Are Franchise Templates Any Good?
(In this blog, we consider the value of different franchise templates and if they’re any good. It turns out that templates can end up costing you much more than you think.)
Organisations of all types and sizes rightly consider franchising an excellent way to expand their business across the UK and around the world.
There are several ways to get started as a franchise:
Using franchise development consultants is a good option because they (should) have the experience to handle the whole process. The best do offer value for money but finding good consultants is difficult and fees (typically £20,000 to £40,000+) can be beyond the budget of companies that only want to explore franchising or those just starting to grow.
Some choose to use solicitors for a franchise agreement and then develop franchise manuals and documents themselves. This can be a good cheaper option when done right – but someone with extensive franchise experience must develop your system. (Professionals like us can write better franchise manuals, documents and training for you – quicker and more cost effectively than your own staff or franchise consultants can).
AND
Using ‘franchise templates’, which is the subject of the rest of this blog.
On the face of it, the idea of buying a generic template and building your own franchise system on it seems a good one. After all, the root policies and procedures of many franchises are similar because they share the same principles of healthy relationships with franchisees, codified procedures, brand protection, mutual benefit and BFA codes of ethics.
Franchise templates may also seem appealing because some believe: a) that a template, priced from £2,000 to as much as £12,000, is still cheaper than using a franchise development professional; and b) that they know more about their business, so will be better at filling a template than a professional would be at writing bespoke manuals for them.
In theory, these perceptions might be true if:
Franchise templates were any good.
You and your team have the franchise experience to complete templates fully and to comply with regulations, avoid expensive mistakes and steer clear of the pitfalls of franchising.
The true cost of your time (and inevitable delays) plus the price paid for templates is really less than using a professional.
Professionals didn’t add any value to the process.
But things are very different in the real world.
We’ve been called in to help many organisations after they’ve had disastrous experiences with templates or failed to complete them. In most cases, we must write new manuals, documents and training for them from scratch – so, the time and money invested in templates was just a waste.
So, let’s explore the four points listed above in more detail.
1. Are franchise Templates any good?
Because we’ve rescued so many businesses from templates, we have first-hand knowledge of the range of their quality and contents (and copies of them on file) to compare.
They seem to fall into three categories:
Templates that only exist as a marketing exercise.
I.e. you buy the template, discover it’s too hard to complete properly or lacking in the detail you need – so go back to the vendor for help, full franchise development or to complete it for you at much higher fees.
If the template is basic but sound, the seller is reputable and they will refund the cost of the template from other services you go on to use (that they wanted to sell you in the first place), then this isn’t necessarily a dishonest practice – just a waste of your valuable time.
We have a copy of a good but basic template sold on this basis (for £2,500) from a legitimate organisation that will refund its cost from their services – there’s nothing wrong with the content, there’s just not enough of it to base a franchise on without significant additional work.
Poor quality templates out for a quick buck.
Unfortunately, there seem to be more franchise templates of this kind than any other. They are sometimes just collections of out-of-date documents copied from others and texts you can get free elsewhere anyway – but still sell for anything between £2k to £8k.
The problem is you can’t easily spot a bad template until you’ve bought it. Their promotion looks professional and you can’t get samples before parting with your cash.
As an example of just how bad some can be:
We were approached to help a company that had bought a template for £6,500 from somebody else, which was advertised as ‘containing documents worth £20,000’. In fact, the template only consisted of a precedential franchise agreement from the 1990’s, contents copied from an American franchise and regurgitations of HMRC and other ‘.gov.uk’ websites. Understandably, they couldn’t complete the template, so called the vendor’s helpline to get assistance. The vendor sent out a ‘consultant’ who promised to complete documents for them at an additional cost. Over the course of a year they wasted £50,000 (their life savings) on both the vendor and the bad advice given to them but were still left without a manual and didn’t sell a single franchise. We were able to help them but had to start again from scratch, so all the time and money they’d spent with the other company and its template was lost.
Quality templates that are legitimate (but still generic).
It’s not all bad news. There are reputable vendors of fairly decent franchise templates out there – and, if you can find them and have the time and a franchise-experienced team, you might theoretically be able to build on these to create a reasonable franchise system.
But here’s the rub.
The cost of buying these better templates is higher (typically £6k to £12k), you still need to spend a lot of time adding to them to make them specific and useful to your business – so, by the end of the exercise it would have been cheaper and quicker just to use a professional (like us) for a better bespoke result.
We did consider creating a quality franchise template like this – but realised it would be better to simply write decent standard franchise manuals and documents bespoke for our clients at affordable prices in the first place.
We’re not against franchise templates as a concept. It’s just that you’d need to find one that was specific to your sector, products, services, culture and type of business before it would be an adequate and cost-effective basis for your franchise. And that’s difficult for vendors to offer because they only get a good return from templates if they’re generic and sell to a wider market.
Perhaps the bigger question is this:
If your franchisees and stakeholders demand and deserve a franchise system that is specific to your business and protects them and you for years to come, do you really want to base the expansion and success of your franchise on a generic copy of somebody else’s manual from the past?
