Data Driven Planning Tips For Franchise Brands

1 – Navigate business growth in a hyper focused way

Growing any franchise is about time and labor, but it's also about attention and intention. Every organization needs to be able to see at a glance the many factors that are important in their business model and simplify their growth planning accordingly.

With the economic impact of the pandemic, every franchise brand is looking to award more units without increasing the development budget. Marketing and sales are under pressure to deliver more despite ever-tightening resources. If franchisors can't change the development math soon, many careers, livelihoods, and entire franchise systems will be in jeopardy.

One example is the concept of unit value. Historically, franchises have struggled to predict the expected new deal value over the average deal term including royalty collections and other metrics. But while there are no guarantees in business, there are steps you can take to increase your odds. If you want to think long term and focus your growth strategy, try our Franchise Unit Value Calculator. We can't promise it will solve all your problems, but it will train your brain to approach growth differently.

2 – Think mathematically and visually

One of the best tips for simplifying financial decision making is to elevate the visual component of the process. Staring at spreadsheets all day can make franchise development professionals go blind, so we recommend that people find tools to better forecast sales and visualize metrics to track goals accurately.

If you have a quarterly meeting or planning retreat coming up, it's critical that you set expectations for digital marketing results with practical and thoughtful planning. You need to be thinking long term and focus on the important, longer-lasting, financials of your franchise organization.

Feel free to pull up our suite of growth marketing calculators at your next meeting. Plug in numbers and see how your brand can award more franchises at lower cost. It's fun, and more importantly, it's financially smart.

3 – Make your own tool by converting data to insight

FranCalc itself started as spreadsheet to scratch our own itch, and became its own branded product. And what we learned was, every organization (including franchises!) have the equivalent of a spreadsheet. A makeshift solution. Just sitting around in a folder, collecting digital dust.

If it's proven to be useful to at least one person, then that asset needs to be celebrated, multiplied, elevated, productized and leveraged. Maybe you can help the rest of your team make informed, data driven decisions, just like we do here at FranCalc.