Tools vs. Traction: Dave Hansen on How to Roll Out Tech That Franchisees Actually Use

Hey everybody. Welcome to today's webinar. I am so excited to have Dave Hansen, the CEO of ClientTether here with us today. For those who don't know, ClientTether is a platform built specifically to help franchise systems, scale through growth. They're on the CRM, the automation side. Really just better follow up throughout, on the development and the operation side.

And I'm super excited to talk to Dave today about tools versus traction. This is a topic that we came up with just thinking about all of the experience Dave has had at being a technology leader, a franchise owner, leading sales organizations, doing it all. So anyway, Dave, I'm super excited to get into it.

Welcome, welcome on the webinar.

Well, thanks for having me, Gary. This is gonna be a lot of fun today.

Yeah, I'm excited. So, I mean, listen, before we dive into it, would love to just hear in your own words a little bit about your background. For everybody that's tuning in.

Sure. Yeah. So, I, you know, I appreciate the intro. It was, I think, pretty good. So I'll, I'll keep this relatively brief, but, my, my wife and I, a couple years ago, we bought some franchises. I'd been in, I'd been in the industry about seven, seven and a half years. It's hard, and because I work with so many brands and they do so much, Fran Dev in our system, I get to see a lot of the FTDs and the item nineteens.

And I'm always curious as I talk to the founders about their stories. So I learned a lot and so I just had this itch to, to get into franchising, buy some. And so we did and grew it. Had a couple team up athletics franchises, grew it really fast. And then we had, we grew it fast enough that the neighboring franchise franchisee was like, I wanna buy you guys out.

You're building all this business. So then we had this, you know, within like 17 months, had this really good exit, which I, I hear is absolutely abnormal. And that's okay. I don't do any, don't do anything the normal way, I guess. So, we, so I, I, we were on the FAC, so I was helping to guide the franchise.

I've done a lot of coaching with franchise founders. We do a lot of work, infr dev, but we also do a ton of work with like, service brands that they're trying to figure out how to get their franchise owners to, to create scale and consistency throughout their system. Technology can help. So it's been fun, but I, you know, do a lot of work.

You know, the Service Franchise Summit, so we host an event now

Mm-hmm.

For sure. I was trying to figure out the best way to do things, and I've been on, you know, panels and, and led discussions and keynotes and all sorts of things, so I, I just feel like I'm pretty dialed into to some of the needs that are in the franchise industry and love this space.

Just love the space.

Yeah, I mean, when I, when I joined the space, a few years ago, you were kind of one of the first faces I met and kind of welcomed me in and you, you introduced us to all this parts and everything. You said. The franchisee side, the development side. The operation side. I know that you sit across so much of it, so excited.

Same.

So maybe that's a good place to start, where we just said around this idea that, you know, people come to you guys with problems on development, on operations, right? And you've seen it in other places. You know, when people come to you for a solution or a tool, and maybe we can abstract, that's not to just you or me, but in general, when people are looking for tools, we, you know, that's.

That's typically starting with a problem. Right? And, and they're looking for a solution to the problem. So walk me through it in your opinion. You know, what is it the, I have a problem all the way to, I need a tool. What does that process look like for a buyer?

So I will not share any, any names of

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I, but I wanna share some real examples. Right before this meeting, a meeting with a member of my team and we're trying to help a brand solve a couple of complex issues. Been a client for a long time, but only in one part of the business, only in nda, but they got crazy issues on the unit side and, They what? Let me just start with this. Most franchise systems don't understand their problems well enough to really go to solutioning. I'll just start with that, and this is what we discover all the time is we're working with these brands is we'll say, Hey, well what is your process for, let's say national account sales? And they're like, spread. Is their answer. They're like, what? Like, no, no, no. Like, what is your flow? Like, how is this supposed to work? What's an optimal approach? You know, like, and, and so I, I would say it's, it's funny because it's a universal challenge. Like people that want to solve a problem with a tool, they're hoping the, the tool will help them define their problem first.

