Franchise Match or Mismatch?

Until recently, there was no way for a franchisor to understand what a good fit between franchisee and franchisor meant and how to determine if someone is a good fit until after the fact, when problems in the relationship occur.

Franchise sales people are trained (maybe) to sell franchises but not how to interview and assess an individual's skills, values and behavior and fit with the franchise.  You could take 5 franchise salespeople, all from the same company, and ask them to describe the right candidate and you will get 5 different answers (we have done this many, many times).  The franchise sales people don't want to go back for additional training because it means they must make an investment of time and energy to develop new competencies and skills.  So, in reality, a franchisor is represented by a sales person who sells the franchises and the franchisor then has to live with and support this person who has bought into the franchise for what they thought were all of the right reasons.

Through our research during the past 29 years with hundreds of franchisors, I can show you numerous companies who have sold a lot of franchises ...... to the wrong people.  When I refer to "wrong people" I am referring to good people who lack the skills, values and behavior to execute the company's business and franchise model.  We often see franchisors advising prospective franchise owners to assess themselves but, honestly, they don't know how to do that either.

Having been in franchising for a very long time I have seen a lot of the good and not so good stuff.  I can also tell you, that in my opinion, most franchisors are "packaged" to sell franchises and are never educated on how to perform as a franchisor nor what their franchisee profile should be.  Many of these "packaged" franchise companies do not understand the depth of what is actually required to be a successful franchisor as they generally are very entreprenurial and not professional businesspeople and they will sell their franchises to anyone who shows an interest.  There are, of course, mature franchisors who also don't "get it" either.

I believe the future of franchise system expansion will be to create a high performer profile that identifies the people best suited to operate the business, and then recruit people who resemble this high performer profile.  If the franchisors would do this I believe there would be less "selling" of franchises and more coaching on whether the franchise prospect is a good fit for the franchise.  This is all about the Human Capital part of growing a business that up until recently was absolutely ignored in franchising.