Owning your own business is most definitely a marathon, not a sprint, and it takes a lot of hard work and late nights to make it a success.
After your efforts have paid off, you’ll no doubt spend some time basking in the glow of your hard work but, sooner or later, there will come a time when you start to wonder what’s next.
Moving on up
Expanding your business by yourself – particularly overseas – can be risky, not to mention time-consuming and expensive – but it doesn’t have to be.
Franchising your business is a great way of achieving fast growth with the minimum of hassle and expense.
Franchising basically involves allowing other individuals to buy a slice of your business to run for themselves. For example, if you own a successful home care company in a particular area, you might allow somebody to open a new branch in a different location.
Not only does franchising allow you to expand easily, but it also offers a new revenue stream for your business.
When first thinking about franchising your business, you’ll have a lot of questions and, the most common of these is how to find people interested in owning a franchise?
Pursuing this business model does, of course, depend on finding the right franchisees for your brand and, in this article, I’ll take you through a few of the best ways of doing this:
Getting personal
The first thing to do is to create a profile of the kind of person that your franchisee will be:
- What kind of experience do they have?
- Where do they live?
- How much money will they need to have to be able to afford the franchise?
By starting with a clear picture of your ideal franchisee, you’ll find that the search is that much easier, with a lot less wasted time.
You’ll also want to put together your recruitment plan; how you will vet applications, and what kind of interview process you’ll be performing.
The process of finding a franchisee loosely follows that of recruiting a member of staff. Still, it’s so much more important as you’ll be trusting this person with the reputation of your brand in a particular region.
The shortlist
Your ideal franchisee profile will, of course, be unique to your business but, to give you a head start, the following three people are the ones that you absolutely don’t want, regardless of your product, service or industry:
The entrepreneur – You’ll recognise this guy instantly; he’s full of big ideas, which is great but, they’ll rarely match your vision – which is not so great. While you certainly may admire the entrepreneur’s gumption, you don’t want a franchisee who is going to be looking to improve or re-invent your business.
The get rich quick guy – There’s a certain breed of person who is forever looking for a shortcut to making a lot of money – and this person is the polar opposite of what you’re looking for in a franchisee; which is somebody who’s looking at the big picture and is prepared to put in the time to get there.
The sloth – There are no two ways about it; running a franchise is hard work, particularly at the beginning. For this reason, you need to look out for the candidate who is expecting to sign on the dotted line and then put their feet up while his employees do all the grafting.
Finding your franchisee
Now that you know what you’re looking for (and what you’re not), it’s time to take a look at the different ways in which you can find that certain someone:
Under Your Nose
On the road to making your business a success, you’ve probably collected some loyal and talented employees – and who better to help you to grow your business than somebody that knows it inside out?
Review your existing employees to see if you can identify any individuals who are particularly passionate about your business and may want to help you carry the torch by becoming a franchisee.
This is, by far, the quickest and easiest way of finding a new franchisee and has tons of benefits, including the fact that they will know pretty much everything there is to know about the company’s ethos and operations.
Online Franchise Portals
Franchise portals are a great tool for advertising your franchise opportunity to generate new leads. Franchise portals like the one you are on now (Franchise Local) can help you advertise your franchise to potential franchisees who would like to buy into your franchise.
These portals are great because they already have large amounts of traffic that consists specifically of people already interested in buying a franchise.
Franchise Portals can also provide you with additional tools to drive more interest in a shorter period of time using their large databases of subscribers, including:
- SMS Campaigns
- Email Campaigns
- Targeted Facebook advertising
As with many types of advertising, advertising on franchise portals is not something you can do for one month and expect the world; this takes time and investment. So for this reason, always look to advertise for a minimum of 3 months to get a good idea of how they perform.
Franchise Events
Another effective way to attract the right kind of franchisee to your business is to take a stand at a franchising event. While this may take an amount of effort and investment, it’s absolutely worth it as these dedicated events are packed to the rafters with people who already have a big interest in owning a franchise – which means that a lot of the work is already done for you.
You can find details of UK franchise events online, including the International Franchise Show, which will be held at the London ExCeL on October 1st and 2nd, 2021.
Not only are these events a great place to find franchisees, but you’ll have a lot of fun as well as meeting some incredibly inspiring and interesting people.
Social Media
As with anything else, social media can be beneficial when searching for franchisees for your business. As well as performing targeted advertising, you can also join location-specific groups in order to start a dialogue with people within the region.
Although this may be considered more of a scattergun approach, it can fulfil two purposes; finding a franchisee and finding out what people in a certain location think about your business opening up there.
If you decide to go down the social media route, make sure that this is run professionally in order to avoid any negative comments creeping in (as is, unfortunately, the nature of most social media platforms).
Newspaper Advertising
It may seem a little old school, but there is absolutely value to be had from the humble newspaper when looking for franchisees. One good reason for taking this route is that, often, business people will check out the paper to look for business premises for sale or rent and new business opportunities – which may lead them to your door.
Let Them Find You
If your business is a success, then you will almost certainly already have a killer website – and it’s now time to update it. Add a franchise page to your site and, on it, make sure that you big up the benefits of getting on board with your brand.
Needless to say, you should also use lots of fancy SEO both on your website and in your social media content in order to attract the right people to your business.
Snipping the shortlist
Once you’ve got a shortlist of possible franchisees, you will need to interview these people to see if they’re the right fit for your business. Below are some constructive questions to help you to drill down and find out if they are the one for you:
- What is it that appeals to you about this business?
- What other franchise businesses are you considering?
- Are you familiar with the British Franchise Association?
- What kind of support network do you have?
- How will you market your franchise business?
- What specific skills will you bring to the business?
Although a candidate may look good on paper, it’s how they conduct themselves that matters. In a franchisee, you’re looking for a self-starter who is extremely proactive about going after what they want; and who is prepared to work incredibly hard to achieve success. For this reason, these questions will help you to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff and whittle that shortlist down further.
Conclusion
Finding the right franchisee is the single most important that you’ll do when deciding to franchise your business; therefore, time and care must be taken.
In short, you’re looking for somebody who will share your passion for your business while bringing some valuable skills and ideas to the table and, once you find your first, there’ll be no stopping you.
