This best practice centres around the field manager’s attention on the particular franchisee and their business unit during the actual field visit. In today’s environment there are clearly many opportunities for distraction, principally via the field managers smart phone, tablet and/or laptop. It is an obvious point to make that the field manager should be fully focused on the franchisee and their aligned business unit during the visit.
All of this means that there really should not be any interruption that might take away from the franchisee’s feeling that the field manager is focused on them rather than other issues. The franchisee cannot be allowed to feel second-best, they must be the primary focus. Therefore, smart devices and alerts etc should really all be turned off so as to minimise any distractions, whether direct or indirect.
No doubt there will be circumstances where this is not possible and, indeed, there can be priority or emergency situations when a visit may need to be interrupted. We are of the view, however, that if this is to be the case it should be clearly understood by both parties. In particular, we would suggest the types of situations when interruptions might need to occur should be explained periodically.
Clearly also, both field manager, and franchisee, as part of their agenda setting, can schedule time to catch up on urgent calls etc, if appropriate.
All that said, the on-field visit focus really needs to be on the franchisee and their aligned business unit. After all, that’s the purpose of the visit and, as explained elsewhere, field visits are a considerable franchisor (in particular) and franchisee investment.
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.
The team at Franchize Consultants 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 here.
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