If you’re like a lot of people who are trying to figure out which type of franchise to buy, the question “should I use a franchise consultant?” has likely crossed your mind. Obviously I’m biased because I’ve been a franchise matchmaking consultant for over 12 years and helped hundreds of people buy the right business for them, so I believe strongly in using a franchise consultant in your search – here’s why:
I’d like you to think about it this way – if you are a first-time home buyer, you wouldn’t go on the Internet and look for listings that are available; you wouldn’t just drive around to open houses and put an offer in on something you like, you wouldn’t buy a house in the neighborhood before checking out where the schools and grocery stores are, how safe the neighborhood is for your kids, etc. Instead, you would work with a professional real estate agent, and ideally one who specializes in helping people buy their first home. Before going out and looking in a particular neighborhood and at specific houses, a good real estate agent will sit down with you and do a thorough analysis to get a clear picture of what your needs are, what your budget is, and what criteria you “must” satisfy as well as what criteria you “want to” satisfy (for example, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, size of kitchen, etc.). Only after they have this thorough understanding of your criteria are they then in a position to do their research and identify the homes that you should be looking at, (in other words they eliminate all the houses in the area that don’t satisfy your criteria and thus save you a ton of time and effort!) then they drive you around to those homes, while pointing out pros and cons of the neighborhood, pros and cons of particular houses, etc. in other words, educating you so that you can make the optimum decision.
Well, using a franchise consultant to buy a business is very similar to using a real estate agent to buy a home. My job is to work very closely with you to get a very thorough understanding of your needs, wants and criteria for business ownership – what are your financial resources? What is your personality profile? What are the core skills and abilities that you bring to the table that you can leverage? What financial and lifestyle goals do you want to satisfy through business ownership?
You see, most people have never bought a business before so they are not aware of all of the factors that should be considered. As a result, they simply underestimate what kind of research and how much research should be done. I typically see people looking at only three or four criteria before making a buying decision –
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how much money does it cost to buy?
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How much money can I make?
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What kind of hours do I have to work?
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How many staff do I need?
Getting answers to only these four criteria sets is simply not enough information to make good business purchase decision – And buying a business with incomplete information is creating exponential risk for you. And I want to help you avoid that.
I get my clients to look at 8 to 10 different criteria sets; in addition, we do full personality and financial profiling as well as a complete skills and interests inventory. Another critical element that we help our clients to identify is what are the short-term and long-term financial and lifestyle goals that you want to achieve through business ownership?
Finally, because our services are no cost to you, you should engage the services of a franchise consultant as early as you can in your search process. We get paid by the franchisor upon successful matching our clients to a franchise; the franchisors are not permitted to increase their fees to you for using our service. It’s kind of like executive recruiting applied to franchising.
Thanks for listening; I hope to have the opportunity to work with you in finding YOUR ideal franchise. All the best!