How to strike that important balance of openness and collaboration with your franchisees. Franchising is all about relationships — those between unit owners and their employees, franchisees and their customers, franchises and suppliers. But the most important relationship — the one that is really the bread and butter of the franchise business model — is the relationship between the franchisor and the franchisee.

Successful franchisors constantly learn and innovate. It’s not enough to have a unique or first-to-market idea. You must constantly evolve and update your franchise to maintain steady growth. And if you set out to sell multi-units, demonstrating to the marketplace that you truly care about the community in which you operate will be critical.

Leaders must be in tune and set the tone with employees. Making yourself visible and approachable can go a long way in establishing rapport and relationships.

Building a strong culture is not only crucial to company success, it helps you through good times and bad, stabilizes employment and boosts customer satisfaction… not to mention making the enterprise a great place to work.

By focusing on four key elements, franchisors can have peace of mind that they’ve taken the right steps to build a system with franchisees equipped to be successful partners.

Any growing brand will face a time when it lacks the resources to run processes with consistency, so lay the technology rails down early.