Not happy

I'm really not happy today with the franchising world. Nothing seems easy and franchising only appears to be something that you can do if you have loads of money.

Let's just take having BFA membership for instance. At the moment, I'm not even eligible for this as you need to have 12 months accounts from a pilot franchisee (which I haven't got). But even when I am eligible, it will cost me £1,833 per year! to be a provisional member - not even a full member!!

I've found out that you don't actually have to be a BFA member to be a franchisee, but then you are hindered in promoting the franchise. Every franchise I looked at yesterday was a BFA member and I looked at loads of comments from franchisees who said that being a member of the BFA was very important to them.

I would love to be a member and this is probably something that I will do at some point in the future, but I'm not even eligible at the moment. I do intend to operate by the BFA standards from day one though.

Looking at things from this angle has made me consider how slowly the whole process moves. Pilot franchisee for at least 12 months before getting any further franchisees. I'd planned to get a pilot franchisee and see how this went for 6 months. Providing everything was going fine and we'd ironed out the teething problems, I'd then planned to get another one. Is this acceptable?
Would potential franchisees consider this model?

A new form of selling

Although this isn't strictly to do with franchising, I thought I'd post this on the blog as it's an experience that I'm sure a lot of small business owners have come across and one that really annoyed me this week.

I'm talking about a new form of selling. This is where someone completely destroys whatever you have done in an effort to sell you their own products or services. Examples I've had in the past have been people criticising my website and then saying "I can improve it for you." However, over the weekend, I had someone ripping my personality to shreds and then saying he could help me improve it with his "coaching solution"!

What solution though - I'm hardly going to buy this service if I receive an incredibly rude email like that off him am I? Grrrr. This new form of selling really annoys me - just who do these people think they are?

So, I've really posted this as a warning to other small business owners not to take it personally if it happens to them. These people are definitely not worth it!!

Has anyone else experienced this new type of selling? What do you think of it?

Does franchising have a bad name?

I went to a networking event the other day and met with a business owner who was explaining how he had expanded his business. The way he described it sounded exactly like franchising, but when someone said that it sounded like a franchise he was very quick to say that it wasn’t franchising.

This isn’t the only time that another business owner has said that how they’ve expanded is not franchising, despite sounding very much like one.

Anyone know why this is…does franchising have a bad name?

I still hate processes!

After what seems like months and months of work (well in my favour, it has been), I feel like I'm finally nearer the end of putting together my processes. I still have quite a few to do, but I'm about 70% complete. I reckon that the rest will be finished between now and the end of November and includes getting my franchisee agreement up and running. Today, it does feel like things are coming together.

I've also been in touch with a client of mine who used to be a franchisee of National Legal Services. She confirmed my earlier assumptions about the way that franchise runs, but says that instead of a % of the total for a service provided by the franchisor, it was a set price. Interesting - hadn't thought of doing it that way.

I was also talking to my mother-in-law the other day, who also bought a franchise. Instead of the upfront fee, they pay monthly in instalments over 8 years. This is a good way of doing things as well and something that I might take up.

Oh and I was also up for two national awards recently - best business expansion plan and best marketing plan. I didn't win unfortunately, but it is still a great testimant to the services ET provide and should be great for business. One of my students on a start-up course that I run entered her plan too and won the award for the under-25 category. I'm absolutely thrilled for her and this is also great support for what ET does.

I'm hoping successes like this will convince any potential franchisee that ET is a good franchise to go for. Though I know it will be, I've got to think about this from a "customers" point of view.