101 Tips for Franchisees

Tracey Leak

• Publisher: Tracelle Enterprises Pty Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781646061624
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Franchising
• Index: Business

This is a must read for every Franchisee!

Whether you decided to read this book cover to cover or simply one tip a day or even just the tips that you need at this time, you will find that you will gain value from this book. These are the best tips for Franchisees to help them succeed or build a more profitable business.

Tracey has been working with Franchisees, Franchisors and entire franchise groups for more than a decade and she knows what works and how to get Franchisees profitable.

Because of the format, it is an easy read, but more importantly it is filled with down to earth and practical ideas, tips, hints and strategies to help franchisees to grow their businesses to be more profitable, have more time and to reduce stress levels!

# 1 - How well do you know your numbers?

Not once in more than a decade have I found a franchisee who knows all the numbers of their business. Not one. Business is all about numbers in the very end and those numbers will let you know where your business is at any point in time.

Every business has a different set of numbers they need to know and these are called your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Which should you know? Conversion rate, turnover/revenue, percentage of your biggest expenses such as a labour cost, number of customers, profit margin?

A good way to work out which numbers you need to know is to imagine that you are going to go and spend the next six months on some little tropical island somewhere (wouldn’t that be nice!). Every Monday morning at 9am, the manager of your business can send you through a one page document with all the numbers you need to know, all the facts you need on the previous week of business. Which numbers or facts would you need to know so that you could see if all was OK with your business, that it was tracking OK and staying profitable and moving forward? These are the numbers YOU should be tracking each and every week.

Every time I talk about this, a franchisee will always tell me they weren’t good at math at school or they don’t necessarily understand all the numbers of their business or that every time they go see their accountant, it is like the Accountant is talking in some foreign language to them. I suggest you learn. Maybe not from your accountant, but I bet someone in the head office team could help you understand them and how to work them

out. Ask other franchisees what numbers they track and that will also help you.

Don’t let this stop you. The more you understand the numbers of your business, the easier it is to track and the easier it is to make sure you are going to have a record year!

# 2 - To do lists

There is actually an art form of doing to do lists. Many franchisees have these massive to do lists that overwhelm them not help them to get things done.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you need a to do list. If you are trying to remember it all in your head, you are going to forget things and not do them. You can’t do that. You need to have it on a list. I always think of the brain like a computer and if you are using up brain power to remember things, that is power you can’t use to get things done.

Prioritising your to do list is a must. Come up with a system that works for you so it might be in due date order so most urgent first. You could segment it into different categories of tasks needed. You could simply have one long list. The main thing is that it is working for you and helping you get more things done.

Did you know that when you tick something off your to do list, your body lets off some little feel good hormones? So use that and keep ticking things off.

If you have a HUGE to do list that is overwhelming you, take

out a second sheet of paper and write down just the most urgent three to five things you need to do first. Put your ‘master’ to do list away - somewhere you can’t see it. Then focus just on the most urgent list of three to five things. Until you have those done, you don’t go to the master list. Once you have completed these items, then pull out the master to do list and write down the next three to five things on a separate sheet and put the master list away. This will help you feeling so overwhelmed because overwhelm often leads to total inaction where nothing gets done even though there is lots to do.

Taking 10 minutes a day to organise your day is said to save you an hour in your day and I totally believe that. Taking the time to plan your day and prioritise your to do list will not only save you time, but also stress.

# 3 - Call in Debtors

If you carry a debtors list – that is people that owe you money –

then this is the fastest and easiest way to generate cashflow in your business. In fact, when I start working with a client, this is one of the first things I do to get money into their business.

Why?

Because this is money that is owed to you. You have already done the service or provided the product, now it is just time to be paid.

The reason many business owners have a debtors list is because they haven’t set the terms of payment clearly or they are not sure how to ‘chase’ payments without being pushy or rude, or

more commonly a combination of both of these things.

Let’s first look at calling in debtors.

I believe the best strategy is to be the ‘squeaky door’. If you have a squeaky door in your house, it will be the first to be fixed because it is making noise. Now this doesn’t have to be big noise, just a consistent noise.

When calling in debtors, don’t delay. Someone that is only 7

days overdue on their invoice is more likely to pay than someone that is 90 days overdue. Most business owners will begin with the debtors that are the most overdue, rather than those that are only slightly overdue, but it is better to start in the reverse manner. By the time people are 90 days overdue on an invoice, the care factor has significantly reduced, whilst people who are only a few days overdue, may just have missed the payment.

My strategy for calling in debtors is simple and you don’t have to be rude or nasty at all. In fact, the friendlier you are, the easy it is!

