It is important to maintain constant communication with your prospective franchisees in order to keep your brand in the forefront of their minds when they come to make their decision. Sarah Carlile, Founding Director at Coconut Creatives, explains more about keeping communication channels open during the recruitment process.
David Williams, Director, Franchising at RBS suggests how you can improve your chances of success with your business and the bank
When seeking finance from a bank it is important to demonstrate a good understanding of your franchise business and its future success. The quality and scope of your business plan is crucial.
When approaching a bank it is important to present a robust and detailed business plan outlining your business goals, performance and management experience. Highlight what key personal skills you have:, team skills, leadership, people skills and sales experience are likely to add real value as well as showing a proven track record.
Demonstrate your understanding of the market and highlight your experience. Banks will look at the complete package including financial projections and what plans you have in place should things take a turn.
Financial projections are the cornerstone of any business plan. They provide an insight into how you are going to pay the business bills together with your own requirements. Your financial provider wants to see real life targets that are achievable. Your Franchisor can be a great source of information by clarifying if your projections are realistic and remember to speak to existing franchisees in the network as they have all been in the same position as you.
The ability of the business to pay you an adequate remuneration is often overlooked within the business plan. This is the amount that the franchisee will need to take from the business to meet their living expenses, household bills and spending money. In order to make an accurate assessment of the amount required, a detailed income and expenditure statement should be completed. A detailed breakdown of all loans, credit cards and mortgages, together with other family income, will assist and ensure nothing is missed. The bank will also ask to see these along with copies of your personal bank statements.
Finally, give careful consideration to your local market and details of competition. In-depth research should be undertaken to understand what makes them tick and in what areas you can compete. This can be ascertained by looking on the web or making calls as a prospective customer. In many instances, competition can be a positive factor.
RBS has a network of accredited Franchise Managers, who are based across the UK. The have all completed a training course, have a detailed understanding of franchising and could guide franchisees through the process of raising bank finance.
To find out how RBS can help you, contact Dave Williams on 07770 733376 or e-mail dave.williams@rbs.co.uk
This blog includes a unique offer for a full sales process review by the Coconuts! Keep reading to find out why…
Social media is a great way to engage with your customers. However, with great exposure comes great responsibility! Here at Coconut, we like to bring you the most current news on marketing and our contacts at Freeths Solicitors have written this blog on the legalities surrounding social media. Here’s what they think you need to know to keep ahead of intellectual property rights online.
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heck the terms and conditions for each social media platform you use (or get your lawyer to do it if they seem a bit dull). Often they will allow the platform provider to do whatever they want with your content once you have posted it. You might be OK with that, but it underlines the importance of thinking about every post.
You need to make sure that you are happy to release that content into the wild and relinquish control over its future exploitation.
Cysbersquatting isn’t just an issue that affects domain names. Many businesses find that their preferred online moniker has been registered by a third party by the time they get around to engaging with social media as a business tool.
Different platforms will have different rules for dealing with these issues but, in general, unless the account is being used in a way that infringes your intellectual property rights, the platform provider is unlikely to intervene.
Your lawyer may be able to find a solution for you in the platform’s Ts&Cs and policies, but often there is no legal remedy. In those cases, you may have little choice but to adopt a different username, or to offer to purchase the account from the current owner.
If you choose the former, consider the impact on the new name from a brand and trade mark protection point of view. Does the variation on the main brand name dilute or undermine the distinctiveness of the brand? Is the username a variation on your core brand that might be worth protecting as a trade mark in its own right?
If you choose to offer to buy the account, there are ways to make discreet approaches and keep the price reasonable.
If an account that bears your brand name (or one similar to it) is being used commercially by a third party then, on the face of it, you would appear to have a claim in trade mark infringement or passing off. Chances are though that the Twitter account will be the least of your worries and there will be other infringing acts online and elsewhere to complain of.
Of course, the world is a still a big place, and the current owner of that account might have every right to use that name in relation to the goods or services they provide in their own territory. As always, these things depend on the facts. Because intellectual property laws include remedies for “groundless threats”, it is important to talk to a specialist lawyer before taking or threatening legal action.
What can you do if someone is using a social media account which, at a glance, looks like it might be connected to your business, but is in fact a parody account which pokes fun at your business? You know you should probably be flattered, because no-one parodies a failure, but it just doesn’t sit right with you…
Parody accounts are not typically used in the course of trade, so trade mark infringement or passing off claims will fall at the first hurdle. Defamation and similar claims will also be difficult (particularly as, since the Defamation Act 2013 came in, businesses have to prove “serious financial harm” to succeed in a defamation action). Moreover, threats of legal action may find their way into the public domain, achieving little more than proving that you have no sense of humour.
As ever, check the Ts&Cs. You may be able to compel the account holder, via the platform provider, to at least include a prominent statement on their feed making it clear that it is a parody account and not connected to you.
The key message is this: by all means have your lawyer look into it – everything turns on its own facts – but where there is no legal remedy the best response is probably to publically ignore it, learn what you can from it about perceptions of your business in the marketplace and factor that into your marketing strategy. In the words of Don Draper: “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation”.
Part two of our social media tips will look more specifically at advertising and reputational issues.
This is only a summary of the law in force at the present time and is not exhaustive, nor does it contain definitive advice. Specialist advice should be sought from a member of Freeths Franchise or Intellectual Property and Technology teams in relation to any queries.
Dave Williams is Director of Franchising at RBS. He is a banking franchise expert and knows the 
industry inside out – he works with both Franchisors and Franchisees. Below he offers some useful tips to those Franchisors that are looking to make their business a bigger success.
“At RBS we specialise in looking after the financial needs of SMEs and mid to large corporate businesses. The bank’s Franchise team have a wealth of knowledge and experience and aim to provide bespoke solutions to both franchisors and franchisees.
As the franchisor, you face many demands. From recruiting new franchisees to liaising with stake holders, from managing operations to maintaining a competitive edge. Here are some top tips I can offer to take your franchise to the next level are:
If you think there’s a ceiling to how much money you can make in franchising, you’re wrong. For most of us, if we want to “hit the big time,” we’re going to need to grow to that point rather than start there. It may take a little longer that way, but the advantage is that you have learned everything you need to know along the way.
Remember, you are part of a bigger franchise picture, with thousands of new business start-ups forming every year, so make your franchise stand out for the right reasons and run your business with the aim to making it profitable.”