The Franchise

HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT FIT

So you have taken the major leap of confidence and have decided to “Be Your Own Boss”! Well done! A Franchise is well regarded as the surest way to ensure business success. But how do you find the right one for you?

There are a number of elements in making this major decision. Each of these elements is vital and if you are honest with yourself and realistic with your expectations, you are very likely to succeed.

In today’s world time is very important, if not everything. Time to prepare, time to market, time to close, time to roll out, and many other time related events can determine in great part whether a franchise venture is successful or yesterdays news. Franchises have been burdened, or perhaps mandated is a better choice of words, to comply with Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (”UFOC”) law for 25+ years. During this 25+ year period the UFOC has changed dramatically, and the legal bodies controlling its function and purpose have also changed, but one thing has remained constant over these years, and that is UFOC’s are expensive.

The First Rule for building a Successful Franchise Business is to establish a great PR operation. You need to build a good reputation and as quickly as possible.

You have to understand the value and the overwhelming benefits that flow from having an impeccable, transparent and reliable reputation so make this a major goal, as the continued success of your franchise business depends on it. To achieve this goal you need to embrace the concept of Public Relations and a continuous communications program.

Do you want to successfully market your business franchise online? Here’s an internet strategy you can use for your franchise opportunity.

1. Design a very simple web site.

I’ve visited quite a number of company web sites, and their franchise page is sometimes hidden under layers of beautiful flash pages. If you insist on having a visually attractive web site, go ahead and maintain it. Please consider, however, building a partner web site that contains mostly text and no flash programming (i.e., the ones with moving images, the ones which show 15% loading….)

When marketing a franchise business to find buyers on the Internet one has to be extremely careful not to break any rules. In fact as easy as that sounds it is not as easy as you might think.

For instance in some states you cannot use the words; Successful, wealth, make money, etc., as some states like California do not want the residents in their states to get the wrong idea about whatever it is you are offering in the way of franchising.

Too many franchise business owners focus on one aspect to the exclusion of all others, and that is in buying local ads as the only way to generate new business. It’s not that you shouldn’t buy local ads if you want to reach a local market, but before you buy any advertising, you should be clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. And that should be clearly spelled out in your overall marketing plan.

Motivating individual franchisees in a franchise Company is very difficult work especially when these franchisees are all or operators and participate in the day-to-day operations other businesses. Having been founder of a franchise Company we always use creative ways to set the tone and motivating our franchisee team members during regional and annual meetings.

Below is an excerpt from a regional team meeting speech, which I gave to one of our Midwest franchise group;