Why Franchisees Ignore Great Advice

When executed correctly, franchising is a powerful partnership between a brand and its local operators that fosters thriving business for everybody. With that said, it’s also a team sport, and like a team sport, everybody has a specific role to play. Being a great franchisee isn’t just about making money and owning a business you’re proud of; it’s keeping a promise that you’ll uphold certain values, adhere to certain standards, and manage situations a certain way.

As a franchisor, seeing your owner-operators drift away from the model you’ve built can be maddening. Moving forward, we’ll explore five different reasons franchisees ignore great advice and begin deviating from the systems they’re supposed to be leveraging. We’ll also look at what franchise brands can do to minimize these non-compliance issues and bring franchisees back into the fold when they’ve begun to slip.

Common reasons ignored

The number one reason franchisees don’t run their businesses how their franchise brands expect is a lack of knowledge and understanding. Generally speaking, most people who get into franchising want to leverage a proven system to delight customers. Sometimes, however, training gaps and lack of institutional knowledge or support drive individual owner-operators to start writing their own playbooks.

Franchisees who lack confidence can’t execute a brand playbook because they either aren’t fully sure the system works or don’t see their individual path forward to making it work. As the franchisor, it’s key to connect operators who lack confidence with maximum resources and mentorship so they can overcome that gap and get back to delivering what you’ve designed.

One of the main things that leads entrepreneurs astray as they transition into owner-operators is their belief that what’s made them successful thus far is a deep understanding of their local market and culture. They might say, “I know Vegas, trust me,” or think, “That marketing campaign’s okay, but it’s not going to resonate here in Miami.”

While franchisees typically have their hearts in the right place when it comes to local knowledge, their obsession with their specific market can quickly grow into skepticism and non-compliance with the larger system their franchisor has built. As a franchise, it can help to share data-driven insights into the success of the systems and campaigns you’ve put in place. That way, market-minded operators get the information they need to see the power of the national model and understand the success others are having applying tools correctly.

Panic and noncompliance

Another reason franchisees start doing things they shouldn’t is they’re starting to feel desperate to make money. Panic breeds noncompliance, and in a franchise system that’s supposed to be built on consistency, panicked operations make everybody look bad.

Again, the biggest way to combat panic is with transparency. By making sure franchisees understand seasonality, proven engagement tactics, and the timetable other operators have seen to reach profit, franchise brands can significantly reduce panic within their systems. It’s crucial that franchisors and franchisees alike know their numbers well enough to be confident the right people are in the system and will find their way to business if they trust the methodology.

Great leaders at the owner-operator level understand that being a good franchisee is about leading and following at the same time. Sometimes, though, someone gets into a franchise system who thinks they’re a better business leader than the folks who built the platform, and that’s a problem.

The “too entrepreneurial” crowd tend to be tinkerers and have their eyes on innovating business processes or uncovering additional revenue streams rather than building a team and executing the proven model they’ve been given. In a franchising context, that’s really a form of selfishness. These potential owner-operators should ideally be vetted out of the system before they even start, but once they do, it’s crucial to bring them back into alignment with the rest of the team.

Loss of faith

When franchisees start doing wacky things and breaking the model, it’s often because they no longer have faith in the value of the opportunity they bought into. They’re making the business something it’s not because they just don’t see how your brand and approach are going to make them successful.

As with folks who lack confidence, the keys here are to provide education, mentorship, and support. It falls to the franchisor to reengage with operators who’ve fallen out of alignment and reinforce, with objective data, the value in following the proven system. With that said, if the situation has reached a point where franchisees are actively defying brand guidelines, finding a path toward corrective action together is especially important.

All these scenarios point back to two key questions: Are we onboarding the right franchisees, and are we connecting them with all the support they need to be successful? So many bad franchisor-franchisee relationships come down to a fundamental failure in one of those two areas.

When you recruit, especially in this era where business disagreements are often adjudicated publicly on social media, it’s more important than ever to ensure you’re working with entrepreneurs who keenly understand the balance of lead and follow that the franchise business offers. It’s also important to get a good read on whether potential franchisees are truly confident in their ability to deliver or if they’re just excited at the prospect of owning a business. The more confident you are about the quality of entrepreneur you’re bringing into the system, the fewer headaches you’ll have about non-compliance.

On the other side of the coin, it’s equally important for franchise brands to have a crystal-clear and easy-to-follow vision for success that each franchisee can apply at their locations. It’s not enough to be offering an opportunity; you need to be delivering a clear path forward that entrepreneurs can buy into and follow without confusion. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for inconsistency and unhappy franchisees.