I had a call from one of my clients, a franchise brand. I can’t mention the company’s name here, but you know them. They have branded walk-in locations in hundreds of cities and towns across America—probably near where you live.

The call explained that the company had a very specific problem it wanted me to solve, which my contact summarized as, “Our annual conference is coming up in a few months, attendance has been very poor, in the low 20 percent for the last few years, and we would like you to get more of our store owners to attend.”

“OK,” I said. “What’s going to happen at the conference that is so important?”

“We will be rolling out a new store design and showing it to our people,” she explained, “and that’s why we want to get most of our store owners there.” Getting the franchises to invest in this new design was mission critical, yet the franchise agreement didn’t require them to upgrade their stores at the time.

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