How does Mystery Validation™ work?
I like to set the right expectations up front, the entire process from the time we start to the time we review the reports typically takes a few weeks.
This is not an email survey, we are not asking 1 or 2 easy questions, we are spending several hours on each report including talking on the phone with the existing Franchise owners.
The first thing we do is ask you a series of questions about your existing Franchise owners. The more information you can share the better the results will be.
Then we will go through a list of suggested questions that we will ask your existing Franchise owners.
We can provide suggestions or we can use your specific questions, or a combination, whichever you prefer, usually it ends up being a hybrid of what we suggest & your specific questions. We are 100% flexible on the questions, you make the final decision on this.
Then you provide us with a list of the existing Franchise owners you want us to validate with. We will need their Name, Email & Phone number along with any other information you can provide, i.e. owns multiple units, owns other businesses, was an engineer before joining the Franchise etc… The more information we have in advance the better the results.
Once we have all of the questions, contact information & any other information you can provide we will start contacting your existing Franchise owners to do the validation.
During the Mystery Validation™ process, we will call each Franchise owner on the list 3 times, we will send them 3 texts and send them 3 emails in an attempt to reach them, we will do a total of 9 attempts spread out over a 2 to 3 week period.
PLEASE NOTE: All questions are asked on the phone. Text & email are only used to set the appointment. We do not ask questions via email or text. This is not a survey. This is an in depth conversation on the phone. Each call typically takes us an hour to complete, although sometimes it does take more or less time and/or multiple calls depending on their availability and willingness to share their time.
During our phone conversations with your existing Franchise owners we will ask all of the questions we agreed on, we will also ask additional follow up questions about their answers. (the follow up question part is magical!)
Why is it magical? Well, for example, we might ask: How is the support from headquarters? Are you getting good support? What does that look like?
They might answer: The support isn’t that good, I rarely hear from anyone unless they want my money. I called HQ last week because I needed some help and still haven’t heard back from my Ops Manager. (Sound familiar?)
We would then ask a follow up: How do you define support, do you expect them to call you every day or do you want an email every week or a conference call each month? When you call them, what is a reasonable time frame for them to get back to you? How do you define “good support”? and then we would ask “What one thing could the team at HQ do that would dramatically improve the support”?
When we ask those follow up questions we get real answers. We are exploring buying the Franchise and have no horse in the race, so they will tell us what they really think versus telling you what they think you want to hear.
Asking those types of follow up questions is really where the rubber meets the road, this is what gives you the actionable information to implement real change in your system. That is the magical part. These answers are worth their weight in GOLD.
Knowing that the existing Franchise owner thinks there is a lack of support isn’t really the issue, the win here is finding out what they think good support actually is, that way you can then decide, do we want to provide that level of support to meet the existing Franchise owner’s expectations or do we need to adjust the existing Franchise owner’s expectation?
You always have those choices and you may end up choosing one or the other, but having that information is critical to creating & implementing real change.
Back to how it works! Once we are done with the validation calls with your existing Franchise owners we will provide you with a comprehensive report on each Franchise owner including the questions, answers, our notes & the answers to the follow up questions.
We will then discuss each Franchisee report with you on the phone and also talk about the overall results, trends and consistent items. If you allow us to, we will make a few suggestions on how you can use the information to implement change and help you identify the changes that provide the most impact.
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