They just want to. Like they say, well I need, I need AI to do this. Like, well AI to do what, you know, like, so I'd say that's the biggest challenge that we run into upfront is sometimes I spend hours consulting with the brand before we get to any solutioning. Because sometimes franchise systems, they just don't have enough people or expertise.

Sometimes as they grow, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm Tom the Plumber. And actually I shouldn't say that 'cause there's a brand with that name, but like I'm Jimmy. Plumber and, and, I was a great plumber and I got convinced to franchise this, and now people like the franchise and it's going okay. But like, I don't, I don't know enough about business or BizOps or tech to even know what my problems are to then start to come up with a solution.

So maybe a long-winded way to say, you need to identify what the actual process needs to be in the problem first before you try to slide into solutioning with tools.

It sounds like that's kind of the difference between I have a process that I'm trying to accelerate or codify with a tool versus the idea that I actually want the tool to drive my process. And you're saying that actually there's a bit of a disconnect there where you need to have an understanding of.

You know, your outcome or your ideal outcome before you start layering in tools, not hoping that the tool will somehow lead you down this path. Is that right?

All the time. Yeah, that that's exactly right. And, and frankly in a, in an industry where people should be codifying everything, right, like operations manual should define it all. To be fair to our franchise friends, like their businesses are evolving faster than they can. They can document sometimes because they launch and then after two or three units, they're like, this isn't working.

Or they're like, we need to roll out national account sales. A totally different process. That's a real enterprise level sophisticated solution, and a lot of 'em don't, haven't really thought through it or they've never done it before.

So you have that through line, right? You have that, you know. All right. Ideally, I would have my data. I would, I would understand a process that I'm either have or I'm trying to get to. I think both are fine. And then you implement a tool to get there, but that disconnect breaks down somewhere. Where do you think that disconnect usually is for?

Somebody, are they jumping the gun or tooling? Do they not have a vision or is it more like, walk me through why it can't be done in parallel? Right? Like the idea is like, well I know I wanna use this tool. I'll figure out some of that process along the way. And, you know, we're business owners, so much of what we do is figure it out on the fly, right?

It's just, it's just the reality. So why is that not work here?

Well, it, it doesn't work because a lot of times people jump into the wrong tools. Right?

Hmm.

Nobody's, well, with the exception of maybe Johnny Fran franchise and like Zach, most people aren't born in franchise and they come from another industry, so they bring. Habits or good tools in other contexts into the system.

So I'll give you an example. A lot of people come into franchising and like the service side, like I need, I, I knew HubSpot and Salesforce or Zoho or these other tools that are not built for franchising and, or I'm like a chuck and a truck and I was using like a house call pro or a job or something.

That's like a

Mm-hmm.

Solution for a chuck in a truck or a stand in a van. And then they're like, now I'm gonna deploy this across. So they'll bring tools with them 'cause they're like, I need a CRM. Like, I need to have a CRM. They haven't defined what the process needs to be with that tool, but they know they need it.

So a lot of times people will drag tools in. Like, I was a finished carpenter, so I got a bunch of little tiny hammers, but I'm actually trying to build a house now, and that's a different construction project. And so now I need to have like an actual air hammer, like a pneumatic, gun to get the job done.

But they're using finishing hammers, trying to tap in, you know, nail, a couple penny nails. So it's, it's, it, it, I see that a lot. Usually we have to unravel. Some stuff before we start to roll out the right solution and people have the right ideas. Generally speaking, I, I don't think people are dumb.

I think people are pretty smart. They just don't have the, the experience to know like, well, what are, what, what's the right tool for the job?

Hmm.

So because they don't have the right tool for the job, they sometimes will build layers of really cruddy process around inadequate tools, and build their operations manual around inadequate tools, not realizing there's actually an easy answer.

Sometimes there really is an easy button.

