By Damian Kay
In the first article of this two part series, I wrote about the pitfalls of relying on the Franchisor being a member of the FCA (Franchise Council of Australia) and some suggestions on what you need to do to perform your own due diligence. In this follow up article I will explore what you can use the FCA for.
One of the biggest challenges when you go out on your own is that you do not get the regular training/coaching you may have received when you worked for an organisation.
Training yourself can be expensive and takes you out of your business at a time when you are desperately needed. Continued development and training should come from a number of places if you are serious about long term success. These sources may include:
The FCA in the State Chapters is very active in providing seminars, breakfast sessions and round tables that promote learning and development. Many of these are held at times that do not take you out of your business for long periods of time. The sessions are fantastic for meeting other franchisees to discuss issues and experiences. I would also recommend taking your key staff members along as it gives them a good overview of the industry. The FCA provides further education as part of the Franchise Academy and from all reports this is an excellent course.
We have found that after the first 6-12 months of business growth, the FCA becomes less relevant to the franchisee. There is very little that they can directly continue to add to your business. However, let me give you a few specific suggested areas of business growth that we highly recommend.
First we recommend that a franchisee obtain sales training because learning one new idea can help your business to grow more rapidly and keep you sharp when with potential clients. The second is finding ways to enhance your client care or customer service. If you get a lot of customers and don't have a way to keep them, you will find your business will be less profitable or sustainable because it costs more to get a new customer than to keep the ones you have. We hold regular 'roadshows' to make sure we are sharing what we have learned with our franchisees, so they can apply it to their businesses. The third area of specific knowledge is financial training. You need to develop ways to collect the money owed to you as a business, but also make sure your business is growing profitably as well. We outsource our financial training and use the expertise of Westpac bank. The training they provide to our franchisees gives us peace of mind that they have the ability to measure their success using tools that are proven in the financial arena. Lastly, we always recommend and offer personal development or coaching to our franchisees. How important is this? You can't always expect things to go perfectly, so you need to have tools that keep your attitude strong, persistent and driven.
From my experience building Telcoinabox, coaching was a powerful key to our success. I counted on my favourite book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Personal development has to be just that, whatever works for you to grow.
If you make sure that you use all the FCA tools and resources as (well as your franchisor's resources), you will possess some excellent skills to start and grow your franchise business. Once you have used these, make sure you begin talking to other small business owners to find out what they are use to helps them progress.
