If you have a desire to be competitive in your market, and with your franchising programme, then you will certainly benefit and learn from the process of entering franchising awards.
In New Zealand, franchising awards are open to franchisors and franchisees, and there are both sector and supreme awards. Furthermore, there are awards for the all-important field managers – as well as special franchisor awards for community involvement, marketing, international development and digital technology.
Franchisees are also encouraged to enter community involvement awards.
Entering the awards not only enable the opportunity to win, they enable the opportunity to innovate and improve. Experienced franchising companies that have entered previously will tell you that the awards give them valuable
information on areas to improve their business and, thus, see the awards as one way they review their business.
Furthermore, many franchisors enter without winning first-time, but then go on to win the second time – having made significant business and sometimes performance advancements. Often franchisors extoll the learning value and describe it as a journey rather than a destination. The entering process can be
time-consuming, and a little stressful, but is often considered highly valuable in retrospect.
For best practice franchisors looking for external benchmarks, the franchise industry awards provide one way of benchmarking for the franchise domain of the business, putting franchisors from a similar category against one-another.
The awards are for franchisors, field managers and franchisees. Franchisors should encourage both their field managers and franchisees to enter the awards.
This sets and helps maintain a competitive and high-performance culture – where the organisation is, and is seen to, be striving to be the best.
For franchisees, the awards are great for their businesses – as well as their own personal development and recognition. Anyone who has been to the award night will know of the often deeply moving and emotional franchisee acceptance speeches.
For field managers too, this is something to strive for – demonstrating the process undertaken and the performance achieved. This can only be good for the business and solidify the value of benchmarking for them in their role. It also provides great personal development.
The franchise industry awards ultimately are also a great marketing credential for a business. If you are a franchisor, then the awards will add credibility to your franchise offer. That means more potential (and quality) recruits to your franchise system that will help you to differentiate yourself and grow faster.
Entering franchise industry awards will add value to your business, and if you, your field managers or franchisees win – who knows how important that could prove to be for them and/or your business.
Relevant questions:
- Do you enter your category for franchise industry awards? And do you encourage your field managers and franchisees to enter awards?
- Have you considered what benefits regular franchise industry award entries could bring to your franchise system at a business and personal level?
- How could entering franchise industry awards contribute to a best practice or high performance culture within your franchise system?
About the Franchising Best Practice 500 Series
This is part of a series of franchising best practices. Franchize Consultants is sharing and publishing these best practices weekly for the betterment of franchising. We know that better knowledge and execution of franchising best practices leads to bigger and more valuable franchisor and franchisee businesses.
We have assembled the first 40 best practices into The Best Practice Handbook, which is available for purchase.
