Be prepared for the relationship to change once you’ve sold a unit to an individual. You will want to build a stronger relationship with your franchisee now that they have purchased a unit from you. Mutual trust and respect must be shown as the individual who bought your franchise just spent a lot of money on your concept with the little faith they have from the few times they met with you. The faith an individual puts in a franchisor is even greater the smaller the franchise is.
After the signing of the franchise agreement, you should already have it in your mind how much attention you plan on spending with each new franchisee. This doesn’t have to be set in stone now, but you should know how much time you want to devote to new franchisees and how to balance that out with selling franchises. You want to show that you support them and will be there when they need it, but you don’t want to get in the habit of spending all your time at one franchise location.
The problems with spending too much time helping one franchisee as they start are:
If you happen to make mistakes when you’re selling our franchise companies, approach the mistakes objectively. No franchisor is perfect when they start out. The difference between the franchisors who fail and the ones who succeed is that the ones who fail do not know how to pick themselves back up. They take a mistake or a roadblock as a reason to stop instead of something pushing them harder to succeed. Franchisors who meet success see mistakes, accidents, or problems with expansion or their systems and cash in on those as opportunities to better their processes and their companies.
Join the winning franchise companies by facing mistakes head-on with an objective mind and a will to succeed. A big name brand might not be as unachievable as it may seem.
As you prepare to sell units for your franchise, you need to plan out the concept for your franchise companies, marketing, and who your target franchisees are. Remember that anyone can sell a franchise. The hardest part isn’t finding buyers, it’s finding the good buyers and maintaining a strong brand with every new location you open. The first five years of franchising will almost always be the hardest.
To better insure success for the sale of your franchise companies, consider franchise development plans to:
FMS is a team of expert franchise consulting professionals based in Canada that provides solutions for franchise development, franchise consultation, and expansion of businesses globally.