So actually, well that's something interesting there. You said that it's not about building a tool, it's about building a system. Right. And in franchising, right. You know, there's, it's a unique system. It's a unique process and tools that are more end-to-end. For it are better. But the reality is it is a system and, you know, client TE's not end-to-end harmonized.

Like there is nothing that is end-to-end for a business. Like they're gonna need their, you know, POS, they're gonna, they're need something, you know, there's, there is something there. So then how do you think about. You know, how would you advise one of your, customers or just even a friend in thinking about designing a whole system that is right for them rather than, you know, a collection of tools that are stitched together?

You know, how does, how do you get people to think at that systems level, you know, architecture.

Yeah. Well, it comes back to, and, and maybe if we put it in the context of like, let's talk about harmonize and. Coaching. Like you have to be able to have a system that you can, you can coach on that you can, that, that has gotta have visibility into, you know, into what's happening inside of the system. And you have to be able to, give your, you know, and, and when you're very small, you don't have field coaches, right?

Your, your FBCs, you just have the owner and maybe the ownership group that's doing the coaching, but they have to have data visibility. So that's a mandatory requirement, but it's gotta be data visibility across the parent child architecture, right? In franchising, you'll have your franchise order, but you need to have entity level data that's segregated for your franchise owners. Trying to use kind of bastardize in the, the, the territory function and like other platforms doesn't really cut it. After about, after about 20 grand and, and, and a lot of swearing, from your, your franchise owners, you'll realize that using like an enterprise class solution, and trying to make it fit into franchising doesn't really work real well. Just ask, well, I won't say it. Major floor flooring company in the industry. Over a million dollars on, on Salesforce. Throwing it away right now. Terrible investment decision, right? Like there, there are a lot of things like that that happen in this industry. And so if we take it back to your question, like how should they be designing it? They've gotta start with the consumer experience in mind first. Just got back from Unconference. Who's it? That was, it was Alex from Dogtopia who was talking about that, and then it was Steve from Hot Works. Be obsessed about how do we create an excellent consumer experience that we can then automate and scale around. How do we have a system that can then take that and then replicate it across all these different entities that we're signing up? So thinking about it in those terms. From, from the, the ma, the three, like if you're a home service company, three major categories of engagement, new lead engagement. You have to be able to automate, create a really rich and engaging experience upfront for your, for your leads that are coming in through any channel.

Mm-hmm.

The. How do I create a, an excellent deal flow experience so that I'm touching them at all the right times in the flow. I'm giving them what they're asking for, proposals, payments, whatever. And then, and then I'm also post deal, like, how am I engaging them after we've delivered service?

Am I sending 'em a handwritten note in the mail to thank them? Am I, am I, know, am I gonna follow up with a review request online? Ask for a referral? Am I gonna cross-sell, upsell? So, or do do something to retain them with long-term nurturing. Like you've gotta be thinking. That customer journey and then defining the process around it. Automating everything you possibly can. So there's no burden on your franchise owners. The less burden in the process to them, the less they actually have to do. That's, that's, menial that the more, rich the experience will be for them. 'cause they're gonna see deals advancing through a funnel.

That you've designed every day, they'll be reminded the value you're providing them as a And that's the worst question when you're franchisor is, well, what have you done for me lately? Why am I a franchisee to the franchisor? Why am I paying this royalty? Everybody gets to that point. But if every day they are waking up in the morning and before they can eat their Cheerios, they have deals that have landed, have have been followed up with by automation. Scheduled on their calendar by, let's say a centralized call center from the franchise or whatever, or just automated follow up system. If they wake up every morning to that, you'll get that question a lot less as a franchisor, and there's a lot more trust built. But it's really, I think, all around the franchise or the customer journey at the franchisee level. You design that properly and then you automate on top of that.

