1851 Franchise by Morgan Wood
Scoop Soliders, the pet waste removal franchise that saves owners from the dirty work of cleaning up after their four-legged friends, is now offering enhanced territories to prospective franchisees as it continues to grow.
“An enhanced territory is where we already have a corporate operation that is developing and building up a client base in the market,” explained Scott Oaks, VP of franchise development at Scoop Soldiers. “We’re seeding the market with clients and building name recognition so that when an interested franchisee comes along, they aren’t having to start from scratch.”
Though franchising brings name recognition, many franchisees entering brand-new markets are still faced with a substantial amount of work as they build awareness in their specific community and work to acclimate themselves to the ins and outs of local marketing and business development.
With an enhanced territory, new Scoop Soldiers franchisees can skip over these challenges — the work has already been done. This allows them to see a quicker return on investment and avoid the potentially costly and time-consuming efforts of working through hyper-specific local strategy.
“It’s a little bit of a hybrid between buying a new franchise and an existing one. Typically, if you buy an existing franchise, the previous owner is out and gone. With us, we were the ones that were running the business and interfacing with customers, but we’re not gone,” Oaks added. “We’re still going to provide all of the training and support that comes with purchasing a franchise. The franchisee is also able to leverage the knowledge and experience we’ve gained in their specific market.”
When purchasing an enhanced territory, franchisees can also carry over existing employees, decreasing the time and energy they will need to devote to recruiting and training new hires.
Why Scoop Soldiers Has Adopted This Strategy
The enhanced territory model allows the franchisor to offer a wider variety of opportunities to its prospective franchisees while gaining insight that only comes with firsthand experience.
“Having enhanced territories allows us to continue to test new ideas, new best practices and new marketing strategies in varied markets before rolling them out to franchisees. Franchisees don’t have to be our guinea pigs, and we’re able to test out strategies in new geographies before opening those markets to franchise opportunities,” Oaks said. “We always want to have our hands in the day-to-day operations that franchisees will experience. Doing so allows us to be much more experienced consultants for our franchisees as they open up in those markets. This model puts us in an even better position to be able to problem solve and identify opportunities for franchisees.”
