Franchise Training For Franchisors Discussed
Not all businesses are franchise-able, although most businesses in most industries are. Not long ago, I was having this conversation with a CFE or Certified Franchise Executive, which is a degree you can get if you are in the franchising industry. He reiterated to me, and he was probably speaking to the choir and knew it, that one of the most important things in franchising is being able to have a great franchise training program.
As our discussion continued, I began to realize that some things you just can’t train people to do, unless they already have a knack for doing it. In other words, you cannot train someone to be a sculptor, an artist, or a great novelist who doesn’t have the capacity to get into that creative flow. Some people just use one side of their brain more than the other, they are not better or worse; their brains are just wired differently. Likewise, you can take a super star athlete, fighter pilot, or entrepreneur and make them into an accountant. It’s just not going to happen.
So, that’s one issue to contend with when considering franchise training programs, but there are also other challenges. Such as; if it takes longer than three weeks to train a franchisee “how to do the business” at the franchise training headquarters, then most likely it will be tough to franchise. Also, if a franchisee must first have various licenses before they can operate such a business, then that makes it very hard on a franchisor as well.
The franchisor can take qualified franchise prospects that already have attained that license but this limits their franchise prospect buyer’s pool. And the interesting thing about licenses issued by the government is that one of the reasons they issue them is so they can take them away. Therefore, if you sell a franchise to someone who needs a license to do the business, and then they lose their license, you just lost your franchisee.
Now then, the franchisor could have a program where they train franchisees and help them get their license, unfortunately that would be a huge expense, quite time-consuming, and it would really get in the way during times of accelerated growth, something that franchise companies are definitely known for. In any case, I enjoyed the conversation with my friend, and I thought you might like to consider all this.