You have probably been to countless seminars and read numerous books on growing a business. If you have been lucky to actually implement anything you have uncovered, you will undoubtedly be looking at the three most common ways of growing most businesses:
- Get some more new clients/customers (lots of different sectors like to call them different names!)
- Get your current clients to visit you more often (whether this is online or maybe face to face)
- Get your clients to spend more at each visit or ‘cross-sell’ as you see fit. developing the relationship and the understanding of their ‘needs’ and ‘wants’.
Do these points seem familiar?
Of course, all of them require marketing effort, typically paid for, so ideally you’d implement some form of tracking mechanism to ensure you are getting a healthy return-on-investment. Otherwise you will see it as a cost rather than investment!
However, let us assume for a moment that you have a proven and successful model. As such, you have enjoyed the early stages of business growth along with all the glory that comes with it. So now you are starting to benefit from a better income than you did when you were employed, probably updated your car to something that resembles one that you had been drooling over and even started to be more adventurous on the property front! There is a new way to grow that most others have probably not even thought was applicable to them or their business…
Have a think about the merits of franchising your business for a moment…
Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean you want to turn your business into the famous ‘Golden Arches’ but actually there are similarities on where you could end up!
You could well join 1 of over 1000 other franchised brands in the UK (I bet you did not expect it to be as high as that did you?)
Why would you want to franchise your business?
We can talk about this subject for many hours, however, for the purposes of this article, think about franchising as the following:
- You have a proven model that is currently limited by your location
- You have (or can) systemise the business and operations
- You can teach anyone the model and operations
- You have an appetite to grow the business and build a network
- You are willing to grow your business via franchisees in other locations copying what you have already done (because franchising is NOT for everyone!)
Then, in brief, this would be some of the elements required to franchise your business!
Sounds too good to be true right?
It is fair to say that franchising your business is just as easy to get wrong as it is easy to do it correctly, however, a methodological approach always wins the day and there is guidance available if you don’t have sufficient resources. This streamlines the process into weeks to get you ready with the right documentation rather than months, which again is against popular belief.
So, growing your business, utilising mini sales agents (franchisees) simultaneously dotted around the country who pay for the privilege to do so, surely this seems like a viable option for your business?
Your company can grow and grow in valuation- this is franchising for you when done right!