Talk to us about affordable options to develop bespoke manuals and training for your business. Even if you choose not to use us, we’ll give you free advice and point you to other reputable suppliers (including franchise solicitors and franchise development consultants, should you wish) that will serve you better than a template.
2. Does your team have the experience to complete a franchise template?
Some buy franchise templates because they think their staff could fill gaps in a template better than a professional could write bespoke manuals for them – because their team knows more.
Even if you could find a template that didn’t have too many ‘gaps’ to fill (which is unlikely due to their generic nature), the assumption that staff will write better franchise manuals, documents and training is often flawed because:
Your team may have more experience in your business but that doesn’t make them the best at writing clear procedures. In fact, a third-party professional will often simplify procedures and make them more efficient because they come to the project more objectively.
Your team would need experience in both your operation AND franchising to write good franchise manuals and training (which must also consider good franchising practice, franchise agreements, the expectations of franchisees, franchisee management, relationships, regulations and the protection of your brand).
If you don’t have advanced experience of franchising AND manual writing in many sectors and types of business, you won’t know what works best for other franchises and how to avoid costly mistakes they’ve made – or how to communicate most effectively with franchisees.
If you aren’t experienced in franchise development (which is likely, if you’ve bought a template) then you simply won’t know if the template you’ve chosen is missing anything important or if it proposes something that is now against current best practice, regulations or BFA codes of ethics. We’ve seen templates with howling omissions and errors.
Many of the franchise templates we’ve seen are not kept fully up to date because vendors have been selling the same ‘pack’ for years. They can even be dangerous if they contain policies, procedures, terms, conditions or practices that now fail to comply with law, regulations and BFA codes of ethics. Your team need to be able to spot these problems if your business is to remain legal and protected. Mistakes in this area can be very costly.
Your team has other duties and responsibilities in your business. This often means they can’t spare enough time to fill in templates properly and your franchise is severely delayed.
This last point is the single biggest reason we are called in to take over – where an in-house team simply can’t complete manuals to a good enough standard on time – and that’s fair enough if they were employed to help your business perform and not to write about it.
But this presents a big problem for such clients. Because we must usually start again from scratch, the time and money spent on templates is wasted, impetus is lost and they have to wait longer to enjoy the improved franchisee recruitment and sales, better relationships and increased performance that good manuals bring.
3. Are franchise templates cheaper than using professionals?
There are many franchise templates available, which sell at different prices and vary in quality. The same is true of consultants and professional writers.
Most franchise templates sell for around £4,500 to £7,000 and some for as much as £12,000. But you must then add the true cost of your time to ‘fill’ those templates – or to completely rewrite them in some cases. The true cost in terms of salaries, lost productivity and delays actually adds £thousands more to using templates.
E.g. (To calculate the TRUE cost of using templates):
Let’s say your staff costs £25 per hour and your business’s wage costs are 20% – so, every hour of their time is worth £125 to your company’s turnover.
In our experience (if they manage to complete it at all), you’ll need at least 100 staff hours to fill a template properly – thus adding £12,500 (£125 x 100 hours) to the cost of a template.
So, even if you only spend £5,000 on a template, the project will owe you £17,500.
But on top of that, you need to add the real cost of delays (e.g. loss of earlier franchise sales etc.) that using templates always causes – adding £thousands more to the cost.
So, templates can be more expensive than you think.
And quite simply – we can usually start you off with better franchise manuals and documents for much less than some templates cost, deliver them sooner and support you better as you grow.
4. Do professional writers add anything that franchise templates don’t?
Good professional writers add far more value to your franchise (or any other format of business) than a template ever will because they:
Provide franchise manuals, franchise systems and franchise training that are written specifically for your organisation.
Deliver faster than trying to complete a template in-house, so you can start selling franchises and enjoy enhanced performance and better standards sooner.
Make your franchise more robust because they’re experienced in many different sectors and know the regulations you must abide by. This means they know what works and what doesn’t and how to enhance your procedures with industry best practice, ensure your compliance and protect you from expensive mistakes others have made.
Know what franchisees demand and deserve, what your stakeholders want and what is required by current best practice and BFA codes – so provide up to date documents that better protect your business and satisfy your network.
Are driven to create manuals, documents and training that better ensure the success of your business, so they can continue to serve you as you grow.
Objectively evaluate your procedures, help you develop new ones and write everything up step-by-step in ways that are easier for your staff to follow.
Write in plain English in engaging formats that franchisees learn more from (than they would from the staid legal language and boring formats of most templates).
Look after you in person, so you and your manuals remain supported by an experienced professional – instead of by the anonymous ‘helpline’ of a template provider.
Professionals add far more value – often for less money than the true cost of templates.
So, are franchise templates ever worth using?
Templates do have their place but only if you can find a good one at a low price that is kept up to date AND you have a franchise-experienced team that has the time to complete it properly.
As it’s difficult to find a good template and the true costs of using them is so high, a professional writer will usually provide better value for money and offer greater benefits and protection to your business.
We suggest you shop around to compare the cost and services of different professional writers (like us) against any franchise templates or manual templates you are looking at. It’s likely that we can develop what you need at a reasonable price and save you the time and money you might waste on a template.
Get in touch to see how we can help here.
