How to Address and Resolve Compliance Issues With Your Franchisees

In this installment of the Successful Franchising series, we examine the role of the franchisee support representative (or team manager) in solving compliance issues with franchisees.

Facing and Dealing With Compliance Issues

It is inevitable that at some point your franchisee support representatives will have to confront a difficult compliance problem with a franchisee. Here are some important guidelines to remember:

• Any issue that has the potential to hurt or hinder sales and/or profits is one that MUST be addressed. The longer it is put off, the worse the damage to the relationship.
• The Support Representative and the franchisee should face these issues together as a team.

When compliance problems surface, the Support Representative’s role is to:

• Help the franchisee understand that the franchise license agreement is written for the benefit of the entire franchise system.
• Explain to the franchisee that the license agreement helps protect the franchisee's investment.
• Ensure that the franchisee appreciates the importance of complying with the established operating system and procedures.

14 Steps Support Representatives Can Take To Get Franchisees Back Into Compliance

1. Try to identify the real issue behind the franchisee's compliance violation. Is it a means of getting attention or of voicing dissatisfaction?

2. Through careful questioning, enable the franchisee to realize that he/she is the one responsible for being out of compliance.

3. Ensure that the franchisee understands the motivation behind the programs. Help them see the big picture and understand the “whys” behind the program.

4. Be sure that the franchisee's staff understand the benefits of franchising, particularly the fact that all franchisees and their employees are part of the marketing system.

5. Educate the franchisee's staff about what marketing actually is and how it differs from advertising.

6. Cite other successful franchisees as testimony of how following the operating system and programs achieves results.

7. Focus on helping the franchisee's business become more profitable.

8. Establish a process for handling violations, all the way from initial contact to license default. Clearly communicate this process to franchisees when they join the system.

9. Tie the possibility for expansion to compliance.

10. Offer alternatives for leaving the system that will constitute a “win/win” situation for both the franchisee and the system.

11. Take a leadership role in the franchise system. Declare your belief in the franchise vision and unequivocally state your confidence about where the system is going.

12. Be prepared to lose even highly successful operators if this would be a benefit to the system as a whole.

13. Reward and reinforce those franchisees who are in compliance.

14. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.