Franchising Autolavaggi Senzacqua » Benessere Franchising

Franchising companies must have a growth strategy and a franchise development plan and it is best if they stick to this and try not to deviate too much. Of course there will be opportunities in the marketplace, which must be considered as they come along but a smart franchising company will be careful with their growth strategy so they do not spread themselves out too thin and face cash flow issues or the inability to manage franchisees, which are too far away.

As a franchisor founder one of the mistakes that I had made was to allow franchisees into our system in regions, which were too far away from our current cluster of franchisees. This made it tough for me to manage franchisees that were 4000 miles away.

Of course at the time there were franchise buyers, which were pretty good candidates and strong performance type people who I did want in the franchising system that we were building and they were paying customers.

In hindsight however, I think if I had to do it again I would not have sold those early franchisees in places like Florida when our headquarters were in California. It made it tough on me due to the travel time and I could not visit the franchisees enough to help them as much as I felt I should.

Also at the time, we did not have any regional management in place to help them. This is why I recommend that you franchisors come up with a development plan and a growth strategy and stick to it as best they can. Please consider all this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

Source: www.articledashboard.com