An Explicit Step-by-Step Guide on How to Franchise Your Business

With the business world becoming more dynamic than ever, it’s always important for your business to look for sure-fire ways of fostering rapid and continual growth. Once your business have already reached the growth or maturity phase in the business life cycle, the pursuit to retain your market position becomes more difficult with so many new entrants in the market with newer ideas. Hence, you always try to expand your operations and reach out to newer markets for better prospects. And among the different types of business expansion practices, franchising has always been the most convenient option for businesses of all sizes.

Now, while thinking of ‘how to franchise my business’, the most ideal way is to hire a reliable consultant who can act as your guide for managing all the processes involved in the course of franchising your business. To help you further, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to franchise your business.

Step 1: Evaluate whether your business can be franchised

Firstly, it’s important to evaluate whether your business is appropriate for franchising or not. Apart from having a record of making steady profits and sales, you need to consider a number of other factors analysing your business concept, checking your financial position, conducting extensive market research, preparing for change and much more. Having clear insights on these aspects will help you get a perception on whether franchising your business can prove to be a feasible choice for you.

Step 2: Know the legal requirements

To sell franchises of your business, you as a franchisor must prepare and register a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD). The FDD will offer you comprehensive information on a wide range of relevant aspects including your business, operating manual, audited financial statements, along with insights on the business experience of the management team.

Step 3: Making decisions about your franchise model

As you move further on how to start a franchise in Australia, you need to take certain important decisions on what are the conditions based on which the franchisor-franchisee relationship will depend. Some of them include:

• Term of the franchise agreement
• Franchise royalty percentage and fees
• Marketing strategy for the franchised outlets
• Length and type of the training programs offered by you
• Size of the territory for each franchisee
• Geographic area for opening up of new franchises
• Required net worth and business experience of the franchisees

Step 4: Select the franchisees

Once you’ve taken the major decisions on how you want to operate your franchise chain of business, it’s time for you to choose the most credible and passionate professionals as your franchisees. Always check whether they have the required experience, expertise, and skillset to understand the nature of your business and the leadership and managerial skills to operate a newly franchised outlet as per your existing business model.

Step 5: Prepare and sign the agreement

Now that you’ve selected the franchisees, it’s time to prepare the franchise agreement as per the mutually agreed terms and conditions. Once prepared, both the parties need to sign the agreement and that’s what will mark as the beginning of a sound franchisor-franchisee relationship.

Step 6: Offer training and ongoing support

As a franchisor, it’s important for you to give proper training to all your franchisees for getting in-depth understanding on how your business works including various areas such as accounting, HR, operations, manufacturing, marketing and sales, customer service, and much more. Also, you must equip them with ongoing online training sessions from time to time for keeping them updated and perform at their best.

The bottom line

When seeking expert advice on ‘how to franchise my business’, you must also ask them about how much time will it ideally take for you to make considerable profits. Having an idea of the same will allow you to channelise your marketing operations accordingly such that you experience a steady growth in revenue after it’s being launched successfully.