What's The Right Time to Franchise Your Business If your business is franchise-ready, but you have not started that road, chances are you are going to miss a big growth opportunity.

Franchising is a smart way to ensure that your product and services reach your target audience. It is because you use a franchise model of distribution, that you are making a smart move to reducing your overhead costs like manpower training, infrastructure enhancement expenditure etc.

So if you have not gone down to franchising your business already, these are a few things which you would be losing out on:

Time to Expand

If you are not reaching out to your target customer when the market is ready for a product or service like yours, which may be unique and the only one in the market, you are obviously missing the train.

Chris Conner, President of the Franchising Marketing Systems, advices that Businesses should grab the "short-lived opportunities which need to be made most of it when the market is ready for them. If you cannot expand a business quickly enough to capture market share you will lose out on an opportunity. Franchising allows businesses to expand with speed and efficiency that is unparalleled by most expansion vehicles."

Economic Expansion

Believe it or not but setting up your business into a franchise model actually helps to save overheads and headache of taking on more capital. With an initial capital where you have a prototype running, when you rope in more stakeholders, they also bring capital power with them.

So in turn, you are expanding your brand without having to invest into these costs. On the other hand, if you don't franchise at the right time, chances are you will be running pillar to post to expand as a sole proprietor, looking at hiring more efficient manpower to run the show for you, or better still spend even more (in terms of money and energy) in training and mentoring.

Connor suggests, "Franchising actually allows businesses to expand utilizing franchisee's capital and investment in the franchise system. If done correctly, a franchise system can grow organically – as franchisees invest in the system."

People Power

If your target market is ready and you are not seeing the signals, you are making a big mistake. Skilled manpower doesn't come easily and that also when you don't know who to trust. You would not like to make someone second in command without having tested your waters with a desirable protégé to put it this way.

However, with a franchise model working for you, this pitfall is removed. In franchising, you get to attract a pool of like-minded people. Because they are coming to you with their eyes open and some bit of professional experience and capital backing with them, the level of commitment and seriousness is that much more, which will be missing if you were to hire a next in line of command, all by yourself.

This article was originally published in Franchise India by Uttara.J.Malhotra.