Why would anyone buy my franchise?
Why would anyone buy my franchise?
My first visit to Jackson, Mississippi to meet with a successful roofing contractor. He is smart, asks great questions and clearly is driven to scale his model. I find myself continually thinking to myself how impressive it is that he’s come from literally nothing and fought his way through life at every stage. He is literally the definition of an entrepreneur and has sold everything from roofs to cars and a variety of other more colorful products. His first question upon my arrival, “Chris, does anyone wake up in the morning and say I want to get into the roofing business? Why would anyone buy my franchise?” It reminds me how often I hear the question but you lose touch with perspective from outside of the franchise marketplace and forget that this is a legitimately good question. My response was a less eloquent version of, well, most likely not, although their are insurance adjusters and people who are connected to the field who might fall into this category, but most of the time it is someone looking at all types of franchises and the financial opportunity of roofing is what gets them excited.
In this case interacting with a roofing business owner, I could relate to painting service franchises, flooring, restoration and other construction service franchise brands I had experienced success with and could reference directly. Most of the people who invested in these brand last were not who you would picture in your head owning these types of businesses. They were former executives, sales professionals and in comes cases business owners who saw an opportunity, understood the value proposition of the brand and chose to invest in the franchise. Some of thee buyers were also considering restaurants and retail businesses and started their search for a franchise business with a very wide net, when the right brand came along and their evaluation checked out, they signed on the dotted line.
My advice to the roofing contractor considering franchising his successful roofing business was to understand how much value he had in his intellectual property. What he had learned in the almost ten years of operating his business model was worth a great deal to someone working hard to get their own start in business ownership. Although roofing may not be the sexiest business in the world, it makes money and has a low start-up investment. The financial opportunity becomes the sexiness and people are drawn to what is a great opportunity.
For more information on how to franchise your business, contact Chris Conner with Franchise Marketing Systems;