Hmm. I, you know, as, as you were talking just now. I kept thinking about, you know, is he talking about the high level or he's talking about the franchise owner In reality, is he talking about both? Right. And you know, there's something about, you know, we, we all interact with non franchise system all the time.

And the idea that if they make a decision on technology, they can just roll it out. But as a franchise brand where you have a brand, a technology, but you need to make. Every single franchisee successful on it. And you can't just say, oh, well, you know, that location over there, that's a loss leader or whatever it is.

Like, you can't afford that because that's somebody's livelihood over there. You can't just say that it's an aggregate, we're gonna be okay on this thing. You need to make that every single unit successful. So, you know, as we think about that, the technology needs to work every single time at every, franchise owner and every franchisee.

How do you make sure that technology is. Effective and stickiness, sticky and deployed well at, you know, when you're talking at the scale of thousands, how do you do that?

Yeah, well, I'll contrast it. Let what doesn't work? Is rolling out a system, or a tool that's exclusively designed for reporting purposes, right? So it adds no, it, it doesn't create lift for the franchise owner. It creates drag. So you can't do that if, if you, if you deploy a tool that Excl is exclusively, they have to log in every day.

They have to manually do this. Then manually do that, then click a button to log a call, then click a button to send and like to, to, to justify that they just did some work. Like if you create a system that's gonna just create extra work for them, and you deploy that because you want data recipe for failure, every time I could list off three major platforms that I see people do that with all the time. No lift. So if you provide a tool creates lift, meaning the franchise owner every day. Eating their Cheerios, things are happening for them and it makes their life easier. They have to hire fewer people to, and have, they have less overhead now because the tool's automating the front end lead follow up process, just as an example, right.

Snap in and AI and, and I, I'm meeting my Cheerios while appointments are being set. Or, you know, Brigham Dallas was talking about their ai, their, their front desk, you know, that they, they've eliminated some, some with technology, the need for a front desk person. 'cause people can self schedule, walk in and check in on their own. If you're creating systems like that, your franchisees are gonna be thrilled because it's gonna cost them less, but it's also gonna create a consistent experience. Think about Chick-fil-A. I go to Chick-fil-A in Raleigh, North Carolina, or Chick-fil-A in Salt Lake City. I should have almost the exact same experience.

I might not even recognize if you drop me into one, blindfolded me, spun me around and dropped me into one in Nebraska, I wouldn't know where I was 'cause I'd have the exact same experience. It needs to be the same with our, with our service brands, that are following up on leads. It you get. But the system has to create lift and it also has to create consistency of experience for the consumer. And, and that, I think that's what franchising's all about.

Interesting. So a lot of that is you're saying it has to be simple. It can't be, well, if you pull these three levers and you know, twist these five knobs, then it's gonna be consistent and all you have to do is turn these three levers and twist these five knobs. Right? I think the reality is like it's not gonna happen.

So it needs to be easy, simple, and very. I guess easily deployable. And I think that's where I've seen a lot of, folks who are like, oh, let me, let me show you what we can do, and this is their existing tools, and they're gonna be like, let me demo it to you. And it just goes off on this journey where if somebody wanted to do something, then they could ask this in a certain way and get that kind of answer, and then you start seeing something that demos well but doesn't actually deploy well.

Right. And I, I think you and I had a quick chat about this idea of what actually works in the field versus what looks good in the demo.

Oh, absolutely. Well, and demos. Everybody's got a great demo, man. Everybody does. Some people spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a cool fake demo. But people, the tell is are they, are they doing it live? Can they, can they dynamically show. Your specific circumstance or did they have their systems engineer spin something up to make it seem good?

But usability is king in franchising. Like franchise owners have such variability and experience when it comes to sales or technology or CRM or whatever, that you have to make it so simple for them that they can, they can also train their people to

Mm-hmm.

