By looking at an example franchise agreement draft that have been used before, you can get a feel for what will be involved in buying that franchise that you want to be your small business.

There are plenty of examples of a franchise agreement draft that any starry eyed franchise owner like you can find to study as part of your homework phase of your quest. Getting your arms around all the franchise information you can handle well in advance can take the fear and trembling out of what you will have to do to have your own franchise of a very successful business someday.

Part of that preparation is taking a good hard look at the different types of franchise documents that will become your bibles in preparation for becoming a franchise owner.  The franchise agreement drafts that you look are perfect for giving you a good feel for the document you will sign when you sit down that that franchise company and take ownership over one of their hot properties.

It is easy to get intimidated by a very large company that may let you give them several wheelbarrows full of money to own one of their franchisees. You can take the steam out of that intimidation factor by studying more than one franchise agreement draft along with other franchise documents so you do not feel like you are reading a foreign language when the real deal documents show up at your door.  Take some time to read examples of franchise disclosure documents  and any other sample franchise documents you can lay your hands on.  All of this preparation will pay off big time when you get into the franchise negotiation game in a big way.

Basic training for buying a franchise.

In lots of areas of life where you take on a big challenge, the preparation time is the most important phase.  In sports, training camp is vital for a team to win. For the military, boot camp is what makes soldiers who can win battles. So look on the time you spend with that franchise disclosure draft and reading up on what it takes to win that big franchise deal as your own personal basic training for buying a franchise.

Lots of people set out to buy a franchise and do not make it. When you start having discussions with the big shots from the franchising company, knowing their lingo and being one jump ahead of them every step of the way is the path to a big win.  By doing your homework looking at a franchise agreement draft and doing other preparation study, you won’t walk into those meetings looking and smelling like a rube.  You will behave like someone who knows their stuff and is ready to take on that franchise purchase and make a big success of it.  That is a sure path to winning that franchise purchase and being on you way to a long and very prosperous career running your own franchise small business.

 

Looking to the postal operations manual as a template for a well run franchised operation will give you inspiration for how to be efficient when you start your own franchise.

The postal operations manual is one of the best kept secrets that are hidden in plain sight.  When you think about it, the post office represents one of the largest, most active franchised businesses in the world. It is also a heavily distributed operation that runs like a well oiled machine completely under the radar.  We are so used to the post office coming through with the mail on time and professionally that if there is ever a problem with the mail, we react like the world is coming to an end.  That is just how much we assume that the post office will always do its job well. The reason for that efficiency is the postal operations manual.

When you are ready to sign a franchise agreement and start your own business, the first step is to find a great franchising company to become a part of. While the post office is not the place where you would make a franchising investment, you will find no better example of how to run a diversified franchise-like operation than the one that is powered by the postal operations manual.  Despite the jokes about postmen and the negative stereotypes, day and day out the postal operations manual assures that the function of that organization is fulfilled with an extremely high success rate without fanfare or notice by most of its customers.

If your franchise lives up to the postal operations manual, you will succeed.

You can get ahead of the game to develop an operations manual template if you reflect on the efficiency that happens every day of the week when the daily mail is delivered to your house.  The discipline and the values of a postal operations manual are evident in the behavior and performance of the army of postal workers who slave away without praise or rewards for the good work they do.

If one day out of the year the mail is delivered an hour late or a day is missed, most of us behave like it represents a national emergency.  That is just how effective the postal operations manual trains their people to run a reliable organization that lives up to customer expectations as a matter of routine.  Consider also that for the tiny price of the cost of a stamp, the post office pulls off the Herculean task of delivering your mail every day and every month of the year.

The way the postal operations manual assures this kind of high level effectiveness is even more shocking when you consider that the post office is a government agency.  We have to put that aside when we look at the many ways that the postal operations manual would make a cracker jack template for any franchising effort in the world. Considering it is a part of the government, the post office methods for getting the job done right and doing it every day of the year should stand as a model for the rest of us to follow.

You send a franchise contract example to comply with franchise law but it can do so much more than just keep you legal.

You are required to send a franchise contract example no less than a week before the time comes to sign contracts (franchise agreement, OM  etc… ) and make the franchise relationship between and that new franchise owner a binding marriage.  When you think about it, one week is not much time for a potential franchise owner to review a legally binding document that will become his or her new life for many years to come. That is why when you are developing your plan to get good franchise information to future franchise owners, it is smart to do more than what is required by franchise law.

