If you want to attract people to your franchise, you have to de-risk it.
Look at ways to de-risk in your offer to the market.
How in franchising do we commonly ‘de-risk’?
We give income guarantees, or even limited time franchise fee discounts, limited time value-add-ons and so on.
That is only a part of de-risking. I think there are much more powerful and sustainable de-risking strategies that also increase your brand power and thus, are a far better investment for you.
True de-risking
True de-risking for a potential franchise partner is making your business less risky to the prospect.
‘Duh’, you say.
Well, it is not all about money.
It’s just not.
And once you get your head around this, a whole world of options in how you communicate about your brand and offer opens up.
You are a more risky proposition if a franchise prospect;
- Knows nothing about you
- Nothing about your people and leaders in the business
- Nothing about your franchise partners and how they are going
- Nothing about how your business works
- Nothing about what a franchise owner does on a day-to-day basis
- Nothing about your products and what goes into them beyond the consumer-facing knowledge
- Nothing about how you make money in the business
- Nothing about your average transactions and customer counts to break even
- Nothing about what you do to support them in daily practical terms
- Nothing about how you attract customers to a franchise business
Look, I could go on and on and on.
But I am sure you get what I’m putting down.
And importantly, you cannot hold all this back till you have their details – because you increasingly won’t get them.
If you don’t get it, then we are certainly not in synch about our approach and what is required into the future for franchising and expansion.
Essentially, you can sum up all of the above info and the stuff I’ve left out, all sum it up in one word – TRANSPARENCY.
If you don’t see that as being important, and the role of telling stories constantly, and rinse repeat, rinse repeat, rinse repeat, then I’d suggest that things are going to get more difficult for you and your business in the near, mid and long term future.
Like I’ve said before, there are brands leaning into the marketplace right now with a heavy content-first approach.
If you don’t get on this, you may never be in the actual game again…