'cause the other challenge is if you get a tool that's complex and then the owners are capable of managing, but they start to grow. And they now have to have line workers or somebody, you know, that they're managing, use the system and it's, and they need a PhD in tech to figure it out. Like now you can't hire properly, you'll, or you'll fail a lot, you'll struggle because the overhead of the system you've deployed now outstrips the value that it can provide.

And as you try to scale. So you gotta be super careful about ease of use. Spot on, Gary. Like I think that's the key.

What do you think are the, the wrong in baked assumptions there? Right. I think, you know, we talk about what franchisers tend to underestimate or maybe overestimate. Their franchisees ability. What do you think some of those critical over underestimations are?

Oh man. Well, I, I think when we talk about the people side of it, the soft side, I think franchisors just assume all their franchisees are gonna be great operators or they're gonna be good at technology, or they're gonna be good at sales. That's probably the number one thing I see that's a big error, is assuming that the, the, the owners are gonna be good at doing sales.

I see that all the time. They're gonna have natural instincts that align with the, the owner of the franchise who's a crazy salesperson, right? Like that. 'cause usually that's who the owner is. They're, if they're a successful owner at a, a single location business, then they franchise, they're probably an excellent salesperson.

So they, they hire a bunch of accountants and, marketers and people who never wanted to get into sales to now go out and do a B2B sales process and oops, like I see that a lot. So the people sides are an area I see there's a lot of, a lot of air. On those kind of assumptions.

Got it. Okay. So maybe,

What do you see though?

Because I mean, you live in this world. I mean, what are some of the big areas or those assumptions you see people making? And we can talk about the tech side too,

Well, I, I think, I think a lot of what I see is the flip side where people are saying, well, if I just outline it for people, and this is. You know, talk about process, right? And, you know, we talk about technology process, but there's also like a coaching process, right? The idea that if I can create a, you know, 15 step evaluation and processize what it takes to run a successful fill in the blank, that like, this process is foolproof.

And the reality is it's not. It, it, there's just so many. It depends, right? There's so many idiosyncrasies in franchising where, you know, my market, my, You know, my, my region, my sales team, my size, my scale, how much capital I have, right? All of these things are factors when you say, how do I drive performance?

And a good franchisor can meet the franchisee where they're at when they do that coaching. So a lot of it is, well, your 15 step process, sure it's a 15 step process, but it actually requires, you know, 500 if then cases for accommodating all these other variables. And that's where I think. There's kind of a tension between how much I have to give a process because I'm a franchisor, but how do I allow for all these weirdness and uniqueness of every brand and what they see in their market?

And that's a tough balance, and I think that that's where people either over prescribe or under prescribe. And now, you know, I, I see this as technology allows for a third option where it's kind of constrained and intelligent and can work within that space. But I think people. Our need to be broken out of that spectrum of one or the other end.

And let's talk about a challenge. Like we, we had a challenge and assumption that you just brought up, which is so core 15 step process. Operations manuals, like some of these processes are super well documented. Guess what? The, the franchisor

I.

Is assuming people are actually gonna read that freaking, encyclopedia that they wrote. They're not like, that's the one of the funniest things when someone's like, here's our operations manuals. Everything's documented. It's 200 pages. I'm like, oh my, the fact that it's 200. You've just, you've just disincentivized half of your franchise owners from even cracking it open, which is awful. Right?

Like as a franchise franchisee, no joke. I don't even know if I had an operations manual. Like, I, I'm sure I probably did, but like I'd never once in the time that we owned that franchise, looked at it.

Well, there's an interesting point there, which is that if you ask the franchisee that has an operations manual. And then they have access to the VP of Ops, right? And I hear from VP of ops, they'll call me, I, they call me all the time to ask. And the reason is they're not calling because they don't have the answer in the operations manual.

They're calling. 'cause they want to know what the VP of Ops thinks is going to work the best for them, which is a very different question. It's not what's in there, it's what do you think is gonna work? And that's where a franchisor should be coaching from is you should be doing X, not because it's in the document.

