Light Bulb Moment
Hi there,
I haven't posted on this blog for a while, so I thought it was time for an update. From October 06, I met another person who was interested in the franchise. We talked (a lot), she had the agreement and even went to the bank and got a loan for the franchise - all sounded really promising.
Then out of the blue in early Feb 07, I got a call from her saying that she'd changed her mind (sound familar?). I arranged to meet her and talk it through, but her heart was set on running a coaching business, and not this one.
So, that's twice now that someone has been yah close to signing and it has fallen through at the last minute.
I was feeling quite gutted about this and then someone asked me the other day how it was going and I told them. As I was talking, I realised that most of the franchises that people buy are things that they couldn't do themselves without a significant amount of training - so they can't go off and start their own business in this field as they don't have the know-how.
My light bulb moment was realising that perhaps I haven't made my offering tight enough to make people realise that they can't do the franchise on their own.
These last couple of weeks then, I've been working on how to tighten my offering and shortly (I hope) I will relaunch the website to reflect this - watch this space!
In the meantime, I'd really welcome thoughts, comments and suggestions as to why you think potential franchisees are committed all the way through and then change their mind at the last minute - I don't know whether my assumptions above are correct, but it would be great to hear thoughts.
posted by Helen Dowling @ 2:06 AM
3 Comments:
I agree - the difficulty comes when potential franchisees are not made aware that the franchise is in fact... a business and lets be honest it takes a long time when you start your first company to learn how to run your business properly, if you learn at all - and most dont.
Potential franchisees should compare the statistics on independant start ups v franchise startups for a reality check.
Franchising is a great interdependant way of growing a business - but remember even when the take up is slow dont be tempted to just take the money, make sure the franchisee is the right person for the franchise before anything else!
Happy Franchising.
Nathan Siekierski
Director
Click here for our Jasper's Franchise Site
maybe it's a case of ' it looks to good to be true'.....and then they decide it is
Hi Helen,
I have only just stumbled across your blog and realized that you haven't posted in a while. Hopefully it's because you are so busy training your new franchise owners!
I was writing in response to your lightbulb moment post and I think that you hit the nail on the head.
We were looking into franchise our company until I found out just how expensive it was going to be - we were quoted by a top franchise lawyer here in the us a minimum of 500,000. Now, in saying this 400,000 of that could be his own retainer fee. I was too busy picking myself up off the floor to hear any more! : )
However, since then we decided we would licence out one of our main programs which catered to business owners. This took care of one of our clients needs that was taking up a lot of our time.
However we were looking into outsourcing work to other business coaches which led me to contact a very large franchise (again here in the states), which seemed to have a great program put together. The challenge we had was that the base fee was 75,000 $US and a monthly retainer of almost $2,000.
Having trained and worked extensively as a business coach and consultant for the 16 years while it would have been great to have found a way to have incorporated their programs into our existing system, we simply couldn't justify spending that price. For us it made far more sense to hire someone who could help us package our programs and form strategic alliances with other coaches.
In saying that however, if we didn't already have such a substantial data base and track record, or had the background skills and training we would have most definately jumped at this opportunity to have that cookie cutter model and the support and association of the 'Flagship' Franchise.
We are still working on our licensing program, and hope it will be ready to go out in January but the challenge still feel we are fumbling around is how to price the licence in the marketplace. We are thinking the first 2-3 we sell will be lower than the rest, so we can tighten the process. That's the plan for now!
It would be lovely to hear how you are going with yours. I wish you every success.
Ashley
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