The chiefs

It’s common for franchises of any size to have a team of executives leading departments and reporting to the chief executive officer. Key influencers are the chief operating officer or operations manager, the chief marketing officer, and the chief information officer, who leads technical development.

A general manager has overall profit and loss responsibility for the company, and usually oversees sales, marketing and daily business operations. The responsibilities of the role may be incorporated into a CEO role.

In a smaller, family-run business the top role may be the managing director.

Franchise support

Franchise recruitment manager: responsible for attracting new franchisees and works with managers from other divisions and the CEO or MD in the final selection. 

Business development manager, field manager, area manager: responsible for helping franchisees achieve their business goals, ensuring brand compliance across the network, communicating brand direction and strategy to franchisees. 

Franchise trainer: sets up a franchisee to run the business and may train franchisee staff. 

Support team: head office team members who manage, monitor and deal with queries, requests and complaints from franchisees. 

Franchise advisory councillor: a franchisee member of the Franchise Advisory Council, which is typically involved in providing frontline feedback from franchisees to the franchisor, and in assessing and trialling new initiatives.

A master or regional franchisee is responsible for a large territory, appointing other franchisees within the territory and ensuring the franchisor’s systems and methods are applied.