Why Invest: Knowing Employees, Franchisees, and Customers Personally is BlueGrace Logistics CEO’s Way of Doing Business (Part 2)

This post is the second of two parts. To read Part 1, please click here.

Training and Communicating

Franchisees receive five days of training at the offices in Riverview, Fla., that covers operational procedures and usually staff members (if they are hired by then) attend the BlueGrace Academy along with the owner. The corporate office has taken to calling it “95 Training” because people who score within the 95^th percentile on tests and personality profiles make the best candidates, displaying great competitiveness.

After training, the company sends a representative to the newly opening site to give further assistance to the new franchisee.

“We talk to them on a daily or weekly basis and send someone to help them out to get them off and running,” Harris said.

There is also a toll-free line updated every Friday that franchisees can call to receive updates from the company on a number of topics.

“It might be something critical or something inconsequential, just something people might want to know,” Harris said.

Unique Corporate Culture

Franchisees soon discover that they have joined a company with a unique culture in today’s business world. As one observer put it: “Bobby Harris has made his freight and logistics brand (a very unsexy industry) into something fun and exciting. Bobby values his employees most and implements an incredibly unique corporate culture into his company.”

One of the ways Harris forges relationships with customers and employees is by interacting with them on social media such as Facebook. He tries to know all of his 130 employees personally and feels the same way about BlueGrace Logistics franchisees and clients. He likes knowing if someone’s son made a home run at a Little League game or if a relative just had surgery.

He encourages franchisees to be on board, as well.