The process of sending to hopeful and wide eyed franchise applicants things like the franchise disclosure document and the franchise contract example is dictated by law so that nobody puts their name on the dotted line not knowing what they were getting into.  In the history of franchise development, there have been plenty of cases of fraud and companies selling fake franchises only to take a powder with the franchise fees and leave some heartbroken franchise applicants with nothing left but broken dreams.

The heavy handed legal overhead that requires that you send documents like the franchise contract example are part of the steps the government watch dog types did to get in the middle of the process of building a franchise relationship and make everyone play nice. That background might help you not dread every minute that goes into preparing workable documents such as the franchise contract example because these documents are the building blocks to one of the truly great business relationships you can have when that franchise owner kicks in and starts making piles of money for you.

Don’t let the franchise contract example do all the hard work of building a relationship with that franchise owner.

It is easy enough to do the bare minimum when putting together the franchise contract example.  You can send along basically a replica of the franchise agreement that will be signed when that big day comes to make the franchise relationship permanent.  But instead of seeing the franchise contract example as a big fat nuisance, think again.  What it really should look like to you is a big fat opportunity to build a solid relationship with each new franchise owner.

If you put yourself in the shoes of that new franchise applicant, unless they are a seasoned old pro at buying a franchise, they are looking to you to guide them through the process.  By making the process easy rather than hard and by using tools such as the franchise contract example to replace that look of confusion and fear with one of trust and excitement, you will have worked some serious magic and built a friend for life in that new franchise owner.

That friend for life will work like a Trojan to build the best possible franchise for you.  By simply delivering that franchise contract example with time to spare, you are helping that franchise rookie understand every paragraph of that important document.  Then by opening lines of communication so questions can be asked, those interactions turn into a business relationship that will result in a dynamite franchise partner who will just keep on delivering the goods for you year after year after year.

The McDonald’s franchise agreement model should be a model for any business that wants to make it big in the world of franchising.

You really cannot go wrong looking at the McDonald’s franchise agreement as a model for how to get it right when it comes to franchising your company.  The McDonald’s people have had such an explosion of success that when you say the word, “franchising”, you almost automatically think of McDonald’s.  So when you begin to get serious about starting your own very successful company out on the exciting adventure of franchising, you do not have to look too far past the McDonald’s franchise agreement as a model for how to grow a business to the empire level and run it like a well oiled machine.

You don’t get to where you are running thousands of franchise outlets and keeping them all profitable and happy overnight. That is why the McDonald’s franchise agreement that they set up with their franchise owners is an evidence of how to do it right. It is a tricky balance to make sure there is conformity in all of your franchise outlets and still give each franchise owner plenty of room to make that franchise outlet his or her own.  But when it comes to a franchise that is a rock solid choice for fast food for millions of customers because they know they will get the same quality of food, service and dining experience from Boston to Seattle to Hong King, McDonald’s pulls it off.

Every aspect of how this massive franchise chain grew up from one store to tens of thousands deserves attention.  From the McDonald’s franchise agreement to their operations manual and their army of field managers, knowing how they got it right over and over again would be pure gold in terms of franchising wisdom. If you are just starting out in planning now to launch your first franchise outlet, it is not too early to think of yourself as a massive franchising success like McDonald’s.  Even if you are not franchising inexpensive fast food and Happy Meals, the principles of running a big chain that are represented by the McDonald’s franchise agreement deserve respect and study.

To say that McDonald’s wrote the book on how to hit it big in franchising is an understatement.

There is an art to running a highly successful franchise chain and the relationship between McDonald’s and their thousands of franchise owners is a modern marvel. Much of that success is in the structure of the documents such as the McDonald’s franchise agreement that set up the franchise to succeed.  But there is no question that McDonald’s has set up a field operation to keep that vast army of spread out small business people operating at peak performance.  It is a network that is so efficient that any modern army would be jealous.

The documents that are the backbone of the stunning success of this massive fast food chain include the McDonald’s franchise agreement along with the franchise operating manual and their system of communications that keeps their thousands of loyal franchise owners all marching to the same tune.

The lesson is clear. To launch a franchise operation that targets phenomenal success, the McDonald’s model has plenty to teach any new franchising operation.  That means learning the nuts and bolts of how the McDonald’s franchise agreement helps to set their franchise owners on a path of success. It also means picking the brains of those in the know about how McDonald’s runs this amazing operation day in and day out. This is the kind of field research that will pay off big time because even if you are not setting out to become a billion dollar multinational franchise chain, the people at McDonald’s have plenty to teach us other than what is in their secret sauce.

Your small business operations manual can keep you on the right side of the rules and regulations of running your small business.

