Shaun Thomson, CEO of Sandler Training (U.K.), charts his master franchising journey and what bringing a brand overseas involved
First things first, becoming a master franchisor isn’t for everyone. In many, many ways, it’s exactly the same as starting and scaling a business. A great proposition is just one part of a very complex puzzle and it means nothing if no one is buying it. You cannot consider recruiting new franchisees until you have proved the model yourself, and that can be a stumbling block that many founders cannot get over.
What does and doesn’t work when starting and growing a franchise is a topic I am very familiar with, having launched Sandler Training in the U.K. back in 2003. Fast-forward 16 years, and we have a multi-million turnover and 30 franchisees across the length and breadth of the country. We have been very successful, but it’s been quite the journey, and I have learned a lot of lessons along the way.
Perhaps it is best to start at the beginning. I hail from a career in IT sales. In my previous role, I was finding training my team incredibly frustrating as there were always excuses for not having closed sales. I needed to offer them tried-and-tested techniques that would help them, but I couldn’t find anything on the market. Someone recommended Sandler Training, but there was one problem – it was based in the U.S. I flew over for a training course and I was incredibly impressed, but also disappointed that I couldn’t continue with all the reinforcement modules when I got home.
It got me thinking – there was clearly a gap in the U.K. market for a company to offer on-going sales and management training consultancy, which would work with companies over a long term to help them achieve structured growth. I hadn’t even considered franchising before that time, but it was a sector I knew well, and I could see a huge market opportunity. If you apply that test to yourself when starting a franchise in a new country, you can’t go far wrong.
Winning clients
You then need to ensure you can prove the model yourself and that you’ve worked out the economics – after all, the franchise needs to be mutually profitable. There needs to be a sufficient margin in the model for it to be a win for both the franchisor and franchisee. My first job was getting my own clients to showcase the franchise opportunity for new franchisees. Some people can find this extremely hard, especially people who have gone into franchising thinking that they can just make money from recruiting franchisees.
As a sales trainer, I could write a whole article on how to write a sales plan and start winning clients, but suffice to say you need to rethink your approach to ‘selling’. There are many common mistakes that early-stage franchisors make with trying to sell their product, which is often based upon their life experience of being sold to, badly.
“There are many common mistakes that early-stage franchisors make with trying to sell their product”
The key to selling is to completely flip your approach of talking about the amazing features and benefits of your product and refocus on the customer pain points to confirm that your product is indeed the best fit for them. It’s also very common to overestimate what you can achieve in the short term and underestimate what you can achieve in the long term. Hire a mentor and put some realistic targets in place, which they will hold you to account for.
When you get into a position where you can start building a network, there are two very important factors to consider: quality and support. You must carefully filter who you choose to share your franchise with. You have a brand and standard to protect; businesses must be assured that they will get a high standard, regardless of which business they are dealing with.
Building your brand
I was influenced by some major brands in franchising, such as McDonald’s and the Easy brands, to see how important it was to build the brand. This made me realize that a brand is only as strong as its weakest link (weakest franchise); therefore, I set the bar high for entry and only let those in that exceed this. On average, I discount 19 candidates in order to find the best person that fits my criteria.
The other key part of building a franchise is making sure you have the right support structure in place. My goal with new franchisees, which has been achieved 100 per cent in the last two years, is for them to be invoicing clients within 90 days of completing initial training. This is important not only from a cash flow perspective but also from a psychological standpoint, as the new franchisees can see they are building a business with money coming in. They can only do this with your help.
You need to have a tried-and-tested, on-boarding process for new franchisees, so they have the best possible grounding for success. We have quite an intensive initial training period and a personal mentor who works with each new franchise. There are also yearly conferences, a set number of one-on-one support days and I run a weekly one-hour “all network” call, which is an opportunity to ask questions and engage with the entire U.K. network.
Ultimately, we have a very holistic approach to help new franchisees identify gaps within their business, whether it’s in management training, how to identify new departments of clients they are not yet working with and much more. We also have a ‘Franchise of the Year’ accolade and each ranchisee has an annual review, where I visit their training center and spend a day working on their future business plan.
By getting a good grounding yourself so you are confident that there is a strong market, and then investing in a quality-first franchisee model with excellent support, you are on the road to success.
But one final thought: while there are many similarities with scaling a business and scaling a franchise, there is one fundamental difference. You must always keep in mind that your franchisees are all independent businesses, not employees. You cannot just tell them to do something – you have to get consent, and to do this you have to be a good communicator and negotiator!
THE AUTHOR
Shaun Thomson is CEO of Sandler Training (U.K.)
