HOW WE WORK
Thinking about scaling your business through franchising?
Our experienced team can help you refine your existing franchise system, or build an entirely new one from the ground up. Whether you are a new, emerging brand in need of strategic planning, sales support, training, marketing, operations, legal, financing and real estate assistance or an established brand in need of a sound, economic and customized expansion strategy, YFS can help you accomplish your goals.
Brand Health Assessment
The critical first step. We dive deep into your business, engaging all stakeholders, to ascertain the overall “health” of your brand in the targeted areas of:
- Operational Structure
- Marketing
- Training
- Profitability Management
- Present and Future Brand Outlook
Using the intelligence our informational deep dive provides, we create your strategic plan that will establish a well defined support structure, marketing initiatives relevant to your audience, comprehensive training curriculums and provide substantial insight that will be the difference between success and failure in:
- Evolving operationally and growing the brand
- Closing the relationship gap between franchisee and franchisor
- Early stage benchmarking for future and current franchisees’ unit economics
- Qualifying high quality franchise candidates
Building Industry Eminence
Whether you are an established franchise brand or you are just beginning your franchise journey, our SWOT/Gap process ensures your business is best positioned and well prepared to attract franchise candidates. We accomplish this by:
- Facilitating a full-day SWOT meeting with all brand stakeholders, where we address the perceived Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing your business.
- Writing your Strategic Plan that will detail the strategies and action plans for your short term goals and long term objectives including financial assessments and projections.
Lead Generation and Candidate Recruitment
YFS utilizes a multi-tactic lead gen approach for finding the right franchise candidates for your brand . We help you develop new, or improve existing candidate recruitment processes and tactics along with leveraging our partnerships with leading franchise brokers across the country.
Lead Generation Support
Without lead generation, the best built franchise system is like a fish out of water. It won’t survive for long. At YFS, we build strategies based on our clients’ candidate profile and create targeted messaging that resonates and ultimately nurtures and encourages the candidate to take action.
We will assess any competitive brands in your category to ensure your brand is strategically positioned to clearly articulate and leverage your key differences and value. Continuing with the fishing analogy, lead generation is a lot like fishing. The best fishermen and women are those who use different lures and fish where the fish are.
For this reason once we understand the target audience, we use a multi-media approach that maximizes your lead generation marketing budget.
Whether it’s digital ads, print, electronic, public relations, social media or tweeking your website, clients can expect customized treatment to find qualified candidates who will build your brand. We keep the best catches and let the rest go. It’s the difference between quality and quantity.
Lead Reporting
We believe our clients deserve accountability. YFS provides lead reporting to identify areas of success, make budget adjustments as well as address challenges in the process that may need improvement.
Lead Management - A Mutual Evaluation Process
The YFS process is one where candidates know right up front what is required and expected of them in an approximate 4-6 week process. They will learn everything about the business and support systems in site selection, construction (if retail), operations, technology and marketing. They will talk to support staff and when possible, they will speak with franchisees.
The way a franchise candidate goes through this process is a good indicator of how they will act as a franchisee. In the same way, franchise candidates get to know the people who will support them, learn more about the organization as well as the vision and values of the franchise system.
At the end of the process, once a checklist of items is completed and there is mutual agreement to continue forward, our candidates understand that they are going to be invited to a franchisor “Meet the Team” day for formal approval and signing agreements. The point of the mutual evaluation process is to determine whether the franchise opportunity is a good fit for both parties.
Lead management is an ongoing and continuous improvement process, always evolving to meet the ever changing environment and habits of franchise buyers.