Starting a franchising business is not that hard. It’s really signing a few papers, shaking some hands, and there you have it. Making your franchise business successful, on the other hand, needs some hard work, dedication, and eagerness to learn. The good news is that the scale is tilted in your favour. Around 85% of franchise businesses succeed to various degrees. The bad news is that if you don’t want to be in the remaining 15%, you still need to stay on top of these 5 factors that are most often associated with successful franchising businesses.
Do your research before you choose a franchisor
This one should go without saying, but it’s the most fundamental part of starting a successful franchising business. Investing your savings in something you have absolutely no idea with a partner you’ve just heard of and never actually researched is nothing short of gambling, and gambling and success never go hand in hand. If you want your business endeavour to be fruitful and not just a waste of money, do thorough research on your franchisor, what benefits you get by signing up with them, what industry do they operate in, is this economic sector promising, what are the existing turnovers, is their demand, how big is the competition. Getting answers to these questions will get you much closer to success than anything else.
Start small, grow big
When Fantastic Services was first established in 2009, we started as a small cleaning company with one sofa, one shared phone, two laptops and a vision of how we would transform the home service industry. Today we are one of the biggest home service providers in the UK, with more than 530 franchisees across three continents providing over 100 domestic and commercial services. The point is that if we started with this scale back in 2009, we would’ve most probably failed a long time ago. Biting off more than you can chew typically ends up choking. You don’t want that as a business model. The better course of action is to treat this like a game. Start small, take the first step slowly, gain experience and level up constantly. When your business becomes self-sufficient, and you can afford to allocate resources to grow, go right ahead. That’s the only way you can have unlimited growth potential.
Take ownership
At Fantastic Services, we go to great lengths to ensure that our franchisees are successful. That means we provide thorough training, ongoing support, assistance in all aspects of the business, and not to mention access to over £20-million worth of technological solutions and automatisation. However, all of our efforts would be futile if the franchisee didn’t take ownership of their own business. We are great at screening out individuals that won’t go the distance and don’t enlist them as partners, but the point remains. If you want to succeed, you can’t rely on your franchisor alone. You need to put in the hard work and learn the ins and outs of your industry.
Furthermore, you’d want to start making your own decisions within the brand guidelines and business model, of course. Treat the franchisor as training wheels. Sooner or later, you have to take them off and start riding on your own.
Invest in marketing
Expanding on the point above, you need to start investing in your own marketing at the first moment you can afford it. Good Franchisors like Fantastic Services will provide you with some excellent marketing assistance and will take care of the basic level of marketing. However, the franchisor can’t provide targeted local ads for each one of their franchisees. They can’t have the connection with the locals and can’t cover or compensate for all local-based marketing channels. So that’ll all be up to you. Naturally, good franchisors will give you all the marketing training you need, so you can not only allocate resources but be proficient in your marketing messaging and communication.
Follow the business model to the letter.
When someone is buying a franchise, what they are actually purchasing is a proven, successful business model that can guarantee them not only survival on the market but easier and much faster expansion. Knowing this, why would anyone deviate from a tried and tested method for building a business is beyond me. When you’re partnering up with a multi-million-dollar company that has established itself as a leader in the market, the least you can do is trust them with how they run their business and follow the same basic principles. That’s what the provided business model is. Or you can simply try to do it all by yourself from scratch, but why would you then waste money on a franchise. Just go into business by yourself and try to beat the 95% fail odds.
Following these 5 key points will give you the edge you need to ensure not only that you will survive on the market as a franchisee but thrive in your industry and grow to become a leader yourself.
