The first question is the obvious one, all about financials. Questions like ‘what is the initial investment?’ ‘what’s the ongoing investment?’ and ‘what’s the service charge?’, all of this will uncover a lot of information to help determine if this is the right franchise opportunity for you.
Another great area for questioning is about the history of the business. How long have they been running that business and the model that you are looking into purchasing?. This will tell you a lot about how much experience they’ve got and then secondly how long have they been franchising? Finding this out will give you insight into how much experience they have in supporting franchisees.
Finding out how many franchisees they have is also so important as that will tell you how many peers you will have to help support you along your own franchise journey. Also if there’s an opportunity to speak to an existing franchisee and knowing if you can do this privately, also if you’re able to choose which franchisee you speak to, this will tell you a lot in terms of how transparent they are.
On the topic of transparency, it’s always good to ask a franchisor what they class as their biggest failure and how they overcame it. This will tell you two things; how open they are and actually how they dealt with that failure. I think those pieces of information are much more important than the actual failure itself.
The next question I would ask is all about time scales. Less about onboarding, more about their franchise agreement. What happens at the end of the franchise agreement? are you paying the franchise fee again? what is the exit strategy? what do you want to do going forward? is this a stepping stone to another business? is this something for your retirement fund? Really thinking about the exit strategy before you make this decision is so important.
Finally, looking at the future of the business, it’s important to question what the ambitions of the franchisor are. What are their future plans and growth strategy? also once they hit capacity in terms of selling all of their franchises in the UK or their current market, how are they investing back into the business? Are they investing into the support team that is supporting you?
These are the top questions I would be asking if I were speaking to different franchisors. If you would like to speak to us here at Home Instead, we would be more than happy to answer these, and any further questions you may have regarding the franchise opportunity available. Call: 01925 730 723 or email: [email protected]