Field Visits
At their best, field visits can be a rewarding
A Strategic Approach
Copyright © 2011 Business Unlimited
Article by Dr. Salim Hajje Ph.D.,
Strategy Consultant
“At their best, field visits can be a
rewarding experience, focusing on building
the franchisee’s business to the next level.
When visits are negative, both parties waste
valuable time and energy, blaming anything
and everyone for the business not reaching
its full potential.”
Franchisor representatives
have a role to play beyond
checking that franchisees The franchisee
are meeting standards and
complying with operational
feels as if
requirements. By adding
business coaching to the
they’re getting
mix, franchisors can make kicked while
field visits a positive
experience and a valuable they’re down!
means of assisting
franchisees to improve their performance.
Having been a consultant on both sides of
the fence – as a franchisee and as a
franchisor representative consultant – I
know that field visits can be either a very
positive or very negative experience.
Cynically, field visits can also be viewed as
just another item to cross off the checklist
for the franchisor – after all, the franchise is
paying for such a visit.
Field visits - A Strategic Approach
experience, focusing on building the
franchisee’s business to the next level.
When visits are negative, both parties waste
valuable time and energy, blaming anything
and everyone for the business not reaching
its full potential.
Given its potential to improve business
performance and motivate the franchisee to
reach even higher, why does the process
sometimes have poor results?
The heavy-handed approach
One reason is that quite often
the approach taken by the
franchisor service
representative is that of a
policeman. The visit is spent
checking that standards and
operational procedures are
being adhered to by the
franchisee and pointing out
items that need correcting.
It’s as if the representative
gains great pleasure from this fault-finding
exercise and the result is that he or she
forgets to focus on business and profit-
building activities.
Even when policing standards and
procedures is not the intention of the
franchisor representative, the visit is often
perceived this way and the franchisee is
likely to become very defensive about their
business. After all, the franchisee is
Copyright 2008 © Business Unlimited Page 1
probably working very long hours striving
hard to reach certain goals, sales levels and
general operational excellence. There may
be many reasons why they are not quite
reaching the target, but along comes the
head office representative with clipboard
and pen and he or she begins to highlight
items and issues that need attention. It’s no
wonder the franchisee feels as if they’re
getting kicked while they’re down! And
while this mightn't be the
case, perception is stronger
than reality. Solution is
of outsourcing business coaching/ consulting
is that the franchisee will be much more
receptive. They know that the coach/
consultant is independent of the franchisor
and they realize that the role of the coach/
consultant is to focus on profit-building
exercises – activities that the franchisee will
benefit from, such as developing business
plans, setting sales budgets, organizing
Local Area Marketing programs and so on.
It’s a fresh approach that
will be welcomed by the
franchisees.

Coaching as incentive outsourcing But what about the

How, then, do we ensure that

to business operational standards and
procedures, I hear you ask.
the franchisor is servicing consultants Who will maintain those?
franchisees without being
overcritical of the individual and coaches. This is where the franchisor
and their performance? How can leverage the business
can the visit be planned to check that coaching service, by only offering it to those
essential operational standards and franchisees who qualify by attaining a
procedures are being adhered to while certain level of operational compliance.
spending as much, if not more, time on Business coaching then becomes the
building the business as well? incentive for franchisees to maintain
operational standards of excellence. By
One possible solution is outsourcing the separating the two functions and having
business development side of the field visit different people perform those functions I
to business consultants and coaches. believe that the results can only be
beneficial to both franchisee and franchisor
Business coaching and business and build better businesses.
development managers and consultants are
becoming more and more widely accepted in Tailoring the approach
the business community. We are starting to
see their true value being realized when used If outsourcing is not preferred by the
correctly and when a professional franchisor, the business coaching model can
organization and the right coach/ consultants still be adopted by implementing a range of
for the business are selected. The advantage internal strategies, including the following:

Field visits - A Strategic Approach Copyright 2008 © Business Unlimited Page 2

1. Split the field visit and franchise
performance review into two parts –
compliance to operational standards and
procedures, and business coaching or
business development.
2. Train field service representatives
to become business coaches, with the skills
to implement business development
activities as well as to be expert technicians
on the operational standards and procedures
of the franchise system.
3. Use two franchisor representatives
when conducting field visits: one to perform
the compliance check and one to perform
the business-coaching role. Representatives
can exchange roles with each field visit to
other franchisees in order to develop skills
in each area. A bonus is that this approach
will also ensure job variety for the
franchisor representatives. Another
advantage is that you have a better
opportunity to match each franchisee with
the correct franchisor representative
according to their personality, rather like
‘good cop, bad cop’.
4. Develop an incentive program
based on operational excellence in order to
gain access to the business coaching
services. This will work well if the plan is
only to provide business coaching services
to those franchisees that are operationally
compliant.
5. Another strategy for implementing
the right business coaching to meet
franchisees’ needs is to split your
Field visits - A Strategic Approach
franchisees into various categories as
follows:
• Non-compliant
franchisees – more likely to be your
new franchisees learning the system
and trying to reach operational
compliance.
• Operationally
compliant franchisees experiencing
stagnant sales growth – these tend to
be franchisees operating the business
according to the operational
procedures and standards and
working ‘in the business’ but not ‘on
the business’.
• Operationally
compliant franchisees and sales-to-
operational capacity – These
franchisees are ‘operational
excellence personified’ and working
‘on’ their business as well as ‘in’
their business. For them to grow
further they will need to develop new
markets, relocate to a better location
or reinvest more capital into the
business; in order to reach new sales
levels.
• Franchisees wanting to
sell for many various reasons, both
good and bad.
Once you have categorized franchisees into
these groups, you need to meet them at their
stage of the business life cycle, delivering
the appropriate business coaching solutions
Copyright 2008 © Business Unlimited Page 3
to help them reach the next level and attain
their desired business and lifestyle goals. Business Unlimited®
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Whether coaching takes the form of ©

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helping the franchisee write a strategic
business plan and coaching them through the
various action steps to succeed, or helping
them put together a professional business
sales package, the end result should be
focused on enhancing the performance of
each individual franchisee and of the
franchise network as a whole.
In summary the objective of all franchise
field visits should be to help the franchisee
build a better business. If this is not
happening in your franchise network and
field visits have become a frustrating and
non-productive task, maybe a different
strategic approach is needed. Outsource part
of your franchisee support to business
coaches or give your field representatives
the appropriate training and tools to conduct
productive field visits which will take your
franchise network to the next level.
Franchisees will gain better value for money
from their service fees and a new culture
will begin to develop, bringing the
franchisee and franchisor closer together.
Maybe another incentive program could be
to provide life coaching for individual
franchisees, but that’s a subject for another
time.
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Dr. Salim Hajje Ph.D.

Field visits - A Strategic Approach Copyright 2008 © Business Unlimited Page 4