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So is the LMCCA like a lobbyist group? Are they trying to be like the IICRC? I don’t see the benefit because I simply don’t know anything about them. If we are going to ask/strongly encourage franchises to join, we need to provide them with an outline of what they will get by becoming a member and how it will help grow their business.
I had more written in my previous post but I hit a wrong key and poof, it was gone.
We are all trying to sell franchises. Sales are slow. Is it the economy? Partially, people don’t have the liquid capital and cant get money from their homes equity as easily as they could a year or two ago. Is it the raise in the franchise price? Maybe, potential buyers can buy a Chem-Dry for $1000 more and have instant brand name recognition. I know there are many arguments to that statement but if they don’t call us we can’t make those arguments.
I was told this expression not too long ago. We ought not crap where we eat. We seem to be starting down this road of forcing ideas onto our franchises. Some are for the good of the franchise. Great. Then there are some that don’t benefit the franchises in any way, so we can potentially sell a franchise-not so great. We need to remember that our franchises are our customers. They buy product from us, they pay us royalties for support and help, etc., etc.. We shouldn’t risk the good will between us and our franchises.
My point is we need to focus on how we can make our operators more successful rather than sell franchises. Like Dennis Scriba says-Nothing will sell franchises like wildly successful franchises.
I’ll get down off of the soap box now.First of all, a state owner isn’t going to receive a complaint from a customer who has been solicited. The operator probably wouldn’t either. the customer most likely will not call the franchise any more. In my own franchise, at home shows specifically, we ask people to sign up on a mailing list and almost every one of them say “you’re not going to give this information to anyone else are you?”. Our answer is always “No”. I have hundreds of customers from those shows who don’t want to be solicited. I won’t do this in my state. I would rather respect my operators business and leave their customers alone.
I agree with you Laura in that we should not force operators to join the LMCCA rather strongly encourage it. I don’t know very much about this organization other than what I heard in Las Vegas but I feel if the LMCCA needs more members, a couple hundred franchises/members joining at a reduced rate is very beneficial for them. I don’t think we should allow them to demand “all” of our franchises have to participate or this discounted deal goes away. They want and our numbers, there’s strength in our numbers. Also what happens at renewal? Maybe we should negotiate that the dues increase incrementally over the next few years so they don’t lose our franchises/members after one year as well. Just my thoughts.
I don’t like the idea of soliciting our operators customers about franchise sales. This idea could cause operators to loose customers. It could also cost us ,as state owners, valuable evaluation cards from operators who don’t want their customers solicited by an outside entity. It’s a little bit of a “big brother” complex, in my opinion, to think we have the right to interfere with our operators customers.
Ron, I love the “make us your favorite” idea!
I agree DB. Content, links and the number of hits are key to making our site more successful in the organic searches. Right now our site on Google ranks a 4 out of 10. Chem dry is a 5 out of 10. and Stanley’s is a 6 out of 10. A one number difference means a huge difference in visibility on the web.
In order for our site to truly be successful, we need to make changes to it. There are a lot of operators out there who are not promoting the corporate site because it does not do enough to promote their cleaning services. Worse yet, there are more operators looking to build and start new sites. This only hurts the corporate site by taking traffic/hits away from it.
We’ve forced franchises to change their look so we can become more uniform and promote a brand, so why are we allowing hundreds of different looking web sites?
The other option would be to build standardized, individual landing pages(on the corporate site) for operators with their own individual URL’s. By doing this it would allow ops to customize their services, info, etc. It would keep everything uniform and still drive hits to the corporate site. I understand this would require time and man power on corporates end. It could be a template where operators fill in the blank fields with information that pertains to their franchise. Charge a small one time “set up” fee. That would help off set the cost of development. Just my thought and ideas.Is their going to be another international seminar? 2009? If so, where? Who’s in? I say Florida in January 8)
If our corporate web site was geared more towards services rather than sales it would generate a lot more hits and become a much more visible site on the web. As of now the corporate site doesn’t generate squat in organic searches or hits. Back in September, an ad campaign I started running in my area, generated more hits to the site than from any where else in the nation (according to the report I got from the old I.T. guy, Jason). That tells me there’s not very much activity on our site. More hits to the site means more visibility on the web which means more interest in our franchise.
I feel every state owner should be able to offer any sale/referral/lead fee or reward they want for a franchise sale. The $500 reward, as far as I know, is more of a gratuity and is not required. I, however, think it is a great reward to give an operator for generating a new sale.
Again, as for the cleaning referrals from operator to operator, I still think it is a bad idea.Let’s clarify. If an operator (“op A”) is selling a portion of their existing area and an operator from another area (“Op B”) brings the buyer, than “op B” is owed a finders fee. If you as the state owner offer a $1000 finders fee, yet corporate has made it clear the fee is $500, than you as the state owner are responsible for covering the difference of the fee not “op A” who sold a portion of their existing area.
As for referrals for cleaning leads, that’s a bad idea. Ops should be referring each other for the good of the company. Logistically it could become a nightmare between the timing, is the amount correct, did they even do the job?, etc. You don’t want ops second guessing each other.
