Building strong relationships is the key to succeeding in your franchise business. And this is true regardless of your market, industry, or location. Business is social. It’s people who run a business, people who work in the business, and people who buy from the business. Your success is not just numbers in a spreadsheet. Every win is because of people, so even though sales matter, relationships matter even more.

We just finished a two-part series on community involvement which perfectly highlights the power of building strong relationships with your community. Make sure to check it out (part 1 and part 2). But in a franchise business, there are many other relationships you need to build too.

  • Your relationship with your franchisor
  • Your relationship with your employees
  • Your relationship with your customers

Building strong relationships is such an essential component of franchise success that we will cover each of these groups separately in a series of articles specifically on relationship building. 

This is the first in the series, and we want to start today by laying the foundation for why relationships matter so much in growing a thriving franchise business.

7 Reasons Building Strong Relationships Is Important in Business

You may already consider relationships an important aspect of your franchise business. But have you considered ALL of these wonderful benefits? 

1. Relationships Increase Trust

When you build a relationship with others, you teach them, through experience, that they can trust you and your business. And when they know they can rely on you, great things happen.

  • Your franchisor is confident that you can represent the company well and provide a great customer experience.
  • Your employees listen to you, enabling you to lead your team better. 
  • Your customers count on you for quality products, services, and experiences, which brings repeat business.

2. Relationships Create Loyalty

Building strong relationships creates trust, and in time, that trust turns into loyalty. It’s a beautiful thing!

  • Retaining employees becomes easier because people love to work for you and your business.
  • Customers will always choose your business and encourage their friends and family to do the same.
  • Customer and employee retention is much more cost-effective than continually finding new customers and employees.
  • Loyalty translates to more sales, profit, and business growth.

Researchers have found that it takes an average of 5 purchases for a consumer to be considered a loyal client. This makes the point that building strong relationships – and experiencing the benefits such as loyalty – doesn’t happen overnight. It takes continuous effort, but that effort is so worth it.

3. Relationships Build Your Brand Reputation

Of course, by being part of a franchise, you’re already taking advantage of the existing brand reputation across the region or the country. People have encountered your brand before and know what to expect if they walk into your business too. 

But being part of a franchise isn’t everything. Individual franchises still get their own reputations as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ places to do business. For example, have you ever heard something like this: “The XYZ business here in town is horrible! I won’t go there! Although I do like the one in [location].”

This just shows that you can’t rely on the franchise name to build your store’s brand reputation. Taking time to build relationships with your franchisor, employees, customers, and community takes the stellar brand reputation that you start with and boosts it even higher.

4. Relationships Help Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Trust, loyalty, brand reputation. We’re building up to something here: the ultimate form of flattery for a business: word-of-mouth marketing! 

  • Loyal customers leave positive reviews online and recommend your business to others.
  • Happy employees who love their job help you recruit new workers.
  • Your franchisor sings your praises and highlights you as an example of an excellent franchise.
  • Your community supports you and is proud to have you as an active member.

5. Relationships Help in Hard Times

Hard times happen in any business. And sometimes unexpectedly, as business owners worldwide learned when the global pandemic struck in 2020. The relationships you have built will carry you through times like these. You’ll still have to navigate the rocky waters, but you’ll be backed by a group of loyal employees, customers, and the support of your franchisor and community. With their help, you’ll navigate the hard times and make it to the other side.

And if not? Well, relationships help there too. Build your connections to last beyond your business, and they just could carry you over to your next big venture.

6. Relationships Make Your Job Fulfilling

The above ideas show how building strong relationships will make your business profitable and respected. However, there is also a great benefit for you, the business owner, because it will make your job more fulfilling.

Knowing the people you work with and the customers you serve gives a sense of satisfaction and joy. You know why you wake up and go to work each day. You know whose lives you are touching and where you are making an impact. 

According to Indeed.com, some qualities of a fulfilling job include respectful coworkers, a healthy work environment, recognition of excellence, consistent engagement, growth, and benefit to others. All of these are possible when you work on building strong relationships with your franchisor, employees, customers, and community.

7. Building Relationships Makes You Better at Building Relationships

Building strong relationships takes a variety of skills, including: 

  • Interpersonal skills
  • Communication skills (verbal and non-verbal)
  • Listening skills
  • Empathy and emotional intelligence
  • Networking skills
  • Team-building skills

And perhaps some of these skills are not your strong suit. That’s okay! The nature of relationship-building is that the more you do it, the better you get. By making a full-fledged effort to build stronger relationships with your franchisor, employees, customers, and community, you’ll get a chance to work on these skills until they become second nature to you.

Building Strong Relationships—Stay Tuned for More!

We’ve made a strong case for why all franchise business owners should prioritize relationship building. And with that foundation laid, we are eager to share specifics on how you can build stronger relationships with your franchisor, employees, and customers. Stay tuned for the next article in this series!