The key to achieving substantially more sales and wealth is to franchise your business the right way. Franchising can be a very intimidating and expensive process. Franchisors can spend millions of dollars and then fail because lack the proper structure and systems necessary to succeed – no one showed them. The solution is to break the process down into three simple goals: Structure, support systems/materials and training. The costs are extremely low because they are part of the process. Another element involved in making Franchise Opportunities viable for companies is that the Franchise Consultant is sensitive to a company’s need to minimize expenses.
A franchise expert offering a Pay As You Go Program it can create a tremendous advantage and opportunity for a business that wants to franchise. Very simply, this transfers the risk to the franchise development company to act for the business you want to franchise without the franchisor having to pay a lot of cash up front. Although franchise opportunities abound, good quality franchise help can be hard to come by. A good franchise advisor, and especially one that works with you on a pay-as-you-go program where you only pay for the services you currently receive, is crucial to your success as a franchisor.
In general, people want to have a business without thinking; Therefore, owning a franchise is the conduit for many entrepreneurs because franchises are business systems that are easily duplicated. Typically, many business owners spend their own money opening satellite offices and hiring employees who don’t even care about the business to run it. Their logic is that this is the best way to control growth and maintain the consistency and uniformity of your product or service. However, if you can get the same results, why not use the resources of an entrepreneur who has fur in the game, use your own money to brand your business without having the out-of-pocket expenses?
To create franchise wealth, you must leverage your efforts and minimize costs.
If you are a business owner and really want to expand your business, you should seriously consider franchising. The following information on franchising can be of great help in starting the process of franchising your business. This information can also be used by business owners who want to talk to companies about franchising. In short, you will better understand how Easy and simple it is for companies to expand through franchising. It is about structure and systems.
Structure refers to Disclosures. Franchise systems are regulated by federal and state agencies that require a set of disclosures intended to protect the applicant. These disclosures are collectively known as a UFOC (Uniform Franchise Offer Circular). When you work with a good Franchise Consultant, they prepare this document for you, customize it for your particular business, add provisions to protect it while assisting you in the definition of your Franchise structure. The UFOC also houses the Franchise Agreement. As the UFOC is a summary of what an applicant should expect: the franchise agreement compared it’s the UFOC on steroids. Every detail is included in the franchise agreement that covers elements such as: investment expectations, fees, restrictions on the products/services a franchisee can offer, multi-area marketing programs, and franchisee/franchisor responsibilities. A franchise expert/consultant works with clients to define these elements and incorporate provisions that don’t commit the Franchisor, but allows options in the future. For example, a business Can file a document that states: The franchisor may form a franchise advisory council chosen by the franchisee whose purpose is to determine how national advertising funds are spent.
Systems refer to what has been developed in the business and presented in an organized manner to the franchisee. This is what the Franchisor provides to the Franchisees as reference material. And of course a franchise expert does this EASY. A good franchise development consultant will provide clients with template versions of an operations manual, a pre-opening manual, and various other supporting pieces aimed at systematize and structure your business operations in a cookie cutter format. For example: The operations manual for a non-restaurant business contains more than 330 pages. A Franchise Expert/Advisor will require that his client personalize the operations manual with your company name, logo and add the “meat and potatoes” of his business in various sections, all proprietary stuff. For example, most clients will take the Marketing/Advertising section of the Operations Manual and convert each marketing piece they have used into a template format ready to be used by future franchisees in their area.
Putting all of these pieces together, including the UFOC and reference materials, allows for enough cross-pollination to create a very nice training program/orientation/discovery day. Using the Framework of the Franchise System (UFOC), the Operations Manual, and the Pre-Opening Manual, a franchise expert can work with clients to determine which elements to focus on when training franchisees. After all, an entrepreneur who invests a large sum of $$ in branding their business should be able to run it immediately after training. A good way to do this is to create an outline of the training/orientation program, supplemented by a PowerPoint presentation. The training and orientation program can be divided into modifications so it can be easily moved and tailored to the audience. For example: a franchise consultant could create a 3-day training program with each day divided into modules. If, for example, a franchisee needs more focus on administrative functions on day two of the training, they could simply switch the next scheduled module with the second half of the administrative module on day three so they can spend more time in that area without wasting time. momentum and without jeopardizing the timeline.
Structure, systems and training are the key ingredients to a successful franchise system. As a potential franchisor, you’ll need good tools and consistent information flows to be able to impart what you learn and let it create franchise wealth for you. And for those vendors who want to work with many franchisors to help them with their franchise business, remember that 85-90% of franchisees use the same vendor for the services their franchisor uses.
As you contemplate franchising your business, here are some questions to consider to see if franchising is the right tool to expand your operation.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to expand without having to worry about capital outlays and having to hire employees?”
Customers you’ve heard say they’d like to see another one of these in other areas.
“Have any of them ever indicated that they’d like to have one of these?”
Just remember that a franchise consultant will take the intimidation out of the process of franchising your business. A good consultant will take one step at a time by providing the structure and creating the systems and training programs necessary to successfully duplicate your business. If a Franchise Consultant can also allow you to “pay as you go” so you don’t have huge upfront costs, then it probably makes sense to let that qualified Franchise Expert create Franchise Wealth for YOU.