However, their gifts don’t stop at just their decision to invest in the newly formed franchise; other significant contributions early adopters tend to make include:

• Providing you with tremendously valuable experience as you learn to be a franchisor and giving you the opportunity to refine your business.
• Having higher emotional commitment to the franchise concept.
• Exhibiting a stronger desire to contribute and to be involved in helping other franchisees be successful.
• Being the best spoke people for the organization.
• Showing a need for newer and better ways, demanding innovation and providing important feedback to you.

Early Adopters indeed have a lot to offer you and your company. However, they also get many unique benefits. These include:

• Paying less for the franchise since franchise fees tend to go up as the number of franchisees increases.
• Choice of territory, and sometimes even a larger territory than future franchisees.
• Complete individual support that can’t be provided as the system grows.
• Personal interaction with the founder and senior management that is unlikely to be available to the same extent to future franchisees.
• Recognition for their contributions and greater opportunities for involvement.

The benefits Early Adopters receive have to be commensurable with the gifts they provide you; otherwise the relationship will suffer.

Early Adopters usually have the following traits and characteristics in greater degree than future franchisees. They tend to:

• Be more entrepreneurial and visionary
• Take more risks
• Have stronger personality
• Be more assertive, independent and outspoken
• Seek higher levels recognition
• Demand innovation

Although these traits make Early Adopters great partners, they may become a real issue for you as your company grows unless you set some initial boundaries. Make sure you recognize the contributions of Early Adopters. Don’t take them for granted. This is true for all franchisees, of course, but critical for Early Adopters. Keep them as your advisors but set yourself as the leader otherwise you will not be able to manage the relationship.

As a senior manager of many franchise organizations I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Early Adopters. Their enthusiasm was contagious and their loyalty was unequal. These great attributes also made them powerful influences with the rest of the franchisees, so making sure they were content was a vital aspect of managing the relationship. Frequent communications were always a must.

What are your experiences with Early Adopters?

Related posts:

1. Are your Franchise Prospects Thieves?
2. 3 Things Your Franchisees Expect From You
3. Zors, Zees and other Franchising Lingo

Selling franchises, especially for a new franchisor, can be tricky. You need to find the balance between providing too much and not enough information. It is critical that you create and follow a systematic approach to your franchise sales process. Paranoia and over enthusiasm can both have the unpleasant consequences normally created by extremes. A system will keep these emotions in check.

People who want to steal your idea simply do not see value in what you offer as a franchisor. They normally have an overinflated ego and believe they can do your job better than you. This experience is more common for new franchisors whose brands are still building. Prospect with dubious intentions tend to be more entrepreneurial and probing in nature than most franchisees. They ask many questions and demand numerous details.

Watch out for questions similar to the following:

• How did you choose this location?
• How did you get it built?
• Who are your suppliers?
• What are your inventory levels?
• Where did you get the equipment? How much did you pay for it?
• How do you get your customers/clients?
• How do you make this or that (referring to a product)?

These are all good questions and you should answer them in a general manner. However, the more the prospect presses you for particulars, the less you should offer. Make sure that you reinforce the fact that the details will be covered during training and go over the level of support you provide to your franchisees.

People truly interested in your franchise opportunity are more likely to be concerned with how you are going to train them more than about how it is really done, at least at this point. The questions people ask, more than the statements they make, reveal a lot about them. Listen to your prospects carefully and pay attention at how they ask their questions. Stay within your presentation and do not just follow their lead at all times; yet make sure that you address their concerns as clearly as possible without revealing your trade secrets. Remember is all about balance.

Working from the premise “if they want to steal my concept, let them’ is arrogant and can cause you many unnecessary headaches. As a franchisor you have the responsibility to protect your concept not only for you, but for all your present and future franchisees. Creating and following a franchise sales process is the best way to ensure this protection.

Do you agree?

Related posts:

1. Are You Listening or Merely Hearing What Franchisees and Prospects Are Telling You?
2. 5 Tips to Creating an Effective Franchise Operations Manual
3. What Gifts do Early Adopters Franchisees Offer?

1. Go to Google. http://www.google.com.
2. Search for the name of your company.
3. When the listing comes up, click on “cache” (in truly layman terms, cache is the “picture” of a website stored in Google for the purposes of matching search queries. For a more technical explanation go to http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html ) See the example results from a search for International Expansion Experts. If you click on Cache, you’ll see what Google has stored.

Search Results

1.                 Franchising Small Business | International Expansion Experts | How …

International Expansion Experts provides customized expansion and franchising consultation to small businesses.
www.expansionexperts.com/ – Cached – Similar

Now ask yourself the following questions:

• Is any text showing?
  • If no text is showing, you are in trouble as Googgle won’t be able to match your site to any query for either your business or your franchise. Pictures and video are pretty and add a lot to your site, but they are not readable by Google.
  • If the above is the case but still you have been getting leads from your site, congratulations, you are doing a great job driving traffic to your site from your marketing efforts. However you need to be aware that the traffic is coming soley from these efforts and NOT from the architecture of your site. Just imagine how many more leads you would get if your site was designed to really talk with the search engines!
• What words are showing in the Cache that Google can use to match your website to someone’s query for franchise opportunities? 
  • If nothing is said in the TEXT (not just in the menu) about franchising opportunities been avaible, Google won’t be able to match your site to a person’s search for franchise opportunitites, at least not from the Home page. You do not have to say much in the text, but must say something so Google can recognize that franchise opportunities are part of your offering.
  • Your franchise opportunity is described in other pages of your site and this description is picked up by Google. But having something on your Home Page adds to the chances of being picked up in the search results and/or will bring your name closer to the front of the search results that include these terms.
  • Should you go to your web designer with this newly found information?
    • My feeling is that if your web designer created the site as is, he or she has limited knowledge about SEO so asking them to fix it will most likely not produce very good results. This does not mean that you should change web designers. In most cases, they will be able to implement the changes you need to optimize your site, you just need to give them a specific list of changes. 
    • Seek the assistance of a good SEO company and get your site analyzed. They will be able to give you a list of recommended changes to optimize your site.
    • Remember, your objectives have changed now that you are a franchisor. You are now not only seeking for customers/clients for your business, you want also to attrack franchise prospects and thus your site must be optimized to produce both.

Keep in mind that this is just one small trick that allows us to determine if we need further assistance. Making sure we use the words “franchise,” “franchising,” or “franchise opportunities” on the home page, on its own, does not bring your business to the top of search results for these terms. It is only one of many strategies we need to implement to get the results we seek.

Related posts:

1. Looking for Franchise Leads? Start With Your Website
2. Why do people invest in franchises?
3. How to get the first 5 franchisees.