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| What
will you need to set up a franchise or dealer
net? | |
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| Your franchising operations manual
and training program
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A franchising
operations manual and franchisee training program
documents your business processes and lets you
teach others those business
processes.
Business processes include
your methods of:
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finding customers, |
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presenting your product or service,
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delivering your product or service,
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quality control, |
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hiring and training employees, |
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bookkeeping and billing, |
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making sure you get paid your franchise
fees |
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making sure your franchisee or dealer meets
your standards in areas that may impact your
trademark, trade name and intellectual
property |
A franchise operations manual and franchisee
training program must do a number of things:
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It must help sell your
franchise |
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It must be effective at training your
franchisees |
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It must deliver what you promised during the
franchise selling process (or
more) |
We have written a number of franchising
operations manuals and have designed training
programs for them. We help you think through your
existing business process so you can either create
the training program yourself or have us do
it.
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| You will need a good franchise or
dealer structure
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The structure of your franchise includes
the fees you charge, how you get paid, how you
allocate customers and territories, how you handle
exclusivity, and much more.
You need to
make numerous structuring decisions up front, when
you are first setting up your franchise.
Unfortunately, you won’t have the
experience to know the impact of these decisions
until later, after the decisions can’t be
changed.
That’s the reason why many
franchisors turn to a consultant. A good
consultant will help you structure your franchise,
so that the lawyer can draft a document
efficiently and according to wisdom and
experience.
Because while a good lawyer can help you with
some of this, the appropriate role of the lawyer
is drafting documents. You need an expert
consultant with experience in setting up and
selling franchises that are unusual or high tech.
You need someone to ask questions and provide
alternatives so you can make the large number of
decisions. |
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| You will need a good trade name and
trademark or service mark, and the right
protection for your intellectual property
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Your business processes and your trade
names and marks are part of your intellectual
property. You need to make sure you structure your
franchise for maximum protection in the
marketplace.
Just one example is your
company name. Often your company name can be the
same as your trade name (for instance, Ford Motor
Company sells Ford), or you can promote different
trade names (how Dupont promotes Teflon® and
Kevlar®). There are pluses and minuses to all
these decisions involving names and
marks.
Similarly, should you patent? If you
do, you disclose your inventions to the world, and
this may not be a good idea. You may want to rely
upon trade secret protection. Regardless of your
intellectual property, you need to develop and
implement a strategy to protect yourself. Again,
this is a decision that you must make early on,
before you have the full benefit of experience.
That’s why you need an expert in licensing and
intellectual property protection
strategy.
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| You will need a legal document – a
UFOC and franchise agreement – that gives you
the structure you need now, while allowing you
to change and grow
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The UFOC is a legal document that lets you
offer franchises, and the franchise agreement is
the contract between you and your franchisees or
dealers.
The primary concern is that your documents
include the following:
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Completely cover numerous
contingencies that could develop |
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Give you room to change and grow when you
decide to change things |
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Don't open you up to litigation if someone
gets sour on you. |
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Can be sold to prospective franchisees –
they can buy into your documents, and more
importantly their attorney can be sold on your
documents | |
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| You will need a method of selling
your franchise
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High tech or complex franchises need to be
sold differently. A good consultant can help you
sell your franchise, or find people who can sell
it for you.
The best way of selling
franchises is to make it easy for prospective
dealers or franchisees check out your market for
themselves, and make them sell themselves to you.
In doing so, they will either gather information
about their chances for success and judge the
potential for themselves. You are assured of the
highest quality, most committed franchisee or
dealer.
We help people sell franchises and
have design programs to train franchise
salespeople.
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| You will need a marketing package
for your franchise and franchisees
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A marketing package includes
website copy, brochures, white papers, mailers and
so forth. All of it should present your company
coherently, like an orchestra consisting of
instruments all playing independently but creating
a single piece of music together.
We
design markeing materials and write copy for our
clients, or we help them use their own resources
and guide them to produce what is required.
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