How a Franchise Agreement and a Franchise Disclosure Document differ
There are two documents that are of vital importance...
From the very beginning, training is an important part of any franchise business plan. The goal is to teach new business owners how the franchise works to make sure that it conforms to the company's overall goal and creates a consistency from one location to the next. The effectiveness of the initial training is often a predictor for how well a new franchisee will do when it comes time to open the doors.
A strong initial training program gets the new business owner off on the right foot. The information provided is valuable and helps a person set up their company to match up with the ideals and principles of the franchise. In order to bring in new customers and maintain current customers, a brand needs to remain consistent. Everyone should receive the same treatment, services and goods at each place.
A new franchisee needs to put aside all concepts of what it will take to run the business and instead, look to the franchise to provide guidelines and directions. While this is not always easy, it tends to be the best way to establish consistency and indirectly establish success. When someone new comes in and begins to adapt to these new concepts, a franchise sees real potential in both the franchisee and the new location. There is no doubt that a franchise has worked hard to establish itself and new business owners should know that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Using the initial training, they can begin to learn and process a whole new way of doing business.
Initial training tends to cover a lot of different areas of the business. Most begin with helping a person choose the right location to open the new franchise. From there, the basic operating procedures, processes and guidelines are all set up to ensure that everyone in the business understands how things should be done. Companies usually teach new owners about how to manage employees, use a new computer program or system, find the right distributors and take care of all financial management. This would be difficult to take on without some concepts from the parent company already established. It makes choosing a franchise a more appealing option than just starting from scratch alone.
Initial training is different with each franchise. Some will train multiple individuals all at one time and require travel to a specific location. Others will send out a team to help with the start up of the franchise to ensure that everything is in place before the doors are open. Sometimes only an owner and manager will need to be in attendance while at other times, everyone on staff will need to participate in the initial training process.
The best way to find out what type of initial training is provided is to communicate with the franchise directly. Find out how much the training will cost, where it will be held, how it will be done and who needs to participate. Make sure to ask these questions upfront. Take advantage of the initial training offered by a franchise and consider taking the next step to learn more.
