As the Scarlet Pimpernel might say: You see them here, you see them there, you see them everywhere.
In meetings, in hotel lobbies, in restaurants, at bus stops and in airplane waiting rooms, men and women sit hunched over leather or vinyl-bound, tab-indexed books making cryptic entries. Their concentration seems total. To interrupt them is to receive a blank stare, as if they had been deep in a trance.They are not doing a particularly demanding crossword puzzle nor are they writing their memoirs - although, for a few, the books may one day become an important source for future biographers.
No, they are noting their "prioritized daily task list," entering their business expenses, looking up a phone number, checking their appointment schedule, doing their long-range (six years) planning, reviewing their "values and goals" and recording their "daily record of events."
In other words, they are consulting their own personal bible: The Franklin Day Planner.
From the corporate CEO whose day is broken down minute-by-minute to the homemaker who must coordinate the activities of four kids, three volunteer groups, a dentist appointment and the arrival of the plumber, most people have some method of keeping track of their lives.
Many simply make do with scribbled notes to themselves that they clip to the calendar. At the other end of the I've-got-it-together spectrum are the people who carry and use the Franklin Planner.
"My Day Planner is fantastic! I am now totally dependent on it," proclaims one longtime Franklin convert. She is not exaggerating. Many Franklin users react in horror when asked what they would do if their Planner were lost or stolen. Better they lose their checkbook or credit cards, or that burglars carry off their new TV and VCR. But not my Planner, they plead. Anything but that.
It would be easier for a fourth-generation member of a family who has always bought Chevys to break ranks and buy a Honda than for a Franklin customer to drop out . . . or jump to rivals Day Timer or Day Runner.
Consider, says Arlen Crouch, president and chief operating officer of Salt Lake-based Franklin Quest Co., publisher of the Planner, that 90 percent of Franklin users reorder new Planner inserts in ensuing years.
This is an "unheard of" degree of customer loyalty for any business, he says, and is one of the bulwarks in the company's rapid growth since its creation in 1983 as privately held The Franklin International Institute.
On June 2 Franklin went public in a $77.5 million offering that followed its April acquisition of NewQuest Technologies Inc. and its subsequent name change to Franklin Quest. The stock was offered at $15.50 per share in June. Last week it was at 181/4.
That fierce customer loyalty, says Crouch, is due to the training that Planner users normally receive. Competitors, he says, offer mere appointment books. Franklin offers a new lifestyle.
That's why "training," not publishing, is the word you will hear most often at Franklin. The Planner is not the end, says Crouch, it is the means, the tool, with which clients implement their time management training.
To quote Benjamin Franklin, after whom the company was named, "If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting Time must be the greatest Prodigality."
Words to that effect comprise Franklin Quest's corporate mission statement: "We are in business to help people gain control over their lives and increase their productivity."
But the Day Planner had not been conceived in early 1984 when founder and chairman Hyrum W. Smith launched the company in the basement of his Centerville home. His first corporate client, securities firm Merrill Lynch, learned Smith's time management system for increasing personal productivity without the benefit of the book that is now central to the system.
Crouch, now Franklin's president, was then in the second half of a 27-year career with Merrill Lynch, serving as director of its 57 Western regional offices based in Southern California, when Smith made his pitch.
"I picked our brokerage office in San Bernardino to try out Hyrum's training," recalls Crouch with a smile. "I figured if it bombed
out there, no one would hear about it." Needless to say, it didn't bomb.
Later that year, Smith and Franklin co-founder Richard F. Winwood went to the executive offices of Day Timer, publishers of a daily appointments book, to ask if the company would be willing to make changes in Day Timer to accommodate Franklin's needs. The answer was no.
"So they came back and made up their own and the Day Planner was the result," said Crouch. Since then it has been modified and expanded, but the basic concept has remained the same.
The initial printing was 5,000 copies, a number that some considered at the time to be about 4,500 too many. They were wrong. All 5,000 were sold and the company has never looked back. In 1991, Franklin sold 1.23 million master and replacement fillers for the Planner, up 65.4 percent over 1990. Sales of seminars and Planner products for the first six months of this year totaled $64.72 million, up 51.9 percent over the first half of fiscal 1991.
The secret of this success? Crouch believes it lies in the deep need that people have to feel they are in control of their lives.
"The key to our training is that it helps people set their own values. It's hard to figure out how to spend your time if you don't know what is important to you. That's the key: Most people spend their day reacting to things that come to them. It is better to be proactive. To be the person who makes things happen."
Franklin clearly makes things happen. From a two-person staff eight years ago, the company now employs 1,000 and expects to increase that number by 20 percent over the next eight months. Eighty percent of those workers are in Utah, most at the company's 39-acre "campus" in the Decker Lake Business Park where it has five buildings housing office and manufacturing facilities, including LeTECH, which makes binders for the Planner.
The total facilities comprise 252,000 square feet and include one of 18 retail stores where the company sells Day Planners and related products. (Franklin products are sold only in the company's stores.) Franklin expects to have a total of 28 stores in operation nationwide by the end of the year.
Crouch says 2 million people now use the Day Planner, and the company claims 2,000 corporate clients, including such Fortune 500 names as Dow Chemical, General Electric, Intel and Marriott Corp.
Crouch, Franklin's first customer at Merrill Lynch, came on board as president of the company in January 1991. Smith, the founder, remains chairman but is not active in the business on a daily business. He is currently writing a book on "life management" at his residence in St. George but still usually manages one or two speaking engagements a week.
Lynn G. Robbins and Dennis R. Webb, both co-founders, remain with the company as senior vice presidents. Robert F. Bennett, Franklin's president until January 1991, and now a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Utah, remains a director.
Recognizing the advent of the computer age and the possibility that everyone now carrying a Day Planner book may one day be carrying a Day Planner computer, Franklin acquired NewQuest Technologies Inc. in April and with it NewQuest's ASCEND software program for "personal information management" or PIM as it is acronymically known. ASCEND permits users to generate and print data on Franklin paper which can be inserted directly into the Planner.
Growth potential? It's huge, says Crouch. Thirty-five percent of the company's current business comes from just three states: Utah, California and Michigan. "If we can penetrate other states like we have those three, the expansion potential is tremendous."
Franklin is just beginning to open international markets, with small operations in the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Hong Kong.
Franklin is the title sponsor of this year's "Showdown Classic" Senior PGA golf tournament at the Jeremy Ranch, a way, said Crouch, for the company to pay back the community for its support. Franklin has made a three-year commitment to the tournament. "After that, we'll see how it goes."