Franchisor Marketing

My fellow b5media blogger Jim Norton (Small Business Boomers) has some good thoughts in his recent “Customer Complaints are Golden” post. Says Norton:

…There is a big difference between the people who complain and those who don’t. That difference is that those who say something about the short comings of your product or service want you to do better. The others want you to fail.

People who don’t complain to you will complain to their friends, family and total strangers. They will not give you a chance to fix the problem that they see. They destroy your reputation and you don’t have a chance to respond. They are out to get you. It happens at all levels.

I think it’s a brilliant observation, and invite franchisors to read Norton’s post in terms of your franchisees, as well as your customers. The ones who complain are often those who truly want to see the problems fixed. Those who don’t may be silent because they’d rather have something or someone to blame for lack of performance, and while they complain they do to other franchisees, prospective franchisees and employees.

Do what you can to encourage constructive complaints, and involve franchisees in prioritizing and solving them. You don’t need to be internally complaint-free to sell franchises, but you do need to communicate that you as franchisor are actively engaged in partnering with franchisees to identify and address “challenges,” and to continually improve, on an ongoing basis.

As Norton concludes:

We learn more from our failures than our successes… If you do not learn from it then it becomes a real failure.

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