If we told you the answer to your franchise recruitment problem was to put more prospects off, you’d probably think we’d lost the plot over here at Rev.
As franchisors, you spend an awful lot of time thinking about how to make your opportunities more attractive. Polishing websites and brochures, finding the best franchisee stories and building campaigns designed to convince prospective franchisees that this could be the business for them.
Guilty as charged
And those of us working in PR are as guilty as anyone. We’re trusted to find the great stories. To shout about the successes for franchisees and their communities and give people reasons to take notice of a particular brand. But perhaps it’s time we all got a little better at telling prospects why an opportunity might not be for them too.
It’s a particularly interesting thought right now. UK franchising is under scrutiny, with the Government commissioning not one, but two reviews into how the sector is regulated following increased scrutiny of the franchise model. The Business and Trade Committee has already called for the Government to consider whether greater statutory oversight is needed.
Where that ends up is anybody’s guess, and we’re certainly not going to attempt to solve the regulation debate here. Best to leave that to people far better qualified in that area than us!
But there is something every franchisor can control starting today: what you tell people before they join your network.
As we’re sure everyone knows, The BFA Code of Ethical Conduct already states that “franchise recruitment advertising and publicity should be objective and not misleading”. Of course it should. But we wonder whether, in the current climate, simply ‘not misleading’ is a high enough ambition.
Because you can be completely factual and still paint a very rosy picture, can’t you? You can feature the franchisee turning over £1 million without talking about what an average franchisee achieves. You can sell flexibility without mentioning that the first couple of years might involve some seriously long days. You can promise comprehensive support without ever showing what that support looks like when someone is six months in, behind target and asking questions about what’s going wrong for them. None of that is necessarily misleading. But is it useful?
We all sound rather brilliant!
This is said with affection, because the team at Rev have worked in franchising for more than 50 years’ collectively, but franchisors do have a habit of saying the same things. Proven business model. Comprehensive training. Ongoing support. Fantastic opportunity. Growing market. Be in business for yourself, not by yourself. And, obviously, lots and lots of successful franchisees.
In our experience, they are all perfectly true. The problem is that when everybody says them, they become somewhat meaningless. If every franchise opportunity offers amazing support, how does a prospect tell the difference?
This is where good PR has a job to do.
Not finding an even more enthusiastic adjective for your support programme but showing people the reality over the theory. And that means being prepared to talk about the difficult stuff too.
How? Bear with us because you may not like it but there’s a method to the perceived madness! Tell prospects what new franchisees usually find hardest. Explain how much work the launch period really takes. Talk about mistakes franchisees have made and what happened next. Let people hear from perfectly ordinary franchisees as well as your award winners and top performers.
Tell them who struggles in your network. Better still, tell some people they shouldn’t join at all. As some franchise professionals have suggested over the last 12 months, fewer leads might actually be a good thing.
Because surely good franchise recruitment communications shouldn’t be judged simply by how many people they persuade to enquire. They should help the right people recognise themselves in the opportunity and give everyone else enough information to realise when it isn’t for them.
When PR does its job
If someone reads that they’ll need to spend their first year in business networking relentlessly and thinks, “Absolutely not”, brilliant. If they discover that the franchise requires them to lead a team and they hate managing people, they’ve learned something useful. If the level of investment, likely working hours or realities of winning customers make them run for the hills, that isn’t your communications failing. They’ve done their job.
And what about the prospect who reads all of that and still thinks, “Yep, I want in”? You’ve given them something far more valuable than a sales pitch: a reason to believe what you’re telling them.
Important side note
This isn’t about airing your dirty laundry. There’s a danger that ‘authenticity’ becomes another marketing trend and we all start desperately looking for things to confess. That isn’t what we mean! Franchisors don’t need to publish every network disagreement or turn their franchise recruitment website into a catalogue of things that could go wrong. They do need to give people enough context to make a genuinely informed decision.
If you publish financial figures, explain what they represent. If you talk about work-life balance, show what that looks like for different franchisees. If you say you offer ongoing support, give real examples of what happens when somebody needs it.
And perhaps stop editing every franchisee story until the person in it sounds superhuman. One of the most reassuring things a prospect can hear from a successful franchisee is that they found something hard. Or got something wrong. Or had a month when they wondered whether the whole thing was going to work. Success becomes much more believable when you can see what it took to get there.
That’s the difference between publicity and reputation.
One is concerned with getting your franchise opportunity noticed. The other is interested in what people believe about your business once they start looking properly.
Trust people with the truth because there is a bigger issue behind all of this. Franchise prospects are being asked to make a substantial financial and personal commitment. They’re choosing a business that will affect their income, family and working life, often for many years. They are going to do their homework.
So perhaps the brands that will stand out in the next few years won’t be the ones shouting loudest about how marvellous their opportunity is. They’ll be the ones confident enough to let people see the reality and make up their own minds.
Speaking of trust and transparency
As a PR agency, we are quite literally paid to make our clients look good. Sometimes, though, the most useful advice we can give them is to stop trying quite so hard.
Good franchise communications shouldn’t persuade everyone. They should attract the right people and give the wrong people permission to walk away. Because let’s be honest, if somebody can consume all your franchise recruitment content and still have no idea why they shouldn’t buy your franchise, you probably haven’t told them enough.
If you’d like some help working out how and where to start flashing the laundry, get in touch. Email Lucy Archer on lucy@revpr.co.uk or call 07921 572554. At Rev, we regularly share articles about hot topics and offer advice to help you maximise your PR activities.
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