Creating the Ideal Franchisee Profile requires the franchisor to reflect about the company values, the beliefs it holds, its culture, and the traits and skills required of franchisees for the success of the business. It also calls for franchisors to be flexible and recognize that the profile will most likely need fine-tuning and modifications as the franchise organization changes and grows.

For example, new franchisors that don’t have an established and recognizable brand need and tend to attract more risk-taking franchise candidates when they first start to franchise. As the franchise system grows with increasing numbers of franchisees, the risk tends to decrease as the brand becomes stronger and the franchisor hopefully gets more financially stable.

An increasing number of franchisees usually leads to a higher name recognition making it easier for franchisees to market their business and get customers. Further, as the franchise company grows it will most likely develop stronger support systems that can result in higher success levels for some franchisees. Both of these factors lead to lowering the risk associated with the franchise opportunity. Therefore, it is appropriate to think that most franchisors will need to modify their Ideal Franchisee Profile at the point when these factors are achieved. Risk tolerant candidates will probably not make the most suitable franchisees under the new conditions and individuals with different characteristics may become better franchisee candidates.

15 Questions to contemplate and answer to create the Ideal Franchisee Profile include:

1. What is the company’s mission and how must it align with ideal franchisees?
2. What are the values ideal franchisees should have?
3. What kind of prior experience should they have?
4. What kind and level of education should they have?
5. Where do they want to open their franchises?
6. What reasons should they have to invest in the franchise? And, what reasons would make them undesirable candidates?
7. Would they want to be owner operators or investors who want to operate the franchise with an appointed manager?
8. Would they want to own one location, multiple locations, or either?
9. What type of management style should they have?
10. What is their ideal communication style?
11. What is their preferred work environment?
12. How resilient should they be?
13. What should be their preferred tasks?
14. What should be their abilities and skills?
15. What are the economic resources that they must have: net worth, liquid assets, and total investment parameters?

Make sure to write down your answers to these questions and use this criteria in evaluating each franchise candidate.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Makeup of a Franchisee?
2. Is it true that veterans make great franchisees?
3. Is a marketing plan to recruit franchisees a waste of time? You decide!

Here are 5 traits that make veterans great franchisees:

1. They have discipline; and, you need discipline to succeed in any business venture.
2. They are used to following procedures; and, franchising is all about systems and procedures. Successful franchisees, in general, follow the franchisor’s recipe.
3. They are team oriented; and, a franchise organization is a team that thrives when all parties are good team players.
4. They are familiar with working in a regimented environment; and, franchising leaves very little room for flexibility in the way franchisees operates their businesses.
5. They are used to taking direction from others; and, the most successful franchisees are open to the guidance of the franchisor.

Here are some interesting statitics from the US Census Bureau News, 2007 release as reported in the premier issue of Operation Franchise, a new publication bringing information about franchise opportunities to military personnel. 

• Veterans are twice as likely to own their own business than non-veterans.
• Nearly 3 million of the estimated 20.5 million businesses are veteran owned.
• Approximately 7 percent of veteran business owners have service-related disabilities.

There is no wonder there are more than 350 franchise companies that participate in the International Franchise Association (IFA) VetFran Veterans Transition Franchise Initiative program. Veterans, indeed, make great franchisees. What do you think? What other traits make Veterans great franchisees?

Related posts:

1. What Gifts do Early Adopters Franchisees Offer?
2. Franchise Procedures vs. Franchise Support: The Fight is on– Or is It?
3. 10 Tips to create great Franchisee-Franchisor Relations