Vice President of New Franchise Development at Floor Coverings International® Alan Dickherber has focused on driving significant changes to the brand’s franchise program. The results have surpassed expectations by expediting ramp-ups and growing revenues. Dickherber has been leading the franchise development program for eight years after a successful career as owner and operator of CertaPro Painters. By Erika Ortega
Vice President of New Franchise Development at Floor Coverings International® Alan Dickherber has focused on driving significant changes to the brand’s franchise program. The results have surpassed expectations by expediting ramp-ups and growing revenues. Dickherber has been leading the franchise development program for eight years after a successful career as owner and operator of CertaPro Painters.
“While owning that franchise, I was frequently tapped to assist newer owners who wanted to understand how to better attain the results I was achieving with my business,” said Dickherber. “Each time I hung up, I felt energized. After doing this for a number of years, I began to realize that my true passion was helping others to achieve business success.”
In addition to expanding and fine-tuning the brand’s startup process by introducing new training classes, Dickherber’s team streamlined required courses to reduce delays and enable faster completion and collaborative learning among peers.
“We no longer do individual field visits. As a rule, we only do field visits to work with groups of owners, as we have proven the value received from owners is tenfold when other owners are there to share experiences,” said Dickherber.
Additionally, improvements to the startup process have been made, such as providing owners with the opportunity to learn about offerings prior to their launch.
“We teach our product set and technology eight weeks before launch and then expect owners to go into real homes and practice their craft well before actually opening,” explained Dickherber. “This gets the jitters out and allows them to launch with a seasoned foot forward.”
Group field events have shown to be highly cost-effective and impactful. Some changes have even resulted in major sales increases, boosting closing rates through enhanced owner preparedness.
“Some owners even land work before opening,” said Dickherber. “This, in turn, creates significantly more confidence that they can be successful when they launch their business.”
The new classes have proven to be game changers, and the overlapping training events have provided participants with the confidence and enthusiasm to experience rapid success. By combining live events with web-based, pre-opening and post-opening training series, Floor Coverings International provides franchisees with the necessary resources to succeed in business and financial planning, sales development, team coordination, customer management and production.
“The list continues to grow, and all these resources are available on our LMS as well as taught live or via Zoom events,” said Dickherber.
Dickherber is proud to have built a talented team dedicated to providing front-end resources and support to new owners. With each class, he sees improvement.
“We track the performance of each class, and each year, we see improvements across the board on our critical metrics, such as close rate, average job size, revenue per proposal and gross margin,” he said.
One of Floor Coverings Inter-national’s most recent success stories is about a franchise that opened in January 2023; it is projected to close 2024 with over $3 million in revenue.
“This will be another glass ceiling broken as a result of focus and our continued improvements in the program,” said Dickherber.
Erika Ortega