A small business operations manual is perhaps even more important to a new franchise owner than to someone running an autonomous small business.  There is a trade off that you get when you land that big deal to open a franchise of a very popular brand name. The trade off that benefits you because when you sign that franchise agreement, you have the rights to hang that highly recognizable franchise name on your building and inherit the massive crowds of customers that will come to you because of that name.

This is not to say that you are going it alone because among the other massive documents that will flood your mailbox will be a small business operations manual that will help you understand exactly how to look, act and smell like every other franchise in the chain. That franchise operating manual  is your bible for how to make your franchise take off like a rocket to huge sales and profits.  It contains the assembled wisdom of an army of gurus who are locked in little rooms back at the franchising company headquarters cranking out documents like your small business operations manual to make you a success.

You are not expected to have been born knowing how to make that franchise a stunning success. But you are expected to read and know well every rule, regulation, guideline and suggestion in the small business operations manual that the mother ship gives you.  Don’t see this as a tedious imposition by the bosses. Instead see it as a lifesaver for your franchise because the people who know very well how to make big piles of cash are passing those insider secrets to you in exchange for your franchise fees.  That is an excellent swap.

Look to your small business operations manual to keep the legal hounds off of your back.

If all the small business operations manual will do is make you rich beyond your wildest dreams because you learned to run a hugely profitable franchise outlet, that would be plenty. But just as important are the legal tips that pop up in your small business operations manual on how to keep your franchise running squeaky clean with the law. Those legal sand traps that your small business operations manual can keep you out of include tax requirements that the city, state and federal government are very interested in seeing you live up to.  They include other quirks of the law like how to run a safe store or how to treat your employees in a way that avoids lawsuits.

These guidelines in your small business operations manual can keep the lawyers and other legal trouble makers away from your door so you can focus on the big job you have of making big money running your franchise outline. Toss in there that there are a rats nest of franchise laws that you have to live with because you signed that franchise agreement.  The franchise relationship is a legally binding marriage so the last thing you need is to have some quirk of the franchise law jump up and bite you on the toe because you did not know about it.  Know about it by making your small business operations manual your best friend in the world.

The steps for setting up a franchise owner so that he or she will become an instant success takes skill, planning and plenty of tender loving care.

When you go about setting up a franchise at a new location, the process of finding a good buyer for that franchise and getting that new franchise off of the ground is a major undertaking.  When you set out to franchise your company, you rallied your troops to set up the systems and structures so that you could mobilize that crack force of business people to expand your business like gangbusters.

Once you have that finely tuned machine in place to crank out dynamite franchises one after the other, don’t get lazy.  Give each and every new franchise addition the same care and anxiety that you poured into that very first fresh faced franchise buyer who appeared, hat in hand at your door to buy a franchise of your very prosperous business.

Pay attention to how well the process of taking a new franchise outlet from soup to nuts works.  Don’t sit up nights if you do not close every franchise deal that appears in the sunset.  You will have potential franchise owners who just do not cut the mustard. But if perfectly good future franchise powerhouses start falling out of the system before you ever nail down that franchise agreement  and collect those fat franchise fees, it is time to look at what is slowing your growth into the massively profitable business empire you want to become.

 The top priority for setting up a franchise is investing in that new franchise owner.

There are plenty of places in the franchise development process that can be fine tuned.  The performance of your new franchise development orientation process could be the culprit for low closing of new franchise owners. It could be those overpaid franchise lawyers are gumming up the works.  You need to keep those legal eagles around to make sure you are kosher with franchise law but don’t let them scare off good franchise buyers with too much legalize in the orientation or in the franchise documents that must be signed to make the new franchise take off.

Keep in mind that each new franchise owner is a part of your business. It is true that they are small business people on their own. But their success is your success and their failure is your failure.  Give them plenty of tender loving care as you nurture a new franchise owner from prospect to very productive franchise operator.  But don’t let it end there.  Apply just as much TLC to franchise owners after the doors are open and customers are flooding in.  If you stay on top of your vast empire of franchises across the city or across the world, you will enjoy seeing an army of happy franchise owners and happy franchises pumping nice big fat profits into your coffers each month.

Your retail franchise agreement should be offered to the best of the best of the retailing world but how to you sort out the good from the bad?

The act of giving a retail franchise agreement to a franchise applicant is a risk for you and the future franchise owner as well. For the new franchise owner, a lot of money, time and effort goes into opening a new franchise outlet of your business. But when you franchise your company,  you want every one of your franchises to be a blockbuster success.  The key to making that happening is to go the second mile in checking out every one of those eager applicants who want to secure a retail franchise agreement from you.

