When you speak to the founder of an emerging franchise system, much more often than not, you will find a genuine entrepreneur intent on creating a successful franchise system and a win-win relationship with his or her future franchisees. During the start-up and growth phase of a franchise system, these franchisor founders are faced with a number of challenges to overcome, with the greatest and most important challenge being the attraction of qualified franchisee partners who will be a good fit.
So how do franchise brokers fit in, and are they good for franchising and emerging franchisors?
They are – franchise brokers are good for franchising and critical for the emerging franchisor.
Here’s why…
Emerging franchisors are faced with a number of “start-up” challenges that include limited capital and limited management resources to focus on franchise sales development.
How Franchise Brokers Help Solve this Challenge: Turns out that, on the whole (of course there are always exceptions in every profession) franchise brokers are professional, well versed in franchising and have every incentive to place a qualified franchisee with the right franchise system. So, franchise brokers can serve as valuable outsourced professional resources to supplement the franchise sales and qualification efforts that are typically lacking in an emerging franchise system.
Emerging franchisors are faced with the challenge of finding the right franchisee partners.
How Franchise Brokers Help Solve this Challenge: The success of an emerging franchise system depends on the quality of its initial group of franchisee partners. Sign on the wrong franchisee and you are left with validation issues and problems. More often than not, franchise brokers produce higher quality franchisee prospects. These franchisees are typically better qualified than franchisee prospects generated organically or directly by the emerging franchisor.
Emerging franchisors require momentum.
How Franchise Brokers Help Solve this Challenge: Quoting Robert Ringers excellent book “Action!: Nothing Happens Until Something Moves”, for emerging franchisors nothing happens until a franchise is sold. So when it comes to growing a franchise system emerging franchisors need to adopt an all of the above strategy focused on SEO, organic lead generation, public relations, social media and broker generated leads. Franchise broker activity and effort is a critical piece to the franchise sales process and “moving things” to create momentum.
In my experience, it turns out that much more often than not, franchise brokers themselves are self-employed entrepreneurs are professionals, take pride in what they do and are genuine in matching prospective franchisees with the right system and so that can only be good for the franchise industry.