Because I'm pretty sure it's gonna make you more money if you do X in Y way. And, and that's kind of the core of coaching or coaching in context or doing anything, right. Engaging with a lead, engaging, with a, a prospect, you know, all of those things that you guys do. Doing that in context is very important.

Oh yeah. And you gotta have data for that. But there's

Yeah,

People are inherently a little bit lazy. I

Of course.

All will. Have the easy button in our life. And so I also see, I see a lot of people, like in my case, I, I would rather find the answer myself than call hq. But in some cases, like I had to call hq 'cause I didn't want to go sift through a 200 page document.

The, the emotional inertia, the mental inertia it was gonna take for me. To get into the groove, to open up this 200 page document, start trying to control F it and find things, and like, it just wasn't worth it. Like I, I would've spent more time searching around that document to find an answer than just to call hq. And so I think, I think that's part of it too. So accessible and easy, like these words, like they're, they're not just. They're, they're mission critical because if you don't, then your field coaches, right? In your world, they spend gobs of time trying to find answers. But if there's data you, there's data to show, Hey, this is what's actually working.

Like these guys have a better close rate than you do. You wanna know why? Because they have a different lead mix than you do. Or because they're following up with more consistency. They're making two times as many phone calls as you are per lead. Guess what has an impact? So if you can now lead with data and insights, normative insights, now, now your coaching will be 10 times more effective.

Well, well that's, there's something really awesome about what you just said, which is that you kept saying the word you. Right. And the idea that if a good franchisor roots every sentence in the franchisees experience, not theirs. Right. And, and let's talk about the operations manual. It shouldn't be, you need to do blank because I said so or because I have it.

It's, you should do it because you'll be more successful and you will make more money and you will make. This much money if you do this thing right. And I think that's, people like being centered in advice, right? People like they don't like generic things. They wanna feel like it's tailored to them. And that's just reality.

And that's when they succeed.

Yeah, I, I totally agree with you. And one more layer of that is franchisees also would rather hear it from their peer than from you as

Absolutely.

Franchisor. So you need, you need peer data to coach with. You need to be able to look at the data, like normative data and say, Hey, in your region. You guys, people tend to have this kind of a conversion.

They tend to have this type of a booking rate on, on new leads in your 20 points below that. Dave, we talk about why you think that might be? Know who's really killing it right now? Frankie, just up the road from you in, in Northern Chicago. Would it be helpful if I got you and Frankie together so you, he can share with you some of the things he's doing, or would you like me to share with you some of the best practices I know he's got in place? This coaching is now low risk. It's not an ego bust, it's a oh, like everyone else is doing okay. A little fomo, I guess, helps in this case, but, but it's not fomo. This isn't chincy. This is, this is effective.

Mm-hmm.

Being able to coach with insights from peers. Mission criticals. So we talk about tools. You gotta have tools that are gathering the data that can give you normative data so that you can, as the franchisor coach with that, or start to even better create peer groups or one-on-ones with people who are excellent and stink at something. But you gotta know that from real data.

Well, now that we've gone onto my favorite soapbox, which is coaching and AI and all that. So anyway, we were met here to talk about tools and traction and all that. And maybe if you're willing, Dave, maybe we could just do, like a final three questions, quick, easy, and just advice for anybody who's tuning in on technology.

Yeah, see. Sure.

First one was, you know, franchise leaders. Obviously they're always looking at technology. What should they do differently if they want to root technology in traction rather than a point in time solution?

Well, I, I, I hate to repeat some things, but I'm gonna just, just clarify like, I think that they

I.

Sure that the solutions that they're, they're selecting are legitimately reducing the working overhead of the franchise owners, and they also need to communicate the value. Of that, of that solution to the Fran in the franchise owner's terms like this solution's gonna reduce about 15% of your overhead and it's gonna double your lead conversion rate. That discussion. Every owner's gonna be like, really? Oh, my costs go down and I'm gonna get better revenue. Like if you're putting everything, every technology solution in context for why it matters to the franchise owner, then you can also prove it with a pilot group. I, I just, I can't preach that enough.

