I wish I were you…
One of the most important stages of your decision if to become a franchisee is the information you can get from other current or former franchisee. You need to know that it’s very candid source of information about franchisor, market, competition, and even profitability (if franchise owner would be so kind to share that information with you).
So, I suggest you to create the list of as many as possible franchise owners. Then you should choose the ones you are going to contact. Try to create a representative sampling – to choose franchisees using different criteria. Choose big and small companies, successful and loosing their net worth, working in big cities and small towns and so on. This will help you to collect more reliable and trustworthy facts about you prospective business.
After the list of your potential respondents is ready you need to create another list - the list of questions to get answered. I found these questions while searching the Net (unfortunately I didn’t save the URL):
How long they operated?
What were their total investments?
Were there hidden costs?
How long before they earned a reasonable income?
Are they satisfied with the franchisor?
What were their backgrounds?
Were the training and ongoing support satisfactory?
Was the advertising program satisfactory?
Did the franchisor meet contractual obligations?
Would they invest again?
Would they recommend the investment?
And by the way please remember that you are getting the information from the people but not from the documents. Do not forget about emotional factors. Sometimes former franchisees can present things worse than they really are. And sometimes current franchisees will brighten up their business. Be on the alert!
September 1st, 2006 at 12:27 am
Hello
I really enjoyed reading your blog. In fact If I were you I would go to http://www.autosurfmonster.com and submit this blog so thousands of others can see it for free. Well, I look forward to all the updates, thanks again.
Jessica
September 14th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Hi,
I just came across your blog and have an expert that I thought you might be interested in featuring on your site. Joe Mathews is the franchise expert and author of “Street Smart Franchising.” He has released a book that advises those entering the franchise world on how to be successful and I’m pasting a press release below about him and his topic. Here are some ideas for how we can work with your site:
a. You can use the press release below on your site.
b. We can email you a review of the book.
c. We can send you a book for you to review on your site.
d. You can use an excerpt from the book.
e. You can use Joe Mathews as an expert source when you have a topic that is appropriate for him.
f. We can provide a Q&A with the author that you can use.
g. He can write an article for your site.
Please let me know if you are interested in any of these possibilities. Thank you for your time.
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September 16th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Laura,
Thank you very much for the information. I decided to have your letter with a proposal here if some of my readers will be interested in it or in the book to.
I also published the press release. You can see it under the title Street Smart Franchising