How to be successful as a V4 Company franchisee » Portal Insights

Two years after becoming a franchisee partner at V4 Company, on a journey that I consider very successful, today I come to share five pieces of advice that I wish I had received at the beginning.

The tips are aimed at those who are considering buying a franchise and for those who already own one. Enjoy!

1. Define your goals (what does success mean to you?)

It may seem cliché, but being clear about your goals is essential to achieving success at V4 Company – as they say, for those who don't know where they want to go, any path will do.

As V4 Company grows – and everything indicates that it will continue to grow more in the coming years – the possibilities for those who are part of the network are increasingly greater and diverse.

You may want to be the biggest franchise, or want to be a reference in a certain segment. Maybe you want to be a partner in the parent company, or you want to make your unit attractive for sale (which was my case).

Therefore, understanding what success is will not only avoid conflicts of interest, but also help in daily decision-making.

In my case, for example, success has always been selling my unit to gain financial freedom. Having this clarity helped me make decisions like:

• focus on building equity rather than profitability;
• form a AAA team that could occupy leadership positions instead of centralizing management in me;
• focus on revenue growth rather than profit margin.

If my objectives hadn't been clear, I could have easily made the wrong decisions, which would have made a sale much more difficult, less profitable or even unfeasible.

2. View your unit as a separate company

It seems paradoxical, but the best way to stand out as a franchisee at V4 Company is to consider that you are not a franchisee.

I explain…

Unlike other franchises, V4 Company franchisees have enormous autonomy in managing the business. Whether it's hiring or dealing with a dissatisfied customer, each franchise unit can deal with the situation in the way it deems most efficient – ​​and of course, taking responsibility for it.

As a franchisee partner of V4 Company, you are an entrepreneur like any other – you need to look at the financial health of your business, selection process, leadership training, tax control, quality of operation, etc…

And the matrix?

In addition to offering training, materials and an ecosystem to accelerate your unit's learning curve, it assigns clients and provides very personalized support based on the needs (and difficulties) of each unit.

In other words, it plays a much more supportive role than a controlling one.

Coincidence or not, the units that stand out the most are those that most “buy into the fight” of solving their own problems, instead of outsourcing responsibilities to the headquarters.

3. Think about process from day one

As much as the dream of “easy money with digital marketing” is sold to us every day, the reality is that growing a business through the internet requires hard work.

In addition to there being no magic formula, each client will demand a completely personalized strategy and service.

Therefore, if you don't worry about efficient processes that can be replicated from day one, the tendency is for your operation to become increasingly chaotic.

And chaotic operations mean high churn, which is the number one enemy of any business whose business model depends on retention.

To be successful at V4 Company, understand that the only way to scale a service company is to create processes that can be replicated by people with a lower level of knowledge than you.

In fact, a great indicator of the quality of your processes is the level of experience that a person needs to have to run them independently, without the support of someone senior.

Below are some processes that I believe are essential for a healthy operation within V4 Company:

• Weekly review of client health (most important indicators);
• Weekly meeting between Accounts (who serves customers) and Head to talk about critical points per customer;
• Weekly meeting between Accounts and traffic manager (or Marketing Scientist) to consider new acquisition strategies;
• Monthly meeting with everyone in the unit, for updates on the company's objectives, learnings and current challenges;
• Monthly meeting between manager and employee, to talk about individual development and exchange feedback.

Of course, these are just the processes that I believe are essential for a quality operation.

As I said, each unit will have the autonomy to define its own – the most important thing is to have processes that make sense and prove to be effective for its operation.

4. Don't worry about selling before you have an efficient operation

Perhaps this is the most controversial advice I will give in this text.

What do you mean, I won't worry about selling? I want my unit to grow!

Yes, growing is good – but growing without first having control over the operation is like filling a leaky bucket with water. In addition to not making sense financially, you wear out your team (who will eventually jump ship) and burn your film with the matrix.

Furthermore, the moment to create your sales machine will arise naturally as you understand that your team has the capacity to absorb more customers, but the number of customers assigned by the head office is not enough.

But at what point should you consider your operation to be good enough to start accelerating sales? I recommend having at least 25 customers with a churn rate of less than 8%.

5. Your company is your team

It's not news that every business is made up of people, but when it comes to providing services, the importance of people must be multiplied by at least 20x.

Everything, absolutely everything, is dependent on people.

Seeing lots of numbers and graphs on a dashboard can make us forget that the quality of your operation depends on people…

1. qualified in hard and soft skills
2. motivated and aware of where they can reach
3. healthy in body and mind
4. with a feeling of self-worth

In practice, this means having a career plan by area (it's okay to change over time, but it's still better than not having one) and a mentoring process consistent with one-on-ones, which are individual meetings focused on the individual development of each person on the team.

Remember: for your unit to be successful, you need highly qualified people, and we know that money is not enough to retain this profile of professionals.

Final considerations

I've already written a text here about whether or not it's worth being a V4 Company franchisee.

Everything I said in this text remains the same. Even after selling my unit, I have enormous affection for people – I even continue to interact with the network at different levels and areas.

Of course I don't agree with everything, but living in this ecosystem for two years has taught me that this is a good sign.

Be sure to talk to the people at V4 Company if you are considering owning a franchise and follow me on Instagram – I am always sharing content like this and opening question boxes there.