By Evan Hackel, CEO Tortal Training

Training represents a truly golden opportunity for making your franchise the best it can possibly be. But are you taking full advantage of it? And where is your franchise directing its training efforts and budget?

Let’s discover how to reap the benefits of great training.

The Basics of Taking Your Training from Ho-Hum to Phenomenal

• First, your training has to be high-quality. It should be developed in cooperation with your current franchisees. Only then can you be sure it covers the issues they are really facing as they run their businesses. (In other words as you develop your training, you should be talking to people who know what is happening on the ground, not to people who only think they know.)
• Second, your training should be engaging and highly accessible, possibly delivered to mobile phones or in-location tablets.
• Third, your training should be ongoing, meaning that you reinforce success strategies weekly or more often after the period of formal training is done. “Once and done” doesn’t make for great training.
• Fourth, your training should be integral to the ongoing experience of franchise ownership, not only to one phase, such as teaching new owners the basics.

Where Should You Deploy Your Training?

• Make training part of selling new franchises. At Tortal Training, we strongly recommend allowing prospective franchise owners to take part in your training. Once they see for themselves that you offer great training, they become much more likely to want to come on board. They see that you are a company that wants them to succeed, and that reduces any fears that they might not have a good ownership experience.
• Make training part of your annual conventions and regional meetings. When you do, training and education become part of your lifeblood and franchise culture. People become more eager to learn, and therefore more likely to succeed.
• Make training part of your onboarding at all levels. This means providing excellent training experiences for new owners, but also for new employees at all levels through the ranks. How big are the staffs at your typical franchises? If you have managers, salespeople, technicians, deliver them all an excellent onboarding experience.
• Don’t forget customer service training. Because every franchise serves customers in some way, simply hiring energetic front-line staffers and letting them “do their thing” is never a good idea. Your customer service training should be based on specific needs that you identify before you develop your training, and it should teach specific, measurable skills.
• Remember sales training too. I cannot emphasize this enough, because the fact is that if you improve selling skills only marginally, that can have an immense impact on your bottom line. If you can train retail salespeople to sell only 10% more on their average transaction for example, that can increase your system-wide sales by $100,000 if you are a million-dollar franchise, by $1 million if you are a $10 million franchise . . . and you can do the math from there. Incremental improvements can increase system-wide profitability in immense ways.

Another Big Reason to Invest in Great Training

It is the most effective way to increase your net promoter score. After all, when prospective franchisees are thinking of buying your franchise, one of the first things they to is to call your current franchises to ask, “Is this a good franchise to buy?”

You want your current franchisees – every single one of them – to say to those possible buyers, “This is a great franchise to own, they really want you to succeed, and they make every effort to be sure you do,”

The way you assure that your current owners say those words is to invest in extraordinary franchise training. You can do that, can’t you? Yes, you can. And if you do, you will succeed magnificently.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 781-820-7609. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?