Your Franchise is Like a Family

To turn your franchise opportunities into profitable business, you must understand that a franchise system is in many ways like a family. The parent (the franchisor) has its offspring, which are the brother and sister franchisees. Like any family, there are rules that must be followed. When this gets off track, the entire system can become dysfunctional, just like so many families. And although the brother and sister franchisees often get along, some may struggle with sibling rivalry. This can also turn the system into a dysfunctional one.What makes a franchise system different from a family is that the offspring - the franchisee - gets to choose its parents. This happens during the due diligence phase, the time before the franchise agreement is signed when the prospective franchisee checks out anything and everything about the franchisor. If it seems to be a good fit, then the two entities enter into their partnership.

Many times, problems start when this due diligence hasn’t been done thoroughly. Perhaps the prospective franchisee doesn’t ask enough questions, or doesn’t ask the right ones, or ignores answers that don’t seem quite right. Or the franchisor may not be too picky about who joins its system and overlooks many warning flags about the prospective franchisee.

Whether you’ve asked all of the right questions or not, after the franchise agreement has been signed, there’s no going back. Therefore, it’s vital to the health of the entire franchise system - the family - that all members understand how to make their relationships work.

These relationships are the source of franchising’s strength. For a franchise system to work in the long term, the franchisor and its franchisees must be able to communicate. That includes talking, of course, but also listening. In my view, listening is the most deficient skill in the workplace today. Ultimately, effective communication will lead to the growth of the entire system.

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