28 DOING THE DEAL
Richard Few, founder of Sales Geek
Our mission statement was simply to change the way the world perceives sales and that ended up being at the heart of us exploring franchising.
We founded the business in 2017 and franchised it through Covid because it gave us the time to build out a lot of the things we needed.
It was quite a scary thing to do, because the cash reserves were running out at the same time, but we had a belief that coming out of Covid we’d be in a better place and that there would be more of our target audience of potential franchisees, who are sales directors, out there.
We’ve had a few challenges. One of those is recruiting. Having the discipline to say ‘no’ is hard when you are trying to start and find those
Andy Henderson, founder of Summit
You start your business, see that it has got some traction, get to capacity and arrive at a point where you think, ‘How do I scale up what I’ve created?’
For me, in the coaching space, there were three ways to do it. You can either employ, use affiliates or you can franchise.
After some debate and conversations, franchising turned out to be the one that made most sense, because our business was systemised. We had a formula that we could teach others.
We had a way of working that was unique and it had a point of differentiation, and the positioning of it was quite straightforward and different to what the market offered.
So we started the process three years ago and today we’ve got four franchisees. They never all stay, it’s not going to be right for everybody, and there’s a huge learning curve about who is the ideal franchisee. You’re going to get some things wrong and when you do it hurts.
The biggest learning is, irrespective of the fact that you might have a really systematic business, it’s not a silver bullet for growth.
It’s a very interesting, very enjoyable model. You get to work with some amazing people with some amazing skills. But it’s different to what you’re used to.
You need to be really fastidious with your recruitment. The strength of your franchise business is basically the people that join you. You want to build a community of great people who share the ethos, share the vision, but that are prepared to roll their sleeves up and actually do the work.
first franchisees. We’ve now got 54, with our latest in Delhi. But we’ve had to kiss some frogs to get us through that process and learn what that looks like.
Some people think they can spend some cash on the franchise and they are guaranteed a successful business. It is going to be infinitely easier than doing it on their own and they are not going to have to work very hard.
The other challenge has been taking our team through the transition from being a professional services business based in Blackburn to an organisation supporting this franchising network. We probably over-supported some of our early franchisees, which actually causes problems down the line. We’re getting there now, but trying to get that balance right earlier on was quite a challenge.
Daniel Fletcher, senior associate, Forbes
Franchising has been described as being like a marriage. I would describe it as an IP licence on steroids. That is because it’s not just a licence to use the brand, it’s a licence to use the whole business.
A lot of my work is centred around carrying out due diligence, to make sure that the brand itself is something that can be licensed, and on the franchisee’s side, it’s advising them so that they fully know what it is they are getting into.
There are a lot of legal considerations on both sides. The franchisor has a successful business model in a particular area, and
they will have an expectation that the franchisee will be able to lift that up, take it to the new area and succeed with it.
So, naturally, agreements will often have a lot of bite to them, with sales targets, warrants, what happens if things go wrong. It’s advising them on those agreements as well. When it comes to the ‘hand-holding’ aspect, some franchisees will take more than others.
We often see in franchise agreements that franchisors actually charge for that, and that helps to reduce the amount of hand-holding where it’s not necessarily needed. As well as charging for that support they can can even pull in performance standards measures to say, for example, ‘If we’re hand-holding you for 12 months then it’s over, because it’s not a franchise anymore.’
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94
