• Expert Advice

Although a franchise offers wonderful opportunities, this does not mean that being a franchisee and owning a franchised business will suit everyone.  But let us start at the beginning.  Before you are ready to consider whether you will be happy as a franchisee, you need to establish whether you are likely to make the grade as an entrepreneur.

It is true, of course, that in a franchise, many of the things you would do in your own business are taken care of by the franchisor, but franchisees do need to display some solid entrepreneurial qualities.

Am I Cut Out for Entrepreneurship?

For starters, you need to be self-motivated.  Once you operate your own business, there will be no boss looking over your shoulder, making sure that you don’t slack off.  Although most franchises prescribe opening hours, it will generally be left to you to decide how many hours you personally want to spend at work.  What’s more, it is up to you to ensure that your staff are performing as expected.  Can you cope with this?

Most entrepreneurs have good technical skills (for example in HR, Marketing or Finance), but this does not necessarily make them successful in running their own business.

Attributes of a Successful Entrepreneur

To accept you as a franchisee, most franchisors will expect you to display some characteristics that cannot easily be taught.  These include the following:

• Being a self-starter: You need to make things happen.  If you are content to wait until events force you to react, you may have a problem running your own business.
• Marketing orientation: Are you able to go out there and aggressively sell the product/service? This is far more important to success than the technical skills required to produce or install it.
• Excellent people skills: You need to be able to deal effectively with customers, suppliers and staff.
• Excellence orientation: You need to be willing to strive for excellence in everything you do.  If you want to operate under a recognised brand, you have to accept that “good enough” never is.
• Administrative ability: The ability to keep records up to date and make sure that all administrative tasks are taken care of, on time, every time, is essential for lasting success.
• Willingness to plan and control: You need to be good at planning your life and handling money, two issues that usually go hand-in-hand. Do you know where you want to be in 10, 20 or even 30 years from now? Are your targets realistic and do you have a clear idea of how you are going to achieve them? Are you in the habit of drawing up a budget and sticking to it? Have you saved some money in the past?
• Ability to tolerate risk: Although starting a business under the umbrella of a franchise reduces risk, it does not take it away.  Can you handle this?

Questions to Ask Yourself

• Is your body up to it: Keeping in mind that becoming an entrepreneur means working long hours, often under enormous pressure, you need to assess whether you can stay the course.
• Will your family support you: If you have family responsibilities, you need to make sure that all members of your family are prepared to support your venture.  We are not talking about them joining you in the business. We are referring to the fact that even if they don’t work in the business they will be affected by your change in lifestyle. You need to prepare members of your family for the fact that you may no longer be able to attend every session of your son’s soccer practice or be home for dinner as regularly as clockwork.  Depending on the type of business you are in, phone calls received at odd hours may become the order of the day, and long annual holidays will soon become a distant memory, at least for the foreseeable future. It is best to call a family meeting and explain the long-term benefits of this short-term inconvenience.  Should you fail to do this, your personal life will soon deteriorate, and you are unlikely to cope with your work.

By finding realistic answers to these and similar questions you should not have too much trouble establishing whether entrepreneurship is for you.  Once you have cleared this hurdle, you will be ready to assess whether a franchise is your ticket to entrepreneurship.

Will I Make a Good Franchisee?

The traits listed above are essential to business success, regardless of whether you more ahead as a franchisee or an independent business owner.  Once you are satisfied that you have sufficient entrepreneurial qualities to make it in a business of your own, you need to check whether you will be able to be a successful franchisee.

Can You Work Within a System?

As a franchisee, you will not be able to do as you please even though you operate your own business.  You will be forced to accept the restrictions of a franchised system, with good reason.

Your decision to join a specific franchise is presumably based on a careful investigation of the way it operates.  You must have been suitably impressed with what your investigation revealed, otherwise why would you have joined?

The success of the brand depends on you sticking to the franchisor’s systems and procedures.  The franchisor will not permit you to change the product range, or the way tasks are performed in the business, just because you feel like it.

Does this mean that as a franchisee, you have to be mindless?  Not at all!  Good franchisors encourage their franchisees to suggest improvements to the system; the network’s continued success depends on it.  However, changes must be proposed through approved channels and cannot be implemented until they have been approved.

As soon as you put a proposal forward to change something, experts at the network’s head office will analyse your idea.  Should it be an improvement worthy of introduction throughout the network, you will get the green light and the credit.

However, should the same experts decide that your idea is not going to work, or what the business needs, you have to accept this outcome. Can you live with this?

Are You a Team Player?

In a franchise, it’s one for all and all for one.  When your franchisor representative comes to visit and excitedly tells you about a new programme the network is about to introduce, you cannot sit back and say.  “Thank you very much for telling me but I am not really interested”.

When the franchisor arranges a regional or national conference, you are expected to attend.  Not just attend, mind you, but provide input and help to drive the brand forward.  Is this you?

Are You Achievement Driven?

Up to a point, the owner of a small independent business can decide how much business he or she wants to do.  They have the freedom to say, “I don’t want to stock this new product range, we are doing fine as it is” or “I don’t want to open my store on a Sunday, I need my day of rest”.

As a franchisee, you don’t have this luxury because the franchisor expects every member of the network to keep identical business hours and offer the full range of products the network advertises.  Are you comfortable with this?

To Conclude: Can I be a franchisee?

If you can answer “yes” to all – or at least most – of these questions, you are ready to move on to the next task.  But remember: if you were less than truthful and realistic in your answers, you are only cheating yourself.  Should you move forward with your plans on unrealistic self-assessment, chances are that your decision will come back to haunt you.

Complete our Franchisee Self-Test to determine whether franchising is the right way into self-employment for you and will find the best type of franchise match for you