Online forums address franchisor team roles

The Franchise Relationships Institute (FRI) has announced a new series of virtual forums starting in July designed to provide targeted support for different roles within franchisor teams. FRI’s research has shown that, while all members of a franchisor team directly or indirectly support franchisees, there are three ways this plays out. 

FRI’s Founder, Greg Nathan, says, ‘While senior executives need to be thinking about support from a strategic leadership perspective, and field managers need to be delivering pro-active operational support in a franchisee’s business, Support Office staff are often providing reactive support to franchisee enquiries. Franchisors need to be servicing franchisees effectively at all levels, so all three types of support are critical to franchisee satisfaction.’

The three virtual forums include:

• a C-Level Leadership Forum for CEOs and divisional heads;
• a Field Manager virtual bootcamp for franchisor who support franchisees in the field, and;
• a Culture of Franchising Forum for Support Office staff.

Greg says the virtual forums have been developed from FRI’s successful face-to-face programmes, and are very different from traditional webinars or online training courses. 

‘We have put enormous thought and planning into our processes to ensure the virtual experience is as good, or better, than our face-to-face events. For instance, we include a lot of facilitated small group discussion and sharing that promotes collaboration between brands.’

He says FRI has built on the best aspects of its popular face-to-face programmes, while harnessing the unique benefits of a virtual learning process. In data collected from nearly 100 participants in FRI’s pilot programmes, 97% said the Forums delivered a good to excellent return on time and money, and 100% said they were satisfied with their virtual experience.

Convenient, efficient and cost-effective

The format of the C-Level franchisor forum also includes input from high-level global mentors such as Graham Weihmiller, CEO and Chairman of BNI – one of the largest franchise networks in the world. This is followed by peer discussion groups to enable sharing best practice on hot topics. FRI then collects and summarises key points from the guest mentor and peer discussions, and circulates these as a learning loop to maximise ROI.

Each Forum session runs for 90 minutes and has a maximum of 50 participants to maintain intimacy and quality control. ‘We have a focus on ensuring all sessions start and finish on time, are carefully facilitated so every minute is used productively, and we allow adequate time for participants to dig into the hot issues that are relevant to them. This enables us to deliver convenient, efficient and cost-effective professional development that is targeted to the specific needs of the different franchisor groups,’ Greg says. 

More information on the three Franchisor Forums can be found here or contact FRI’s Education Manager, Sarah Furlong at sarah@franchiserelationships.com 

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