SPOTLIGHTINTERVIEW
What a difference a year makes
This time last year Ashtons Franchise Consulting took over a long-established franchise consulting practice. Here, Flora Neighbour speaks to managing consultant Nick Williams about the past 12 months...
Talk us through the past year in brief… Ashtons Franchising is a successor business to a long-established franchise consulting practice – and began trading at the start of 2016. Today we are a consultancy business, which is embedded into the franchise community with strong connections with the major service providers within the sector, and have established a reputation for working in a very close and tailored fashion with our clients. Our team is strong, with a presence that enables us to provide a comprehensive service throughout the country, as well as internationally.
What have you learnt from the past year? What we have learnt fundamentally from the marketplace is that clients respond to a highly personalised approach that offers far greater fl exibility in the way we engage with them than has been the case previously.
In a busy world, with many communication
methods, it is no longer essential to work in a laborious face-to-face manner throughout our engagement with clients – nor is it necessary to offer a one-size-fi ts-all approach. If we were a restaurant, for example, our guests might
“We are optimistic of 2017 and beyond, and we are hoping for a period of economic and political calm to allow business to develop in a stable and prosperous climate”
simply want a starter and the dessert but forgo the main course. In consulting terms, that means that some are better equipped
time- and knowledge-wise to undertake a greater element of the franchise preparation than others leaning on us to fi ll in the gaps – but in every sense all our clients truly value the knowledge that we pass on to them of how to become a good, successful and long- lasting franchisor. One thing is for sure, the internet has a
great deal of information available but it isn’t that easy to interpret. I know that I can get a diagram to do a rewire of my garage – it doesn’t make me an electrician! (This is a real example – I did have a go, blew all the fuses and ended up spending more money getting somebody to put it right!)
How has Ashtons Franchise Consulting helped its clients in the past year? Our clients appreciate confi dentiality, so we cannot talk about specifi c brand success, but highlights include the launch of a fi rst-in-its- fi eld franchise, helping an inbound US business
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