As a franchisor, the most important part of your business is growing your network of franchisees. Supporting them so they don’t fail goes without saying!

Most franchisors understand this and, understandably, want to get out there and find those franchisees in the first place.

Before this happens, however, there must be a number of things in place or in progress:

Attracting Potential Franchisees

1. A franchise website with great content aimed at the right profile of potential franchisee
2. A fully formed email marketing strategy to ensure that people that enquire online (95% of most enquiries) get relevant information the way they expect to receive it
3. A realistic lead generation strategy (i.e. marketing plan to generate franchise enquiries)
4. An organised and fully focussed enquiry handling system that helps keep control and provides reporting

Keeping Their Attention

So you’re now generating enquiries and giving them good information to look at. This will encourage serious prospects to go to the next steps: conversations; meetings and due diligence.

For this to go well, you’re now going to have to show them that you have the following items in order:

• A franchise development plan with a financial model to show them that there has been good research and thought to prove the market holds potential
• Operations manual which shows you have fully documented how the business is run covering every aspect (almost a ‘Dummies Guide To Running The Franchise’) from sales and marketing to operations
• Franchise agreement written by a solicitor with franchise knowledge

Remember that people looking to invest in a franchise opportunity are usually risk averse by nature, so they need to be shown evidence of success, or a plan, in order to inspire confidence and credibility and trust.

Getting all of this in place is almost impossible for a new franchisor to do in-house, so a certain amount of outsourcing to franchise professionals is necessary.

The best thing you can do is to have a chat with franchise professionals and get their opinion on where you’ve got to so far, and what may still need to be done.

It’s only by doing this that you are showing due care and attention to your brand, and your future franchisees…