Are you community oriented? If you work best on your own a franchise organization may not be your best bet. While all entrepreneurs should be able to make it happen on their own, franchise organizations thrive on sharing victories and defeats, best practices and lessons learned and above all a unified passion to build their local franchise business as well as the collective brand. Case Franchisees are particularly open and often share and communicate with each other.

 

Does the Franchise Opportunity leverage your past skills? The last thing you want to do is to “check your experience at the door”. It does not do you any good, nor the Franchisor to do so. Instead, when evaluating a franchise, look at the elements of successful franchisees in the system and the Franchisor’s posted criteria of the right skill set. The more you can leverage what you already know the better off you are.  

 

Is the Culture of the Franchise organization appealing to you? Franchise organizations all have a particular “color”. Part of the evaluation process should include meeting the franchisor’s staff in person before making a decision to go forward. Some Franchise organizations actually grant franchises over the phone or the web, but many require face to face activities before agreements are inked.  Not knowing who you are really partnering with and how they are as people is a big risk to take. Ideally, you should feel comfortable with the culture of the organization you are joining.

 

Understand the franchise relationship. Franchising is a relationship more than anything else. It is much more like getting married than buying a car. The phrase “buying a franchise” also misses the mark. Franchising is really a license to be a strategic partner with the franchisor. The relationship includes accountability from both sides and like a drivers license, requires the relationship to remain in good standing during the term of the license or it may be revoked. Another good analogy for the franchise relationship is that of music. The musician, or franchisor has written some music and as the franchisee you are paying a royalty or branding fee to use the music for your business.

 

Talk openly and frequently with the franchisor before making a decision. Franchisors welcome dialog and can be a resource in helping you decide if there is a fit for you with their business or if they feel that you would not be best served being in their industry. Most Franchisors also have a process that they would have you go through so that your due diligence is structured. The process is designed to help you get what you need, when you need it and involves site visits and interaction with Franchisees. Franchisors will observe how you proceed through the process so it is important to follow their requirements at a minimum.