Problem-Solving in Branch Organizations

Have you ever worked in a branch office?

For those in the staffing industry today, the answer is overwhelmingly, “Yes.” Then why does it come as a surprise that market leadership in the staffing industry has as much to do with branch effectiveness as it does with pure recruiting or sales. For the account manager who wants to lead a branch, the branch manager who wants to lead a district, or the regional manager who wants to become president, the path to greater responsibility always requires the mastery of branch effectiveness.

When I say branch effectiveness, I don’t just mean whether Branch #442 is making as much money as Branch #443. Branch effectiveness is much larger than any one branch; it also includes the “branch canopy” (the overall shape and structure of the entire branch organization): how many branches, what size, what locations, what geographic reach, what technology, what regional divisions? The way these questions are answered can lead to huge differences in sales, expense and net profit outcomes. I’ve seen it and so have you.

Several years ago I found that some branch-based businesses generate as much profit from the top 10 percent of their branches as they do from the bottom 90 percent. Understanding and addressing that dynamic is the key to maximizing your success in field operations — and the key to your development as a long-term driver of profitable market share. Another interesting thing about branches: If you have too many or not enough, you leave millions of dollars on the table and cripple your team’s capabilities for competitive attack.

Consider the restaurant industry. Few people express a preference for the chain restaurant over the local family-owned business. Yet by definition the largest players win a ton of business through their chain branch operations. The same holds true in the staffing industry. While local initiative is always credited for a large part in the success of the chains, the largest organizations know something about how to use the specific competitive advantages their branch network offers. Some of them use these advantages and believe me, the advantage is more than just saying “go get ‘em team” and competing on a purely local basis. As history shows again and again, there is great strength in coming together for a common purpose: that’s how nations and market leaders are born.

I’d like to address all these ideas — and help you become more effective, more highly paid, leaders of field operations — in this forum together. For the purposes of this blog, I’ve compiled a list of more than 20 problems that I’ve either heard about from different branch organizations or experienced personally.  We will attempt to solve them together. Over the coming months I’ll post a new problem for you to consider. Please share your thoughts here in the comments. Each problem solved could be worth at least a million dollars in profit, maybe for you.

Problem # 1: Noncompliance with brand standards: how should it be fixed?

  • Have you ever referred one of your customers to another branch only to discover “the other branch” did not follow the standard operating procedures your customer had come to expect?
  • What brand standards matter — and which brand standards just seem like bureaucracy?
Frank Troppe

Frank Troppe
Frank Troppe analyzes trends in sales strategy and field operations. He is the author of three books and 40 articles on Branch Operations.

Frank Troppe

Share This Post

Tweet

Recent Articles

3 Responses to “Problem-Solving in Branch Organizations”

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.