Expert Interviews

Most of what you can read about running a franchise network is thin. A good deal of it is American, some of it is written to sell something, and much of it is the same handful of points rephrased. When a franchisor wants to know what a development plan should look like in year two, or how to turn down a candidate who has the money but not the temperament, they end up asking someone who has done it.

So that is what we have started doing. Since the summer we have been recording conversations with people who have spent their working lives in franchising: consultants, lawyers, accountants, and franchisors who have run networks through good years and bad. Each one is published as an article with the full audio and a lightly edited transcript, so you hear the guest in their own words rather than our summary of them.

Why we’re doing it this way

We have built software for franchise head offices for over twenty years. That gives us a close view of how a network runs day to day: what gets reported, what gets chased, where the arguments start. It does not make us experts on how to grow a network, recruit the right people or settle a dispute. The people we are talking to are, and the series exists to let them say so at length.

A few rules we have settled on:

• The guest carries the expertise. We ask the questions a franchisor would ask and we don’t steer the answers.
• Everything is published in full. Audio and transcript go on the page together. If a guest says something you disagree with, you can hear exactly how they said it.
• Guests approve their words before publication. We tidy the transcript for reading; they check it.
• No product pitch. The conversations are about franchising, not about our software.

Each conversation runs 20 to 30 minutes on a video call, with the topic areas sent ahead so the guest can think of examples. We ask for specifics wherever we can: what sort of number, what happened next, what would you do differently. Names are left out. The lessons are not.

The series is published on franchiseair.com, our parent brand’s site. Where a conversation bears directly on head-office practice, we follow it with a shorter article here that turns the advice into something a Franchise 360 user can act on. Two of those already exist, and they are a good place to start.

Ken Rostron on development plans

Ken Rostron has been in franchising since the late 1970s. He helped grow Prontaprint from a handful of franchisees to close on 300, and has advised new franchisors at The Franchise Company since 2001. We asked him what a development plan is actually for, where its numbers should come from, and what to do when the plan meets reality.

His answer to the first question is simpler than most. The plan should show the franchisor how growing the network grows their own income, and it should be built on figures that came from real trading rather than hope. He is blunt about the alternative: a plan written to satisfy a bank and then filed is not a plan, it is a document.

Two things stay with you. One is his insistence that the first few franchisees decide everything, because a network that recruits badly at the start spends its growth years fixing the damage. The other is a pair of expensive mistakes he has seen first hand, including a franchisor who let a consultant choose the franchisees and had one left eighteen months later.

Listen to the full conversation with Ken, then read our follow-up on keeping a development plan honest after launch, which takes the second half of his conversation and turns it into a monthly check a head office can run.

Clive Smith on recruitment

Clive Smith was marketing and franchise director at Dyno-Rod through the 1990s, saw it through its acquisition by British Gas, and has spent the last ten years at Franchise Focus advising businesses on becoming franchisors. We asked him how a franchisor finds the right people, and what goes wrong when they don’t.

His answer keeps returning to one discipline. A franchisor is not in the business of selling franchises. A franchisor grants the right to operate under a brand, using its systems and know-how, and the moment the mindset slips into selling, the selection standard slips with it. He puts it more sharply than that in the recording:

“If you have a mindset that says you’re going to sell a franchise, you’ve already put one arm behind your back.”

Also in the conversation: what the wrong franchisee looks like in the first few months, how to say no to someone with the money, how fast a network should grow, and a cautionary tale about resales.

Listen to the full conversation with Clive, then read our follow-up on the selection discipline behind networks that last, which looks at how to hold the line on your franchisee profile and what the wrong appointment really costs.

What’s coming

More conversations are on the way, including one on taking a UK network into its first overseas market, one on where franchise disputes start and when to stop fighting, and one on what a business actually needs in place before it can become a franchisor. Booked for later this month: the management service fee, from an accountant who acts for both sides of a network, and a broader conversation on the numbers behind a franchise.

They will appear on the Interviews page as they are published, and we will write up the ones with the most to say about head-office practice here.

If you’ve run a network

We would like to hear from you. If you have spent years on the franchisor side, or advising franchisors, and would be willing to spend 20 to 30 minutes talking about the part of it you know best, get in touch. We send the topic areas ahead of time, there is no preparation needed, and you see the transcript before anything is published.