Joel Libava
Nothing pleases the owner of a franchise more than having warm bodies…and lots of them, in his or her franchise business. Nothing.
That’s because without those warm bodies…without foot traffic coming in and out of the franchisees’ location:
- Credit card processing machines won’t process transactions
- Cash register drawers won’t open
- Employees won’t have enough work to do
- Rent won’t get paid
- Bank loan payments won’t be mailed out
- New inventory won’t be ordered
- Franchise owners dreams won’t be realized
Etc.
In other words, things can get real ugly-real fast, without a steady stream of warm bodies coming into a franchise business location. That’s why warm bodies are needed immediately for franchise locations. Your franchise location. From the minute you open your doors for business.
One more thing: Empty stores aren’t very enticing.
Think about it. When you’re out and about, if you had the choice of stopping in a store that was busy…like an Apple retail store for example, which is not a franchise operation by the way, or a store that had 1-2 people in it, which one would you enter?
Another great example that has to do with foot traffic and human psychology is this one…
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Let’s say that you’re travelling with your family-you’re on vacation. Everyone in the car is getting hungry, and you’re driving through some medium-sized towns. Do you:
- Stop at a restaurant that has 2-3 cars in the parking lot and almost no one inside
- Stop in a restaurant that has a packed parking lot and not an empty table in sight
I’d guess that unless your family members were starting to get light-headed because they’re so hungry, you’d try to find a parking space in the parking lot of the busy restaurant. It’s human nature.
My dad taught me a cool trick he used when he was out of town on business-which was a lot. He said to not only to look for a restaurant in an unfamiliar town that was busy, but to scope out the cars that were in the parking lot of the busy restaurant. If the parking lot had a good amount of nice cars with local license plates, he felt that it was a good bet that the restaurant was good. To him it was a positive sign because upper-class local residents were spending their money there. Try it; it works.
Warm Bodies Needed Immediately For Franchise Locations
Now that you know what light foot traffic would mean to your franchise business, and how some potential customers decide whether or not to enter your establishment, let’s get down to business. Let’s get down to the business of getting more foot traffic into your franchise location. Let’s find you some nice, warm bodies.
One thing you can do that works…no matter what your retail or food-service business sells-is to offer free seminars.
Customers love free things. Customers also like getting educated, because it makes them feel better about their purchases.
Offering a free seminar…heck, you can call it a workshop, is one way to get people in your door.
Recently, I wrote an entire article on getting foot traffic into a retail location for Small Business Trends. In it I offered a few other foot-traffic generating ideas to help your franchise business succeed.
Read my article on foot traffic here.