Step 1: Establish anticipated payment date.

Make the first call to them. Yes, you need to call and speak to them. This doesn’t work via email. On that call you simple let them know their invoice is overdue – tell them how overdue for example 7 days – and you were just calling to find out their anticipated payment date (eg. when are they going to pay it!).

Often they will say something like ‘Oh sorry. I’ll fix that up today’. Then all you need to do is ask them how they will be

paying it. Let’s use an electronic funds transfer (EFT) for our example here.

They are going to pay the account today via EFT and let’s say

‘today’ is Tuesday. I’d simply then say to them ‘Oh that’s great, Thank you. Right, so if you EFT today it should be in our account tomorrow, but I’ll give it an extra 24 hours just in case. That means I’ll check our account on Thursday and if for any reason it isn’t there, I’ll give you a quick call back. Do you need to check our account details again?’

What I have done is set up some accountability. When it comes to Thursday, I’ll check the account. If the money is there, I’ll send them a quick thank you email. If it isn’t there . .

. . .

Now we become the squeaky door and remember, we are going to be polite and friendly. I go with a tone of almost concern that the money isn’t in our account, that something has gone wrong, not that they haven’t transferred it. The call would go something like this:

“Hi Mary. I’m just calling you because when we spoke on Tuesday you said you were going to transfer that payment via EFT and I said I’d give it an extra 24 hours to hit our account.

It is now Thursday and it should be in our account, but it isn’t.

I thought I better check that you have the right bank details because it looks like the money has gone astray.”

Yes, I’ve been a little tricky here. I haven’t come straight out and said you haven’t paid, I’ve ‘assumed’ that they did do what they said they were going to do. Generally people will fess up

pretty quick and admit they ‘forgot’ to make the payment. I then tell them that’s OK and ask for a new date that they will be making the payment.

Again, they will tell you when they are going to pay. You tell them that it should be in your bank account tomorrow (or whenever the normal transfer time is up – in Australia it is usually one business day or overnight) and then give them an extra 24 hours. Let them know that if it doesn’t make it in by that date (the date with the extra 24 hours allowed) then you will give them a quick call back again.

Now they know you are seriously holding them accountable.

You have already shown that you will call back if the payment is not in your account. Most people will put you to the head of the list on payments because they don’t want you calling them again. But if they don’t pay, you do this again. Call them on the day it was supposed to be in your account by (with the 24

hours extra grace) and go through the scenario again.

Very rarely will you have to do this more than 2 or 3 times because you have now become the ‘squeaky door’ and they no longer want you following them up, so they will pay your account.

I’d keep a little book or spreadsheet of who you are calling and when you need to call them back because the biggest factor of this is that you do call on the days you said you were going to call. If you don’t stick to this, then the plan won’t work.

As I said, start with those the ‘least’ overdue and then work your way back through all your debtors. Remember, this is

YOUR money and if you are not collecting it, you are basically their interest free lender. You don’t have to get nasty or threaten to break someone’s knee caps to get your money, you just have to be organised, persistent and keep them accountable.

The second way is not to have debtors in the first place. If people pay you after a service or product is delivered, is there a way you can get a deposit upfront or can you put people onto a package or retainer rather than a post-payment. Can you set up a direct debit? Do you offer multiple payment facilities to make it easier for people to pay you?

The best strategy is to put a due date on your invoices rather than a ‘Due in 30 days’ type of account. When is the 30 days from? Is it from when they received the invoice or when you sent it? Plus, in 30 days, I’m not going to remember what that date is. If you put an actual date (eg. Due June 1, 2015) then it is way easier to hold someone accountable to that date and it is way easier for them to also know when to pay. They are less likely to ‘forget’ or ‘miss’ the payment date if it is there for them in black and white.

# 4 - What three things . . .

This is a question I ask franchisees when I first sit with them if they have been in business for some time. I simply ask them

‘What are the three things that you used to do, that worked, that for whatever reason you have stopped doing?’

These can be marketing strategies or personal items or things in the business. Often times responses are about a meeting they used to have or that they used to exercise daily which made

them feel better or that they would look at their figures daily/weekly or even that they used to advertise in a local paper and they don’t anymore.

In business we all can get busy right? It is very easy to let things slide that work for us and for whatever reason - usually because we are just busy - we are not doing them anymore.

These items are the best place to start when you are looking to make changes in your business because you know they work, you know how to do them, you just have to start doing them.

I like to think of them as great ‘bang for your buck’ items.

When working with a franchisee, I want to find items for them to do or implement into their business that will give them the most ‘bang for their buck’. That is, what will take the least effort and give the best result. If you know thing...