We haven't talked about that, but anytime you're gonna roll it out, make sure FAC is involved in the decision making in the review process, and then you've got some of those FAC members that are involved in kind of a pilot launch of the, of the tech. Then you show up rather than showing up to the network with.

Hey, we got a cool new solution. We're gonna roll this thing out. It's gonna be awesome. It's, Hey, we rolled this thing out to these five peers. This is what they said about it. And now the peers are selling to peers. I think so that I, I'm going a little long on the question, but I think it's about understanding the true need.

Getting a solution that's actually gonna create Lyft, and then, then proving it's gonna create Lyft. And having the franchise owners themselves tell their peers about how it created Lyft. That's the real, the real way to roll a tech. And a lot of people try to short circuit it and it doesn't work as well.

Got it. So that's kind of that first part, which is you understand it, you, you know, you pilot it, you start pitching it. Right? Then you're starting to build traction at that meat of it. When you're pushing it out to everybody, all the franchisees. What kind of. You know, behaviors and rhythms should you expect to see from your franchisees as you're doing that mass rollout.

But if you said, I'm gonna ship you a kilogram of gold in the mail to your franchise owners, you'd have about about five to 10% of them be like, I don't want your gold. Like they would just push back. So one. I, I, I, you, you, you gotta anticipate pushback no matter how freaking good it is. No matter how many of their peers are telling 'em, it's excellent.

No matter how much more money it's making people, you'll always have the naysayers and the people that push back just 'cause they don't trust you. Welcome to franchising. So I, I honestly recommend put all those people, like create cohorts. And then, and then put those people on the end so that the critical mass of the system is having experiences and winning with the tech.

And then they're gonna feel like idiots for whining about it because 90% of the franchises are now using it and happy and making more money. I feel like I just strayed a little bit away from your question, but maybe, maybe rephrase it and we can get back on

No, I, I think, I think that's accurate, right? It's kind of, you know, all right. You're saying that we're segmenting out that 5% that is naysayers. We already have the pilot of 5% that are, you know, cutting edge and, and leaning in. How do you develop a behavior around that middle 90%? Right. Not just the tool, not implementing it, but making sure that there's conversations and systems and, you know.

Just rituals within the organization to use that technology properly.

Yeah, it's a bell curve, right? Really bell curves are everywhere, right? But in adoption of technology and use, use of, of new systems, it's about the same. So, yeah, you'll have your 60% that once you, you say, Hey, this is the new tech, and you roll it out, they'll just do it. But you need to have rituals.

So one, proper training, like real training. Have as much as you can. Unless they make you pay a ridiculous amount for it. But even if they do have the proper training protocols in place with the, the person who's the expert in the tech, make sure you're, you have, you also have to develop internal expertise in whatever you're rolling out.

And that's hard. 'cause there's overhead, right? And that's people, you have to have people available for that. But. Then have regular internal blend and hybrid meetings after you E, after you've gone through proper training and rollout, your field coaches also have to be trained properly so they can be the point experts on whatever you're rolling out.

They need to be coaching in whatever T tools you're rolling out. So I think part first training is internal corporate team and FBCs, and then you've got your pilot group that gets trained and lodge. And then as you're rolling out these other cohorts, you've gotta have the ritual of having regular meetings, like cohort, Hey, we're gonna get together.

Every, the, the third Friday of every month or the, you know, the last Tuesday or whatever. And every month we're gonna review this and we, we need to be peer-to-peer sharing. So facilitate that, that peer-to-peer sharing of what have you learned, how is it working, what questions have you got with an expert, hopefully an FBC, and, or initially it might be the, the supplier. We do that with our clients all the time, but we really want the in-house expertise to be with the FBCs because then they can use the tool to coach up performance. Those, and then, and then sharing tips and tricks, having, having suppliers do quarterly huddles and, and, and showing what's new or getting people amped up, creating case studies internally is really successful.

