Researching Your Franchise Options

Ready to look at specific franchises to see how they and you fit together? Knowing who you are and what you want to achieve in business will help you to identify businesses that match up with your goals and strategies.  Once you have identified a few of those businesses you are now faced with the biggest and most important task in selecting the franchise system you ultimately become part of:  RESEARCH!

Doing research on a franchise is a lot like peeling an onion.  You do your research layer by layer until you reach the center.  You MUST be prepared to walk away from any and/or all of these businesses if, as you peel away “another layer of the onion,” you find something that does not properly match up with your personal abilities, business strategies, or ethical standards.

Doing the research takes time but it is not hard.  There are several key steps that you must do each and every time to insure the best chance of making a good decision. We want to make sure that any franchise organization that you investigate should meet certain criteria.  Briefly, any franchise you become interested in should:

1)      Be in a Stable Industry.

2)      Be a leader in that industry (whether the industry is large or small).

3)      Be Affordable to you.

4)      Be Very good at the core business that you will be in.

5)      Have room for you to expand and grow.

6)      Have good future vision for growth.

7)      Be in a non-consolidated industry (your competition is not made up of major chains with great competitive strength).

8)      Has a much needed product and/or service and is an excellent provider.

9)      Has an acceptable level of risk from YOUR point of view.

10)  Is an ethical, and franchisee friendly franchisor with happy successful franchisees.

Having satisfied yourself that the franchise you are looking at meets the above criteria, you now focus on the issue of the specific franchises you are interested in, and how YOU will fit in.