Franchisor becomes first in UK to use advanced US meta-analysis profiling to select franchisees

Aspray adopts Zorakle programme to add extra level of insight to its recruitment process

A loss assessing and property reinstatement business has become the first franchisor in the UK to adopt a highly advanced psychometric assessment and profiling tool to recruit franchisees.

Aspray now uses Zorakle, a franchise specific, US-developed programme, to try to achieve the perfect franchisor-franchisee fit.

The Zorakle Spot On! Profile system draws on seven validated sciences and has been developed by some of the top academic brains and management theorists in the USA. 

The establishments from which experts have been drawn include Harvard Business School, Gallup, Stanford, the University of Rochester and the Caruth Institute.

The system uses benchmarking, psychometric assessment and meta-analysis methodologies to seek out franchisees who have compatible values, work style, cultures, competencies and capacities with the Aspray franchise model, but who also fit the profile of Aspray’s current top performing franchisees. 

Rather than trying to clone individuals within the franchise, it uses its advanced profiling techniques to try to identify what might be viewed as ‘identical twins’.

Its ethos is that shared values and like-mindedness are the foundation for a long-term business relationship. The more compatible the franchisee, the better they are likely to perform once they take ownership of a franchise territory. 

The profiling aims to discover who’s ‘in step’ with the Aspray franchise model’s stages of growth and its distinguishing characteristics.

It sifts out those too independently minded or entrepreneurial, who would be best served by starting their own business, rather than being asked to follow established ways of building an Aspray franchise.

Its starting point is the benchmarking of existing franchisees, assessing the psychometric and competency differences of the top, middle and lowest performing individuals. 

From there, it creates a blueprint for the top performers, assessing shared values and characteristics that make them tick. 

Then it uses its Eclipse profiling to assess any new Aspray franchisee candidates and, using a custom algorithm, compares them to the blueprint’s top franchisees. Prospects are allocated a percentage score, according to how closely they match the blueprint.

A Zorakle Spot On! report can then pinpoint who has the attributes required to become a successful Aspray franchisee.

It’s still, however, mindful of the requirement for those individuals to have the societal values and empathy required in a role in which handling highly charged situations and emotional customer circumstances is part of the day-to-day job and which it’s necessary to have the skills to handle policyholders within a wide societal spectrum. 

The profiling also examines eight complementary competencies, which are the framework for collaboration between franchisor and franchisee. 

These include leadership and vision, administration and customer service and sales and channel planning.

And thanks to the Mirror and Motto section of the Zorakle Spot On! Profile, candidates are matched with a well known personality. They could find they share the same characteristics as Martha Stewart, Bill Gates or a host of other top business names.

Aspray recruitment manager Rebecca Dean says: “It’s easy for a franchise prospect to come across well at interview and appear to have everything we require on paper.

“However, we simply have to delve deeper and assess their capacity to cope with multitasking and high pressured environments, as well as focusing on their needs and wants in the most sophisticated way possible.

“Over the past 16 years, we have tried all manner of psychometric tests as part of our recruitment process. Nothing has had the insight that Zorakle provides, however, and we believe its adoption will enable us to home in on who is right for our franchise opportunity and who is not - even if, at face value, they appear to be so.

“We are aligning our vision with that of future franchisees in an unprecedented way here in the UK and can hopefully prevent some candidates wasting their savings or redundancy pay or borrowing money, only to find that, although they have convinced themselves that a territory is right for them, it really isn’t. 

“In the pandemic, many people are suddenly sitting on lump sums and are tempted to spend their cash on a new career opportunity.

“We feel we’re being hugely responsible in adding this extra level of top quality insight to our recruitment, despite already being highly selective about those to whom we offer territories and always recruiting to stringent standards.

“We need to prevent anyone slipping through the net, for everyone’s sake, as to get it wrong can mean a lot of wasted time and effort, disappointment and also a sense of failure on the part of the franchisee. 

“That can be unfair, as they can be brilliant performers, but only in the right environment for them.”

Aspray’s profiling has identified that it needs to find candidates with a value set of ‘Achiever’, who are self-motivated, reliable and hardworking. 

It needs them to have the work style of a ‘Director’, being goal-oriented, structured about task completion and fast and decisive. 

However, they must also be solutions focused and practical, self-aware and capable of self-management too. They also need to be ‘technical’, learn quickly and have a ‘consultative’ approach to sales.