We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jack Eberenz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jack below.

Alright, Jack thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar your firm earns is always special. We’d love to hear about how you got your first client that wasn’t a friend or family.
I bought a franchise and became a franchisee who built the largest unit in the franchise system. Two years later the board of directors of the franchisor called and asked me to become the president of the franchisor. The company was struggling and needed new leadership and in a strange twist of fate the last president was shot by his girl friend. There are a lot of lessons involved in the last sentence. So I moved into the president’s role, sold my franchise and the company started to turnaround rapidly prompting the board to sell the company at which point I resigned. So here I was, two weeks before Christmas without a job, not ideas of which way to go and a family to support. Between Christmas and the New Year a social friend called and asked if I could build him a franchise company, I said yes and I became a franchise consultant. Franchise Integration was born and grew.

Jack, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I focus on three areas of franchise consulting. 1. New concepts or proven concepts that now want to grow taking through the franchise process so they have a strong business base in all their legal documents and a system that can grow through successful franchisee.

2. Turning around troubled franchisors and getting their management teams developed to promote long term growth.

3. Providing corporate governance assistance to assure that the franchisor has a solid board of advisors or directors to help the CEO grow and manage the company.

My goal is to help entrepreneurial owners lead their companies to success and not lose control of their dream.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?
I cannot think of a single client in over 40 years that did not come to me by referral. People I know from coast to coast have referred clients which is one of my proudest achievements.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?
A good salesperson understands the customer. I have made some large sales, and had some that I didn’t sell but they all hinged on how well I could understand the customer and their wants, needs and desires.

Before I was in franchising and only about 5 years out of college I owned and managed a ski shop in upstate New York. One day I walked in late in the evening and was immediately approached by an exasperated sales clerk who explained that he has a customer that had already tied him up for 45 minutes and the shop was jammed with customers needing his attention. So I stepped in and approached the customer. He had an extensive spread sheet on every ski he had read about in several ski magazines and every possible torque, flex and twist measurement and he was looking for a ski that matched these measurements. I had to get the engineer in him aside and find out what he really wanted. Question 1, “I understand, but at what temperature will you be skiing? These are done in a lab at room temperature, it’s a little different out on the slope.”

Question one took care of the engineering instinct. Question two “What kind of a skier are you?” Followed by “So what you want is a good ski that is designed to ski in varying conditions that will help you become a better skier?”

Sale complete: “Here is a great ski that will help you improve over the next several years then you can come back and we will upgrade you to an advanced ski.”

Nothing fancy, just find out what the customer wants.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.franway.com
• Facebook: Jack Eberenz Management and Consulting
• Other: Jack Eberenz on LinkedIn.