When you start a business, you’re probably thinking about how to reach more customers with your pitch decks for deep-pocketed investors or multi-unit operators, helping create a more resilient network. But what if instead you let them reach you? Franchising should be the act of finding someone who loves you so much they’ll start working for you – and not just investing money, but actually turning their own passion into revenue for you and their own family. Think of it as “reverse franchising”: when the best customers become the best franchisees, not investors, because they love what you do so much.
What happens is that as you look less for experienced franchisees and more towards people who love your brand the most – those “super-fans” or “regulars”, those who show up three times a week and sing your praises on social media – you then give those people a blueprint for creating their own branch of your brand at a different location. For help with Franchise My Business, contact www.ashtonsfranchise.com/franchise-my-business/
The advantages of reverse franchising are that:
– Authentic Passion: You can teach inventory management, point-of-sale systems, etc., but there’s no way to create enthusiasm for your brand’s culture for someone who doesn’t have it; someone who has consumed you before will already have it on day one.
– Built-in Local Trust: When a local face opens up a new location, that location will benefit from the community’s pre-existing trust in that face and location, rather than that same community having to trust some out-of-town investor who’s doing a cold entry; people want to support their neighbours and especially support bringing a beloved experience to the neighbourhood.
– Lower Acquisition Costs: A lot of traditional franchisee recruitment requires spending on advertising or broker fees; with reverse franchising, your existing community of loyalists becomes your pipeline for customer acquisition channels and talent pipelines, essentially free of charge.
