Buying a franchise is a major decision. It is not unlike buying a house or a car. This is to suggest that when you buy a franchise, you have to do a thorough market research, a lot of investigation and major computations. You just do not dive in and buy the franchise that you saw has a long queue in one of the football matches that you saw. Buying a franchise entails a lot of research and a lot of asking around. Of course, you would not want to put your hard earned money in something that is not a guaranteed success, would you?

Well, after deciding on what product or service, what do you do next? The first thing you have to do is develop you business plan. More often than not, the franchise owners will have some sort of a template to guide you to develop your own. The franchisor can usually provide you with a checklist of things a franchisee needs including legal requirements.

Your business plan should take into consideration the business location, marketing strategies, training, operations, etc. On the marketing side, you have to clarify if the marketing is part of the package or the franchisor takes full responsibility for this aspect. However, if this is a small business, you often have to do your own brochure printing for example.

Developing your marketing plan is serious business. You really have to consider how you would market or advertise your franchises. This becomes more important particularly if your franchise would not take responsibility over this. It then becomes your responsibility to do your own print brochures, flyers or posters. There are other platforms you may wish to consider like radio or television. Although these may cost a little more than your print brochures, they surely will be able to get your message out.

The next important aspect is hiring. This is the most difficult task because the life of business depends on your service crew. They are your front liners so you have to get the best among the best. Make sure that before you hire, you are set with your policies and legal requirements. During the training, you should be able to discuss with them the operations policy of the business and this will become some sort of the Bible for everyone involved in the business.

Have this in mind and pretty soon, you will get pass the initial birth pains towards enjoying the fruits of your toil.