There is a routine amount of due diligence that has to happen before you ever sit down to sign a franchise agreement with a new franchise owner. Part of the reason that the franchise application is such an involved document is that the franchise applicant has to show to you that they have the financial resources and the experience to take your retail franchise agreement and run with it and turn it into a major money making machine.

Don’t just take the information provided on the franchise application on face value before you offer a retail franchise agreement to that franchise applicant. You have every right to check out that the person who might sign that retail franchise agreement with your company to make sure they have the financial resources either on account or as viable credit accounts to carry off the size of transactions needed to start a new franchise.  You also have the right to check their resume, references and history of success in running a knock-your-socks-off retail outlet.  Running one of your franchises is no place for rookies and you want a seasoned old pro that can take that new franchise from start up to a hugely profitable franchise in the shortest time possible.

Double check who should get that retail franchise agreement before signing day.

When you sit down on the appointed day to grant a retail franchise agreement to that hopeful new franchise owner, you want to look across the table at someone you trust and someone you feel that you know.  The various ways to validate that each franchise applicant is up to snuff should be considered SOP or standard operating procedure whenever there is a retail franchise agreement on the table.

Take that SOP to the next level.  Do not find yourself in the position that the first time you lay eyes on that potential franchise owner is the day they take ownership of a fully operational retail franchise agreement.  Someone in authority in your business should meet with each franchise applicant sometime before that retail franchise agreement is finalized.

This is a great time to ask those subtle questions that will surface if this franchise applicant is excited about the challenge of putting that retail franchise agreement into action and has the confidence, the leadership skills and the many other personality traits of a great future franchise owner. If you do that and you did your due diligence before the singing of a retail franchise agreement, you and that new member of your franchising family are in for a long and very productive life together.

The FDD franchise disclosure document is a required franchise document but it is also a crucial step toward making the franchise take off.

When your FDD franchise disclosure document is delivered to the future franchise owner, you are living up to the letter of franchise law.  Franchise law  is quite picky that when you are ready to set up shop to sell franchises, you have to be ready to deliver a FDD franchise disclosure document within a specified time frame before that big deal finally goes to that big moment of closing and becoming a reality.

When you are required to do something, it is easy to meet the minimum requirements and to pout about it along the way.  Well, put that reaction on the shelf because the FDD franchise disclosure document can be a huge key to turning a wide eyed raw recruit into a seasoned old franchising pro in no time.  That is because the FDD franchise disclosure document is where the rubber hits the road.  It is designed to make sure that all of the behind the scenes details and the insider scoops that the franchise owner must know before plopping down his or her good money to buy your franchise.

Look on the FDD franchise disclosure document like one big training manual that will give the lay of the land to your future franchise owners.  Just as the legal pests insist that you get that FDD franchise disclosure document to the franchise owner in time for them to review it, they are accountable for what is in that big document. So by packing it with everything you think is crucial for running one of your franchises, you pass the buck to the franchise owner because they can never say, “But you never told me that!”

Go the extra mile on making the FDD franchise disclosure document a helpful step toward a very successful new franchise owner.

Making the FDD franchise disclosure document a watershed document that allows you to go forward with the franchise arrangement is one of the big values of the document.  There is a lot of detailed that franchise law requires that you pack into that document.  But instead of just doing the least you can do, take your efforts to the next level.  See the FDD franchise disclosure document as your chance to begin molding that new franchise owner into the kind of go getter that will know how to take a franchise and make it a huge success.

There is a window of time when you are required to deliver the FDD franchise disclosure document to the future franchise owner. Instead of barley delivering the FDD franchise disclosure document within the deadline, go above and beyond and have that important document in the hands of your franchise applicants as soon as it is clear that he or she a serious franchise candidate.  Go that second mile of being available to discuss and explain to the franchise applicant what is in the FDD franchise disclosure document so that the cycle of using this required franchising document as an educational tool works its magic.

Reviewing the franchise agreement forms that you sign with a franchise owner makes sense because you might want to cut them a better deal or cut them out.

The franchise agreement forms that you send out to a prospective franchise owner are not “till death do us part.”  While you are selling that franchise to a small business owner and it is he or she who will run their operation, the rights to that franchise are still with the franchising company. That is why the language that you put into the franchise agreement forms should include some escape clauses so that if the franchise owner makes a mess of things, you have a way out.

