The Glass Guru

BVM: How do you support your franchisees, both initially and as their businesses grow? Frey: “When somebody signs a franchise agreement with us, we typically go through a six- to ten-week onboarding phase, where we plug them into our learning management system that is comprised of dozens of videos covering all areas of the business from the technical side, to operations, to estimating, marketing, and pricing. We start them out with the ABCs, and then, ultimately, get into more advanced topics. Then, there’s a week-long training they have just prior to their actual launch, where we review all of those topics and go through final preparation before their grand opening. We also are involved in helping them select a location, getting a couple of vehicles equipped and wrapped, and, typically, lining up their first couple of employees. We typically start out with just three, owner included. “Once we launch, our support and development team is highly involved and very proactive in working with our owners on a weekly and monthly basis to continue to coach and guide them in the various aspects of the business, with a primary focus on the numbers, the infrastructure, and the marketing. We have a dedicated support team of a dozen individuals here at our headquarters, with about a third of them doing direct coaching and support. Another third of my team is in the marketing department; we do all the heavy lifting in the digital marketing management – the website, SEO, pay- per-click – if it’s internet-related, we pretty much manage all of it from our headquarters. We also do all of the design and content and production work, with our great in-house marketing team, for all the traditional forms of marketing that our franchisees employ. Then, we’ve got another three or four employees dedicated to internal operations and administration for our franchise operations.” BVM: Are franchisees required to work with a specific set of vendors, or do they have some local control?