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How Does A Franchise Owner Recover A Poor Relationship With Their Franchisor?

Guest post by: Glenn Walford

Article Overview: Its troubling to see many franchise owners who do not realize the full potential in their businesses because they do not fully utilize the resources and support available to them. That is troubling enough on its own, but when this happens because for some reason franchisee and franchisor do not get on very well because of past 'bad blood' then this is a totally avoidable tragedy. Everyone get over it and move on! I'll show you how here.

How Does A Franchise Owner Recover A Poor Relationship With Their Franchisor?

We are all human, so from time to time we are all going to have some troubles in our relationships in life – one of these relationships is of course the one between franchisor and franchisee.

It’s a fact – its life, so we all need to learn to come to terms with this in the easiest and quickest way possible because a bad relationship with your franchisor will generally cost a franchise owner more than it will cost your franchisor.

It is also going to happen at varying degrees of confrontation level. The main point is what are you going to do about it to recover the situation and get you and your business back on track!

I’m a big believer in doing whatever it takes…and I will tell you like it is, minus the BS.

Some ways to get your relationship back on track to one with a laser like focus on growing your business;

1. It does not matter who is to blame – I don’t care! Don’t get into a stand off with your franchisor as you will generally be the one who loses more in some way. Behaving in a principle based point-scoring way means your business will definitely lose out.

2. Be accountable and take responsibility for what has happened before. Get rid of any cold or abrasive attitude and acknowledge to your franchisor that regardless of who is to blame or at fault, that the process of working together to grow your business is currently not going in a healthy or helpful direction.

3. Ask for acknowledgement of the same by your franchisor (mostly field representative). In each of your cases you are not apportioning blame but asking and offering an acknowledgement of a less than helpful direction and environment for both of you. You have just established a common ground and effectively drawn a line in the sand.

4. When you start moving forward in your working relationship be certain not to jump back to your old abrasiveness if something does not go your way as this will set you well back – and possibly even further than before.

5. If your franchisor has ‘got back on board’ with you before after problems and you let them down with a negative attitude toward them or don’t follow through with commitments then be prepared to have to prove yourself to get their trust back. Once again, it’s about doing whatever it takes to grow your business.

It really is a pretty simple process to get your franchisor really back in your court and backing you all the way. It just takes an honest commitment by you to make it happen. You will always get a level of support as per your franchise agreement stipulation. But to build your business into a thriving success you need your franchisor field support fully engaged and passionately driving your business forward with you.

It gets even better, as if you have had a rocky relationship previously that gets turned around – you become an outstanding success story. An example of a poor situation reversed to a great supporter of the brand and system.

Remember, we are all human and we love to have our ego’s stroked by a personal success story that we made happen. Franchisors love having ‘trophy’ franchise owners they can hold up and say “Be like them”. Imagine your field support looking at you like that – just think of the potential help and support you could then get over and above the norm?.

This is so important because you are always looking for every single advantage possible!

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Article Tags: franchise owner, franchise owners, franchisee, franchisor



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