7 Strategies to Burst Your Multi-Unit Expansion
Jun 20, 2023
Expanding a franchise business from a single unit into a multi-unit franchise is exciting, but growth also increases the complexity of the business. That’s why it requires careful planning and the strategic execution of certain steps to make it happen successfully.
Multi-unit franchisees can even sense that every time they open a new unit they have less profitability, instead of increasing it, as one of my clients told me once.
Based on that, I'll be sharing some strategic actions that you can implement as a franchisee that wants to grow into a multi-unit enterprise successfully.
Looking for a new brand? This is what you should consider during the process
Strategy #1
Before you start growing your organization you must strengthen your operational and business management systems.
As you grow, you won’t be able to be in each and every one of your locations, and having those systems defined, carefully documented, and trained, will allow you to delegate operations successfully and get things done the way you want to.
But you can’t forget that this has to come along with the proper training processes for team members and leaders, so you can give them the tools they need to implement those operational and management systems with excellence.
Having this will give you consistency and quality across all your units as you open more and more stores across your organization.
Strategy #2
To grow into a multi-unit franchise, you have to build a strong leadership bench because you cannot reach for the stars without hiring the right leaders to help you oversee the business operation.
It's crucial that this leadership team follows your vision, your guidelines, and the way you want things to be done in your organization, so you are able to delegate responsibilities to them. They also have to inspire and motivate the staff to do a great job.
Having a team of leaders that you can trust will give you the freedom to focus on growth and strategic planning instead of monitoring the day-to-day operations of your business.
In case you missed it: Team success lessons from the first thunderbird woman pilot
Strategy #3
You have to secure adequate financing. Scaling an organization requires a significant amount of money, so you have to evaluate what is your financial position and explore your various funding options to make sure that, whenever you need, you have that money available.
One thing you want to consider is investing part of your cash flow from your existing business into that growth so that you do not leverage your business too much and find yourself in potential financial health situations.
Another tip: prepare a comprehensive financial growth plan to calculate how much capital you must secure, when you’ll need it, and when each of your units will come to break even point so that they can sustain themselves. You do not want the lack of capital to stop you from achieving your growth goals!
Are you making the right investment in your franchise and in the correct places? Find out here!
Strategy #4
The next strategy is to leverage technology. In this day and age, there are a lot of platforms that you can use to help you be effective and efficient at managing your organization.
Technology will play a critical role in your success for growth because it will give you access to data, information, and reporting in real-time, which will help you make better decisions and have a successful and healthy business in the long term.
These tech tools will help you and your team leaders manage your organization.
Strategy #5
You have to develop a local marketing strategy as you're growing your organization into a multi-unit because of two reasons:
- You may potentially be cannibalizing your existing locations, depending on the distance between them. But having a marketing plan will allow you to contact the potential damage that you might be doing to nearby locations.
- If they're not near your existing units, this marketing plan will attract the community around your units and bring awareness of your brand and your value proposal as fast as possible.
Social media will have a crucial role in your marketing strategy plan for growth because they will allow you to target the critical audience around each new unit.
Strategy #6
The next strategy is to monitor the performance and adapt. This has to do with technology because you need that information and reporting to see what's happening and take care of the issues you have in your organization.
Continuous monitoring of the key performance indicators of your franchise will allow you to make a change when something is going in the wrong direction.
But first, you have to establish what are the most critical KPIs in your business because every organization and industry has different ones. Understanding and monitoring the metrics in the multiple units across your organization will help you maintain the long-term health of your business in the long run.
Discover what are the 3 most important numbers in your business
Strategy #7
This is, I think, one of the most important things you need to be able to grow into a large multi-unit organization. And that is to cultivate a culture of positive performance.
If you have a strong and positive company culture, based on values, teamwork, and excellence, will not only attract great people, but those great people will then produce great results for you, without you being there all the time.
- Another tip: start this strategy when you are beginning to grow because that will set the tone for the livelihood of your organization.
Having this strong company culture will also help you generate consistency in creating results, attracting great talent, and growing into a multi-unit organization with ease and potentially even a lot of fun.
An additional strategy!
Those are the seven strategies to burst your multi-unit growth. But let me share one more: explore how The American Franchise Academy can help you!
We offer three best-in-class programs to help multi-unit franchisees achieve multi-unit growth and scale with success:
- A development program for unit managers
- A development program for district managers
- A development program and support for franchisees
Through these programs, we provide knowledge, tools, and resources on leadership, management, and in processes and documentation of those processes, so that you can duplicate your business and grow just like other brands do.
If you'd like to learn more about these programs, go to this information link: https://americanfranchiseacademy.mykajabi.com/programs
Don’t forget to follow us on our YouTube channel, subscribe to our podcast and find us on all of our platforms across social media, where you can find a lot more knowledge, tips, and information for you to be successful.
Reflections:
- What’s the status of your leadership bench?
- Are you clear on how much money you need to grow into a multi-unit organization?
- Are you taking advantage of the technology to properly manage your business?
- Do you know what are the most important numbers of your business?
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