So those sorts of rituals will help roll out a successful. Deployment, and then also talk about successes with it ongoing. So every time you have a power up call, you know, with, with your franchise owners, have somebody assigned to share how this new technology helped 'em close a deal. And if you hear enough of that resonance from, from your peers. That's the ideal case is have the, the peers do it, then that that ritual will cement the, the, the value of that technology. And it also takes the pressure off the zore. The zore iss not constantly tapped at

Mm-hmm.

Happened. No, it's Bob, my neighbor up the road. He's the one that's telling me about it.

That, that, that resonates better with franchise owners.

I love that. All right, last one. So we have, you know, let's say we have this full adoption. It's rolled out, you know, we have even that tailing 5% on, you know, everyone in franchising talks about the three prongs of franchise or franchisee supplier, right? What does that good partnership look like to continue driving ever greater results?

Long term, right? We're implemented, everybody's using it. We're sharing our wins. Bob's our advocate, right? All that's happening. What does that collaboration between those three parties look like long term?

You know, when everyone else is sitting in like the, you know, the keynote sessions, the suppliers are actually this other pond that gets neglected and, and overcharged for everything. They're, we're out there talking about strategies like we're in a privileged position, right? You are. 'cause you work with a ton of brands.

We work with hundreds of brands. We get to see what legitimately works. If, if the market's shifting, we'll probably be the one who notices it before the brands do. 'cause we'll be like, oh, there's a weird trend across 300 franchise development locations. Right. So, so I'd say we gotta make sure there's a good partnership where the franchise brands are leaning into their suppliers expertise. Who knows more about, about HR and, and placement in the franchise industry than like career plug, right? Like they're doing it across hundreds of locations. They know way more about it than even like the, the big platform companies do who are seeing it across 10, 10 different brands.

Right.

I think part of it is ongoing strategy updates.

Obviously. We're incentivized to continue to innovate, to stay ahead of the market trends, to find the best AI and pull it into the platform like I would say constant, you know, reg regular engagement, at least quarterly engagement to talk about strategies. Franchise brands also have strategic needs that change. So keeping your supplier partners in, aware of what you're trying to accomplish as a franchise brand. All that it does is enables your Fran, I mean, why not let your franchise suppliers who are already embedded in your ecosystem know about what you're trying to work on? 'cause they might just go and innovate it.

Or might they might say, oh, we just built that, or that's in development, or, or are you sure you wanna do that? 'cause I've seen 15 other brands do it this way and that might work better for you. Like there, I think there needs to be a little bit more collaboration at, on the strategy side. And I don't say that because.

I just feel left out. I say that because, like, where I've done that with franchise brands, they usually lead their category and, or, or they jump ahead or they just double their, I have a brand that has doubled their revenue for each one of their franchises, just by rolling out a simple adjustment and the way they use, they use our tech now for, for something they were outsourcing, the revenue

That's awesome.

60 days.

I.

Right.

I mean, it's, it's, it really is just, it's such a natural junction for cross pollination of ideas, right? The idea that, you know, we're spending our time talking to hundreds of brands all the time and that cross pollination, even if it's not our domain, right? Like we don't operate in the development space.

But I have opinions and I have vendors and I have thoughts on what it would be like to run a good development org. So, absolutely. Last question always, Dave, if people have, follow ups or people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

LinkedIn's pretty easy. You can also email me directly, dave@clienttether.com. And I, as you might be able to tell, I kind of like the, this whole aspect of sharing best practices and talking to people so I don't, don't feel like you're gonna be signing up for a sales meeting, upfront. But happy to reach out LinkedIn, david client tether.com and I'll, I'll jump in and help where I can.

Awesome. Well, Dave, thanks so much for the time. Always a great time.

Thanks Gary.