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A franchisee should reasonably expect a quality franchisor to provide:
- Complete documentation covering all business processes.
- A profitable model for your business.
- Ongoing input to the business to keep your brand alive and in the market.
- Education about the documentation and continued amendments to it.
- Solid initial training and support to get your business up and running, including support with marketing and sales to get your first customers in the door.
- Open communication about all the information you are presented with.
- Ways of removing yourself from the business in a speedy manner should the need come up due to medical or relationship challenges.
- Ways of removing yourself from the business in a speedy manner should the need come up due to inability to generate required finances in a set amount of time.
- The ability to terminate your contract, equal to his rights to terminate.
Being unwilling to agree to many of these terms (i.e. not having full confidence in the product they are selling to you), yet still wishing to carry on with a deal in selling the franchise to you should cause you to think about what might happen regarding your contracted agreement should things not work to plan and end up in some sort of messy conflict further down the road.
For a franchisor, the aim of selling franchises is to sell as many as possible, as fast as possible and with the minimum amount of risk. I'd prefer to see the risk shared between the franchisee and the franchisor and if your contact is not willing to spread the load then I would consider the fact that you are just as likely to have a working, profitable business if you do something else for yourself.
While the franchisor may tell you all sorts of things about what would happen hypothetically, don't sign up to a contract that you disagree with. Don't be sweet-talked into agreeing to sign "because that sort of problem never happens", or because you think the franchisor is a really nice guy. Remember, it really is your own business and the buck stops with you if there's ever a problem. Make sure you've got the means to defend yourself legally, just in case things don't work out the way you hoped.
The Franchise Opportunity Guru is a website run by former franchisees to help people who want to buy a good franchise. You will find unbiased information about all kinds of franchise opportunities there, plus some great questions to ask when choosing a franchise business consultant to help you.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
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