Trading business are usually B2B establishments like importers and wholesalers. They supply products to other businesses or large-end customers and keep them in stock. They’re not always B2B enterprises because some trade businesses do sell directly to the customers, but they profit more from large scale bulk orders. Many people are under the impression that trade businesses can’t be franchised or aren’t a good option for franchising.
At The Franchise Institute, we encourage people to consider this seriously because trade businesses can have unexplored franchise potential. Here are some tips that would help you successfully franchise your establishment.
Your first step is to determine whether your business is franchise-worthy because even trade businesses need to be well established and have value to be good franchises. Not all establishments can be turned into good franchises and a good way to determine whether your business is suitable or not, is to study it with an unbiased eye. Here are some things you need to consider:
The answers to these questions would help you determine the worthiness of your brand and whether it would be a successful franchise.
Franchisees won’t invest in a company if the products don’t have a future, and might eventually become obsolete eventually. Your business should have the staying power to thrive for many years to come. It should also have significant profit margin in order to sustain a successful franchise. This model won’t work for low profit margin establishment because the franchisors won’t be able to support the business after playing for the raw materials and royalties.
B2B companies usually have a very different marketing strategy in comparison to normal businesses. Such companies use different platforms and have different kinds of keywords and ads. If you want to get word about your franchise out there, you need to make sure your marketing campaign for franchising is specifically designed to target the right audience. You need to create a profile of your potential franchisees and design a campaign that would appeal to them and increase brand visibility. The more visible the brand is, the higher the chances of success.
We mentioned in the first point that you need to check if your operations can be standardised and if they can be, you need to start working on it. You need to make sure the business model, branding, operations software, and other such crucial elements of your business can be easily used in different locations. You should be able to form a training procedure that would allow you to help franchisees understand your system and implement it successfully in their branches.
It’s important to choose franchisees that are familiar with the B2B industry and know how to carry out business in this field. Every branch of your franchise should perform well and offer good customer service because mistakes and bad service in one branch can have an impact on your entire business. Franchising in trade businesses isn’t as easy or popular as normal B2C establishments so you need to maintain a stellar reputation as much as you can.
If you want to know more about franchising or want some advice, feel free to get in touch with us at The Franchise Institute. You can call us on 1300 855 435 or fill in this contact us form and we'”ll reply as soon as we can.
Thanks for reading,
The Franchise Institute Team
1300 855 435
