After you have identified franchise opportunities that you are interested in, you need to contact the franchisors for further information.
If you are reading about the franchise on a franchise website, or the franchise’s own website, you can apply online for a copy of their franchise prospectus. If you are reading about the franchise in a magazine or other publication, their contact details should be included on the advert which will allow you to contact them directly.
If there is a franchise exhibition taking place near you, you can go and meet with the franchisor face-to-face to find out more about their franchise business. Franchise exhibitions take place throughout Australia.
The franchises you have selected for further information will send you out their franchise prospectus which should give you information on their franchise opportunity which wasn’t initially available to you. Reading through this will give you a better idea of what their business entails. You need to ask yourself the following questions to help identify if it is a franchise you see yourself being part of.
- Can you see yourself working in the franchise every day? Would you enjoy doing the work? Can you see yourself making a career out of it?
- Do you have the skills required to run the franchise? Or do you think you could learn the skills required?
- Can you afford the franchise? Do you have the working capital required to run the franchise even if not making any money in the first couple of months? What impact would this have on your family life?
- Is the return in line with what you are (or were) earning? If not, can you afford this drop in income?
Once you have answered these questions you should have narrowed your selection of opportunities and now be in a position to seriously consider and evaluate one or two opportunities in more details. If none of them appeal to you, go back and reconsider what it is you are looking for in a franchise opportunity i.e. the type of franchise that will suit you and is within your budget. There is no such thing as too much research as it is vital that you find the franchise opportunity to suit you.
For those franchises you are serious in you need to complete the questionnaire that was in the prospectus and send back to the franchisor. The franchisor will then contact you if your application was successful, i.e. you meet their criteria, and ask you to come along for an interview.