Profile-Based Franchise Marketing
Success leaves clues. Who wouldn’t want to uncover its secrets – especially when launching a marketing campaign? It’s not surprising that a behavioral scientist with a specialty in neuroscience would be fascinated with success. After all, I’ve spent the past 23 years studying, quantifying, validating and modeling the psychographic markers which create franchisee success. You might however, wonder how psychographics and neuroscience will make you a better marketer. More importantly, how you can use these sciences to attract franchise candidates with the highest likelihood of success within your franchise system.
How vs. Who
But before we can get into the how – let’s talk about whom. Who is your ideal franchisee? Beyond their net worth, education or job title, what distinguishes them from the not so good franchisee? Performance? Of course – that’s why you are in business.
Compatibility? Certainly – no fun working with a prima donna or disagreeable franchisee. Compliant? Naturally – you spent a ton of time and resources creating those systems and have earned ever royalty cent. What else? Can you measure it? If not how will you be able to replicate or manage it?
Franchising is all about replicating. So why not clone your top performing franchisees? You might be thinking, that’s a great idea but how do I do that? Simply put – by analyzing your current franchisees and modeling your top performers. If we want to replicate the people part of success then we must quantify what created it from a psychographic perspective.
Analyze and Model
Modeling, at its core, is a forecasting process used to help predict the best possible outcome. Companies use it to see which methods, sites or solutions score well against a “model” of various influences—both positive and negative—on future store performance, marketing, site selection, staffing and more.
You’re a smart franchisor. You’ve been modeling many facets of your business already; your consumer base in various markets, future brick-and-mortar sites and even the potential challenges and opportunities of products, services or systems you are considering rolling out. All for naught however, if a franchisee is incompatible, unmotivated or incapable of exploiting all that you have laid out in front of him.
How do we define a compatible franchisee? A compatible franchisee shares your company’s values, stage of growth and fits within your culture. A compatible franchisee will comply and leverage your company’s systems. A compatible franchisee has competencies that complement your value package and strategic plans.
A compatible franchisee will ramp-up quickly, pay his royalties, validate well and retain for the long-haul. Most importantly he will have strong year-over-year growth. That being said, if we can measure the psychographic markers that lead to franchisee-franchisor compatibility in theory we should be able to replicate the DNA of a top performer. You’re likely thinking sounds great but you’ve tried personality tests and found no clues or evidence as to how or if personality inspired performance.
Personality Tests Do Not Work
I agree. Personality is a poor indicator of performance. Personality tests are designed to measure traits of an individual that remain constant through a lifetime. People like businesses evolve and change; thus personality tests, by their very nature, are limited both in scope and application.
| “Correlations between personality and performance fall in the .03 to .15 which is close to zero.” – Frederick Morgerson et al, Personnel Psychology |
Zoracle does not use personality tests. Instead we use a meta-analysis approach including the following statistically validated sciences: Values, Stages of Growth, Culture, Work Style, Business Skills, Sales Style, Business Path and Emotional Intelligence.
Top Performer Blueprint
Zoracle’s Top Performer Blueprint is an intimate look into your franchisees. It will delineate the attributes that separate your top performers from your low performers. It will provide a means to screen and qualify your candidates. Now let’s look at how your top performer model will act as marketing fodder for attracting your ideal franchisee candidate shall we? In my opinion there is no greater marketing weapon then the one-two punch of psychographics combined with neuroscience.
Miscommunication and Misfits
An early stage franchise company was worried – several of their franchisees were struggling and a few difficult to get along with. Poor validation was causing slow growth and support costs were excessive compared to their competitors. They had been meticulous in their site selection and the systems were button down and tested; that left the soft part of the success equation – the franchisee.
Leads were pouring in from all directions but they were clueless who would be a good fit and run a successful local business. So they hired us. When we did their Top Performer Blueprint the problems became obvious. The franchisor was attracting franchisees that were poor cultural, values and stage of growth fit.
Their marketing was directed towards someone who valued: fun, variety, prestige and recognition. Whereas the top performers within the system valued: contribution, quality, simplicity and results. Additionally, their marketing gave a perception that the franchise system was much larger and evolved then their current stage of growth. This in turn created greater expectations and demands by their franchisees then their resources permitted. They were attracting skinners not hunters, if you know what I mean.
Profile-Based Marketing
Our research and that of others, show that there is a strong link between financial performance and values alignment. When the values of an organization are in alignment with the aspirational values of the franchisees, the result is high performance. Values, also called buyer motives act much like love potion #9 attracting prospects to a business whether good for them or not. It is vital marketing efforts communicate clearly a franchisor’s culture, values and stage of growth so as to avoid misfits.
Our recommendations focused on attracting the right candidate using the art and science of psychographics and neuroscience. With changes to fonts, colors, graphics and messaging the mood shifted from a fun, prestigious and stable business to a first to market business opportunity for someone who wanted to provide high quality, cause-based products and services. Today, our franchisor boasts steady growth and strong validation.
It comes as no surprise that colors influence emotions, perceptions and behavior. Science has also shown us that size, location and syntax of a message, commercial or article will influence a decision. Further, it’s widely accepted that graphics will entice individuals differently based on their value sets. Seems logical then we reverse engineer the franchise recruitment process. Let’s first quantify and delineate who the top performers are and determine how they make their decisions – then and only then can a franchisor craft marketing efforts to attract more of them. Yes, I understand you hate science as did I once. But wouldn’t you trade a few hours of looking at boring numbers to increase retention, validation and performance? The secret to marketing success is in using psychographics and neuroscience to attract more top performers.
About Zoracle Profiles
We are a franchise specific solutions provider offering a suite of customizable psychometric assessments. Our meta-analysis approach integrates five statistically validated sciences providing insights no singular profile, survey, algorithm or assessment can. Our SpotOn! Science ® determines franchisee-franchisor compatibility and predicts performance. Our tools provide franchise companies a means to reduce recruitment, training, support and litigation costs while increasing franchisee satisfaction, validation and performance. For more information, contact Rebecca Monet at rebecca@zoracle.net or visit www.zorakleprofiles.com.