Franchising your company  is a big step and there are steps you can take to make sure the partners you bring onto your roster of players as franchise owners are up to snuff.  The various franchise agreement forms shift some of the burden of proof that they can carry their weight in the franchise relationship to those starry eyed new franchise owners.  By making it a serious requirement that the franchise owner provide proof that when it comes to running a small business, they know their stuff, you avoid handing over that valuable franchise to someone who is going to run it into the ground.

There are variables in the franchise agreement forms that you can tweak based on how well this new franchise applicant gives you the warm fuzzies that they will do well.  If you have secret doubts that a particular franchise applicant might be a dud, you can hike up the initial franchise fees within the franchise agreement forms.  That way you build in some insurance in case you have to go in and clean up some messes.

You can also adjust the term of the franchise agreement forms so that an iffy franchise comes up for renewal faster than might be standard. If you set that renewal to come up in a year and make that the law of the land in the franchise agreement forms, then you have a legal way to cut and run if they do badly.  But if they turn out to be all star business managers and their franchise is knocking down serious money, you can make adjustments when you renew the franchise agreement forms.

Making some changes when franchise agreement forms are renewed gives you a window to turn a good franchise owner into a great one.

All franchise agreement forms spell out so anyone can get it that the franchise will expire at some moment in the future.  While the idea of renewing the franchise agreement seems on the surface to be at time when either franchisor or franchisee can run for the hills if they need to, it is also a chance to kick a very successful franchise owner into high gear.

If you have a franchise owner who is kicking backside and taking names when it come to profits, you can sweeten the pot in the franchise agreement forms to make his or her next tour of duty even more of a profit machine. You may wish to sweeten the pot with a nice looking franchise royalty arrangement that lets the franchise owner keep more gold in his or her bank account if they break a few sales barriers.  Or you can offer that knock-your-socks-off franchise owner a way to build an empire through a master franchise agreement.

These changes are all perfectly legal within franchise law and they are what capitalism is all about. When you can capitalize on your all stars and cycle out the dead weight leveraging those franchise agreement forms term limits, that is just smart business that will result in a dynamite team of franchise owner that you will profit from big time year after year after year.

The format of franchise agreement will take some getting used to but by understanding it advance, you will fly through the process of buying your own franchise small business

When you are new to the process, the format of franchise agreement will seem very odd to you. The franchise agreement is a unique animal that will not read like the newspaper or even a business memo that you ever saw in your life.  That is why it is smart to take some time to understand the format of franchise agreement before the moment of truth arrives and you are ready to click your pen and sign your life away investing in a new franchise opportunity.

You should remind yourself that the franchising company does not mean to make the franchising documents cryptic or hard to understand.  Much about the format of franchise agreement is simply the nature of the beast and it is you who is getting used to this new way to conducting a business discussion.  There will be new terminology that makes up the format of franchise agreement and you will be expected to have already become a native in the world of franchising long before the final franchising documents are signed and it is time to roll up your sleeve and get to work building a world class franchise outlet for the company whose name is now outside your building.

One way to get that feeling of disorientation that could happen when you start to look at the format of franchise agreement for the first time is to look at it well in advance of any formal steps that will happen when you and the franchise get serous about working together. There are plenty of ways to get that orientation on the fly.  You can download templates that will show you the format of franchise agreement as well as the contents and how you should go about slicing and dicing that tricky document when the next one you see has your name on it.

Don’t let the legal language that is part of the format of franchise agreement throw you.

One reason that the format of franchise agreement is awkward to the average Joe or Jane is that the franchising company has to let the lawyers in the room when the franchise documents are prepared.  The entire franchising process is heavily regulated from the handshake to the final agreement process and even past that too.  Before we scream conspiracy theory about the evil interference of government, keep in mind that most of that oversight is for the benefit of the franchise buyer and that the franchising industry has exploded since the feds got their fingers in the middle of it with so much franchise law.  So having that much regulation may not be such a bad thing.

But all that regulation makes for some very strange language in the franchising documents which makes the format of franchise agreement very weird to the regular person. It might be smart to get your own set of franchise legal wizards in on the act when you start looking at the format of franchise agreement for the document that will become your marriage license in this new love affair with the franchising company.

You will be able to see the actual format of franchise agreement for the paperwork that you will sign at least a week before the date of the big step to take ownership over your own franchise comes along.  Jump all over the sample format of franchise agreement that they send to you and have your overpaid franchise lawyers jump all over it too.  If you do that, you will be able to waltz into the meeting to sign on as a new franchise owner knowing that you did your part to make sure you know what is what and that this is a sweet deal for you and for the franchising company.  If you did your homework well in reviewing the format of franchise agreement, you may be in for a very profitable new franchise experience indeed.

« Previous Page — Next Page »