Beth Haselhorst: Millions of small business owners are looking for ways to stimulate growth in their enterprises and franchise owners are no exception. In fact franchises have some unique opportunities available for them. If they just know where to look. We have an award winning franchise expert to help franchise owners. Dick Rennick former chairman of the international franchise association has 30 years experience in the franchising sector from starting the highly successful American leak detection franchise the running team Rennick, a franchise consultancy company in California, welcome to SBTV.com Dick.
Dick Rennick: Thank you glad to be here.
Beth Haselhorst: So what system of the growth opportunities that is unique to franchising?
Dick Rennick: Well you’re not in business by yourself but with someone. So usually everybody is working together to build the brand. That’s what unique about franchising. Is you get into a franchise so that you can grow quicker? Meaning that you’re enhancing the vision of the franchise or you’re enhancing the growth of the brand and you’re enhancing one for all, all for one.
Beth Haselhorst: Store and restaurant franchises are very common. What about driving sales in those franchises? What are some innovative techniques you recommend for them?
Dick Rennick: Well it’s always good to make you customers happy and when they’re leaving, you should give them something as a take away. And that take away could be maybe a key chain holder something to put their keys on. Maybe something for the telephone that you could put on the phone that might have any emergency 911 numbers and numbers of doctors and ambulance companies close by that they could contact, that they could have handy and that you’re the one that’s passing it out. That’s very cheap advertising but it gets your name out there.
Beth Haselhorst: Well that that sounds like a great idea. How can franchise owners work together so other franchise owners in that area to stimulate growth and drive sales?
Dick Rennick: Well that’s the idea of buying into a franchise that everybody needs to work together to enhance the brand and to grow the brand. That way everybody wins. You know, early you ask about getting the franchise or the store to increase its sales? PR is a very good way to have that occur as well.
You know when you have an article that comes out on a newspaper, a little periodical that talks about you getting behind the local boys and girls club or you are they sponsoring team softball teams and those kinds of things. You’ll be surprise how that little bit of press gets people to recognize that you’re unless you have an interest. You see when you get into a business especially into a franchise business, the key is giving back to the community and by giving back to the community people recognize that and will start frequenting you establishment more often.
Beth Haselhorst: When it comes so you’ve mentioned—we talked about working with other franchise owners. So I would tend to think of them as competition. That’s not the way you should think of them?
Dick Rennick: No, they can help you do some coop buying. An example would be your liability insurance or your vehicle insurance if you’re a mobile franchise by a lot of people buying the same insurance the great school down by a lot of people having to purchase foods. You can do coop buying and drive prices down because you’re buying in both.
So your franchise brothers if you will. Your others that are part of the team need to work together to buy both buy so that everybody gets the product little cheaper so that enhances your bottom line just a little more.
Beth Haselhorst: All right, if franchise owners need some fresh ideas on stimulating sales. What do you recommend?
Dick Rennick: Well fresh ideas are always interesting. You need to leverage that with your customer that comes in whether it is a foods or whether your mobile franchise or a home based franchise, you need to look for ways that you can get these people interested in your business. If you’re a mobile franchise and maybe you’re a dog grinning franchise or you’re a carpet cleaning franchise you have to find ways reasonably to market. Things like door hangers, when you’re in an area you’re doing a job. You should have dozens of door hangers with you so that the technician can go from across the street, down the street and hanging these door hangers adjusted your neighbor’s house. Here’s who we are da-ta-da-ta-da.
Sometimes you can get inserts place in to local newspapers. So there’s many ways that are what we called Guerilla marketing, you know right down and dirty and cheap and then today’s age of doing direct mailing campaigns its just too costly to male out there and what you want to try to do in your neighborhood is create TOMA, T-O-M-A. That stands for Thought of Mind Awareness. You see you want everybody to remember who you are. If you’re a window cleaner you want them to remember your window cleaning franchise. If you’re a fast food establishment and you do take out you want them to remember that.
So you got to think of unique ways to get them to remember who you are by creating TOMA. The largest example I can give on TOMA, the people that advertise on the super bowl are creating TOMA. The Budweiser commercials, the subways of the world these people have unlimited expenditures that they can make and spend a lot of money and they create TOMA for that day and people remember that.
Beth Haselhorst: I do, I know I do I love those commercials.
Dick Rennick: I know.
Beth Haselhorst: Are there any limitations with these fresh ideas, are you limited because you’re a franchise from the franchise org at all and what you’re able to do?
Dick Rennick: Sometimes, if you want to do something outside of what the franchise org ask you to do, you need to get it to approved by the franchise org and nine times out of 10 you’ll never going to get a kick back from the franchise. Or saying no, because it’s something that the franchise org is going to say, “Wow great idea” and remember you’re the one on the trenches. You’re the one growing the business. The franchise or wants to pass that on to his other members of the team.
Beth Haselhorst: Wow sounds like there some great exciting opportunities out there for franchise owners. Well thank you very much Dick for joining us today.
Dick Rennick: Thank you.
Beth Haselhorst: Look for other segments on franchising and small business from Dick here on SBTV.com. You can also learn more about Dick Rennick and his company by going to www.teamrennick.com. This is SBTV.com small business is our only business.
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