Guidelines For Finding A Franchise Consultant

AllBusiness:

1. Find out how many years this person has been a franchise consultant/broker. Lots of “newbies” have entered the business in the past 2 years.

2. Ask them if they have previous experience in the franchise industry, or if they have ever put their own money into a franchise or non-franchise business of their own.

3. Find out how many newspaper, magazine, or online franchise articles they have been quoted in. Also, you can ask them if they have ever been interviewed by local or national news organizations.

4. Ask them to share any franchise articles or whitepapers they have authored, and that have actually been published.

5. Find out if they are part of a franchise that just so happens to “sell” franchises. This is important, because you may find yourself being pitched on buying their own franchise! Besides being a serious conflict of interest, what are the chances of you being interested in becoming a franchise consultant/broker in a very crowded field? Also, the paydays tend to be rather large for these folks that sell their own franchises, so the incentive is certainly there for them to push them.

More guidelines by Joel Libava here.