Support Questions To Ask Other Franchisees During Due Diligence

27.08.22 07:52 PM By Stacey Riska

Support Questions To Ask Other Franchisees During Due Diligence


We're continuing on with the questions to ask franchisees during due diligence, and I'm going to ask Stacey three questions. She's going to answer as if she were a franchisee talking to another franchisee, looking at the current franchise that we run today. And she's also going to give you some perspective on why she feels. This is such an important question and maybe some add-on questions. 

How does the franchisor provide ongoing support?


The franchisor actually has some good systems in place. They have a portal where you can go online and ask questions. You can put in a ticket if you're struggling in any area and you can categorize what you need help with and somebody will get back to you. So the importance of the question about asking about support is to understand where do you go when you have a question and we're always advising our candidates to understand, to get an answer right, to this question. Yes, you're buying a business in a box. That's what a franchise is, but what happens 3, 6, 9 months down the road? When you have a question or an issue, do you have a dedicated person you can reach out to and pick up the phone like us in our current franchise? Do you have to put it into an online portal and wait for somebody to get back to you? What does that timeframe look like? Do they positively help you resolve the issue? So there are a lot of ancillary questions around support, definitely make sure you get the answers too.

Yeah, it's absolutely critical. I mean this is really important to make sure that you're comfortable, that you're going to get the level of support based on where you are in life, and what you're looking for. Focus on what's your why, and your past experience. It's really important to know that you're going to be supported properly

Does the franchisee support your business activities and results to your expectations?


So for our coffee smoothie business, I would say yes, but it's very average. Now our franchise has been through quite a unique scenario where they actually ended up being bought out, which in the long term is a good thing because they have a lot of stronger franchise brand and leadership in place now. But during those bumps and bruises, there were some ups and downs, but as I suggested previously we get the support we need. Luckily enough for us, for Dave and Stacey, we don't need a lot of support. When we do we're able to put in that trouble ticket online and somebody does get back to us.

Watch your episode on, “Would you do it all over again?”. We're going to give you some perspective on some bumps in the road that we ran into with our franchise at the time we needed it with support. I think it's important that those types of things are the types of questions and answers you want to get during this part of the due diligence phase, to make sure that you're comfortable with that franchise's ability to support you. We went into our franchise having a very decent amount of previous business experience and had we not had that, I'm not sure the result would've been the same today.

If you'd like a copy of the full questionnaire: questions to ask franchisees please just click on this link and ask us to send you a copy.

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 Author Bio


I’m Stacey Riska aka “Small Business Stacey”, your franchise placement specialist. I help aspiring business owners find the PERFECT franchise so they can get to the next level in life and business.
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Stacey Riska