Steps to Start your Own Franchisor – Franchisee Business Model:

You are running a successful business, you have more than 3 years of experience in running it. You have several people enquiring if you had a branch locally, in the different neighbourhood or different city.

Maybe its about time to that you consider franchising as an expansion strategy. Several entrepreneurs thought they had a product or a service that had a universal appeal and ended up creating Subway, Dairy Queen, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Aptech, Spykar and Kidzee. Their are no particular restrictions to franchising, in terms of what businesses can be franchised or not. Technically speaking, every business under the sun can be franchised, right from automotive care to apparel retailing, from preschool education to pet care.

Unless you are running a super niche, individual personality dependent business for example, a cardiac care institute or so, you could look at franchising your business to expand your capabilities.

Over the last nine years, we have seen several businesses that seem unusual at first successfully developing into much larger scaled up business. Back in 2002, Jumbo King Foods, a Mumbai based company launched a vada pav (Most Popular roadside Snack in Mumbai, comprising of a spicy potato filling) booth outside railway stations, few would have known that this would turn out to be a multi crore business with more than 40 Plus Locations across Mumbai.

So, what does it take for you to start your Start your Own Franchisor – Franchisee Business Model, here is a ready checklist for you to consider:

Brand Name and Identity: Create a peppy look for your brand, staff and retail stores. The identity should be contemporary and have a universal appeal or atleast to your respective targetted age groups. If you believe your brand is already the way it needs to be, get an opinion from some of your customers, or supplier and re-validate it.

Training Programs: Franchising is synonymous with uniform identity and service, this can only be achieved with a robust training program. As a business owner you would take several routine practices to be standard but you would need to specifically pen it down and ensure how you would explain your business to a complete new bee.

There would need to be different training programs for the store manager versus a retail store assistant with different responsibilities. As an entrepreneur you must systematize the whole learning process. A good starting point is to start noting your day-to-day schedule, how do you interact with customers, how do you deal with arrogant staff and so on.

Build a team: Franchising is a game of cricket and not a game of chess. Franchising is all about team spirit. How rapidly you would grow, expand and prosper, depends on the team that you have. If you are a startup franchisor, do not worry, you can hire trainers, franchise professionals at a variable expense. Although for franchise sales, building an inhouse team is recommended. More on this in coming articles.

Advertising and Promotions: Don’t fret, if you cannot hire Mahendra Singh Dhoni like Siyarams has, or Kareena Kapoor like Gitanjali has. You can start off with promotions in a simple cost effective way. Leverage the power of social media, build a user friendly website and so on.

Potential Franchise Prospects: Any business that has been there for 2 to 3 years would have received atleast five to ten franchise enquiries, maintain a database and keep them posted about new developments with your company

Well, this is just a starting point, to launch your own franchise model you would need to conduct a feasibility test as well as create a financial structure as well. More on that, shortly.

Guest Writer : Dhawal Shah is India’s first Certified Franchise Executive from IFA University and a leading franchise expert, his company Way2Franchise has been instrumental in assisting more than 10 companies expand internationally and over 50 companies expand within India.

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