach to franchising shaped by cultural, political, market and economic forces. It was a fascinating discussion where we learned that:

Vietnam has the youngest population in the word with a vibrant emerging franchising sector, since legislation a few years ago gave more certainty to the market.
While China has a population 350 times the size of New Zealand, its franchising sector is only three time the size. But China's franchising sector is continuing to grow with some Chinese home grown franchise concepts now expanding internationally.
Malaysia is beating its franchise expansion targets relating to its government sponsored franchising program.
As the Indian middle class continues to grow franchising is providing multiple opportunities at the business and consumer levels to meet growing demand for goods and services, especially in the education space.

This will be the fourth time FRI has participated in these International Society of Franchising Conferences. Last year in France we presented a paper on Psycho-Social Predictors of Franchisee Performance. As part of FRI's charter, we will continue to contribute resources to conducting and fostering quality research in the franchising sector.

Thanks to Lorelle Fazer (Griffith University), Jenny Buchan (University of NSW) and Liz Spencer (Bond University) for organising such a fantastic event. The next ISoF conference will be held in Boston.