Henry Ziff, Managing Director of Transworld Business Advisors UK is into matchmaking. He matches buyers and sellers of businesses. Henry tells Elite Franchise his recipe for success.
Eton College educated and self confessed workaholic, Henry Ziff, has always been a man on a mission.
A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Geography and Planning, Ziff, over the course of his career has developed and honed the necessary skills (mainly in strategy creation and development) required for his current role as Managing Director of Transworld Business Advisors UK.
Indeed, Ziff’s work experience to date reads like a template for problem-solving various client issues across different consumer and retail sectors. “I learned how to combine analytics and intuition to improve business operations, and their processes to achieve a better outcome, making them better for customers, easier for colleagues and cheaper for the business,” says Ziff.
Starting out in the family business, Barratts Priceless Ltd., which involved project managing new store openings among other changes, Ziff moved on to Pentland brands, supporting sales and launches of designer menswear ranges. Following this were consultancy roles with London-based PatelMiller, and then through his own business consultancy company.
In his current role Ziff describes the core objective of Transworld as being “to help small to medium size businesses package up and sell their businesses, whilst on the flip-side, helping people acquire a new business venture.”
But he adds: “We also help people looking to invest in a franchise business, or a franchise resale. Selling a franchise is similar to selling a business, with a buyer, a seller, landlord etc. except you have a fourth key stakeholder involved with the franchisor.”
He further notes: “The Transworld Business Advisors sales process has four steps, which enable us to support our clients to plot the sale of their business or franchise: Package the business up; Look for the right buyer; Agree an offer and Manage the transition from contract negotiations through to exchange and completion.”
Transworld also operates a referral programme through parent company, United Franchise Group, providing support to business owners to build and develop their business into a franchise system.
“Should they require further assistance, we can help to grow the new network, both here, and globally, through our 235 Transworld offices in 17 countries,” says Ziff. Transworld has 500+ brokers globally, at present. In the UK, there are 14 franchisees and 31 brokers.
Transworld, which started out in the United States 40 years ago, makes money at the point of sale, where it takes a commission – the amount of commission determined by the size of the business and the deal.
With his focus on the UK however, Ziff says Transworld’s objective is to grow the network to between 30-40 franchise partners here. And for them to have as big a territory as they would like.
“We very much look at our network as extended members of the family,” he says.
