When Emerging Franchise Brands Should Partner With a Sales Consultancy to Kickstart Growth

For an emerging franchise brand, one of the most important — and most challenging — aspects of growth is finding the right franchise partners. Emerging brands don’t typically have brand awareness at the start of their growth path, and most brands are also still trying to identify what their ideal franchisee looks like. For these reasons, many emerging franchise brands turn to a franchise sales consultancy to help them expand their footprint. Before that happens, however, emerging brands need to make sure they’ve done the proper groundwork to be prepared for a partnership.

Below are four checklist items emerging franchises need to complete before they can be ready to engage a third-party sales team.

Determine market demand.

When starting a franchise brand, it’s incredibly important to understand the demand for your service outside of the immediate geographic area in which your brand currently operates. During your due diligence, talk to potential franchise sales partners about their experience in your segment and what types of businesses are the most viable to meet the current demand. This will help you further develop your franchise opportunity and target the right markets for growth.

Ensure you are well-capitalized.

However strong your franchise concept, you must be well-capitalized in order to grow and sustain the expenses of franchising. Not having enough working capital will set your franchise up for failure before it even gets off the ground. Emerging brands that benefit from being under the umbrella of a parent company should evaluate the resources available to them and make sure they are all leveraged.

Refine the business model and protect your brand.

Before you can grow, you have to know without a doubt that your product or service is scalable. Franchisors should know how to run every single aspect of the business including potential problems and solutions before allowing franchise partners to join the system.

To this end, franchisors should take steps such as utilizing effective and user-friendly software systems that will help facilitate franchisee training and identify every cost of the business down to the dollar. If the business utilizes any proprietary products or chemicals, those should be thoroughly tested to ensure they are safe and effective. Once this has been accomplished, make sure you have copyrighted and trademarked anything proprietary in terms of processes, products and intellectual property.

Establish a solid supply chain.

Emerging franchises must ensure they have a solid supply chain and vendor network established. Franchisees will not be learning in a vacuum; they will have to deal with many different aspects of the business. It is the responsibility of the franchisor to ensure that franchisees are set up for success.

Choosing a sales consultancy is about finding the right fit to help your franchise grow. Before that relationship can blossom, though, your brand must have certain processes in place to prove itself as a lucrative business opportunity. Once those boxes are checked, the foundation is set for a fruitful working relationship.

Joe Delatte is the President of Home Clean Heroes. For more information and franchise opportunities for International Franchise Association (IFA) franchisor member Home Clean Heroes, click here.