Essential steps to more effective and accountable field marketing.

If you don't have a $10,000,000 marketing budget and need to be more competitive, attract more customers, and achieve higher sales levels, a field marketing and local store marketing (LSM) system is essential. It must be a strategic and tactical component of any successful marketing program. Educating, motivating, and encouraging franchisees to execute field marketing tactics is a critical element for highly successful stores, and all too often it is difficult to achieve at the field level. However, implementation of effective LSM tactics will have a dramatic impact on customer counts and sales growth that will propel average stores to become highly successful and profitable.

Local neighborhood marketing is the only marketing initiative where the franchisee has control of the performance and success of their store. The franchisor's marketing staff must develop the proper environment and field marketing structure to help ensure and encourage success throughout the network, especially among struggling stores. Effective field marketing initiatives will not only increase customer counts and sales growth, but will also become a competitive weapon in taking customers away from the competition. For franchisees to maximize the sales growth opportunities their market area offers, they must have the proper knowledge, tools and motivation to succeed.

For smaller franchise organizations that do not have the budget or store concentration for electronic mass advertising vehicles, field marketing and LSM programs become even more essential. For smaller as well as larger franchise organizations, effective and well-structured field marketing initiatives will:

* propel new stores to break-even faster,

* allow struggling stores to achieve higher sales levels,

* take customers away from the competition,

* increase customer counts, increase sales, and

* tie in with the national and regional marketing direction, branding and media strategy.

Many franchise organizations may not have the staff or the budget to fully develop and implement a successful field marketing program. An endorsed marketing services firm should be considered to offer objectivity, credibility and support the franchisor's marketing direction.

The responsibility of a field marketing program is to:

* educate and motivate the franchisee to become involved in the marketing process,

* motivate new customers to seek out the store for its products and services,

* encourage frequency of visits, and

* take customers from the competition.

Key steps in developing an effective and successful field marketing environment:

* Establish system-wide benchmark sales growth standards for measuring stores' performance based on length of time in business, and by product sales categories. For example, determine the average sales of stores that have been open for one, two, five years, and longer. Each franchisee will have an immediate comparison of their performance based on the entire network's performance by these standards and will serve as a motivating tool for them to achieve new sales levels. This will allow each franchisee to establish relevant short-term and long-term sales growth goals and objectives. Each franchisee should review and access their performance on a monthly basis by analyzing their royalty reports with a specific worksheet. This data should be provided to the corporate marketing department and to the marketing services firm to review and analyze. These benchmarks should be communicated in the field marketing workshop.

* Develop and implement field marketing workshops, conducted in the field for franchisees and mangers to educate, motivate, and provide specific step-by-step direction that can begin to be implemented the next day. The workshop should be developed to address the relevant marketing issues and challenges the franchisees face. Each franchisee should be shown how to properly analyze their store's performance by the benchmark standards, average daily customer counts, average customer transaction, and other key items. These calculations will reveal the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities for the store. The franchisees should have an opportunity and be encouraged to participate and share their experiences and knowledge. This will enable the franchisees to learn from one another and develop camaraderie, as well as learn new marketing techniques. Specific tactics should be presented with accompanying tools and workbooks.

* Conduct store marketing consultation sessions. Several in-store marketing services should be developed in conjunction with the workshop. The franchisees can select from several custom-designed sessions that will address specific challenges and opportunities that each franchisee faces in their local marker area. Marketing consultation services may include the development of an annual local store marketing plan, business prospecting session, suggestive selling workshop, and others. These sessions are hands-on learning mini-workshops conducted individually with each franchisee.

* Create direct response vehicles that generate customer traffic, as an element in the field marketing strategy. For example, direct mail is an excellent vehicle to project the image and positioning of the franchise, communicate the products and services offered, identify the store's location with a locator map, and a special offer to generate trial. Four-color jumbo postcards are the most effective vehicle and allow for a post-mailing analysis to evaluate the responses by zip codes or postal carrier routes as well as by demographics of the respondents. This will allow targeting geographically and demographically for more effective and cost efficient mailings in the future.

* A comprehensive follow up system that established accountability should be developed to ensure the franchisees are implementing the recommended tactics and to discuss the results and to address any questions or concerns. It will also provide a format for obtaining feedback from the franchisees. Once a plan is developed for a franchisee, coaching calls should be placed on a periodic basis as a follow up mechanism. Many success stories will evolve from this process. Documentation of the results should be encouraged and shared as a motivational tool for the other franchisees.

* A recognition and reward system should be established to reward successful performance and provide recognition perhaps in a system-wide newsletter or during quarterly meetings.

The properly developed field marketing system and programs will result in dramatic results.

John Lee is owner of Impact Marketing Services. He can be reached at 800-836-6625 or Jlee @ImpactMarketingServices.com.