When you're harried and under pressure to sell as many franchises as possible, do you use the "cash and fog a mirror approach"? In other words, do you award a franchise to someone that has the financing and can fog the mirror? If you use this approach, you'll regret it for years to come.Quite often, franchisors that use the "cash and fog a mirror approach" also tend not to delve too deeply into whether the candidate is really suited to run a franchise. Instead of taking the time to find out the probability of the candidate's success, franchisors go with…

We're all looking for that "magic bullet" that will tell us which applicants would be the perfect fit right at the beginning of the interview process. Unfortunately, there isn't one. However, there are some easy-to-implement methods you can add to your interview process that can take you a step closer.One of the best methods is to develop your own pre-qualification questionnaire. What’s nice about using a questionnaire is that, if well designed and you ask each candidate the same questions, you’ll have a legally defensible selection process while at the same time cutting down on turnover.What Should I Include In…

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, one of the participants mentioned the fear that many franchisors have  - inadvertently but unlawfully discriminating by using a selection tool like a personality profile.There is general lack of independent data that demonstrates the effectiveness of personality profiles in predicting performance of franchisees.In fact, after nearly 50 years of use for employee selection, even the experts are questioning a personality profile's effectiveness. An interesting book about the subject is The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves by Annie Murphy Paul, a former senior editor…

Have you ever wondered how a franchise candidate that seemed so promising during the selection process turned into such a nightmare? You ask yourself time and time again "How could this franchisee slip past our screening process? They had all the answers. They seemed to know what it would take to be successful." Maybe you're the victim of the dreaded "professional franchise candidate"! They know what you're looking for so well that they'll almost always slip past your screening process. How do you protect yourself from these "professional franchise candidates" (PFC)? Here's what happened to one of our clients and how…

This year, in preparing to go to "cottage country" for our summer vacation, I brought our vehicle in for servicing (which included an oil change) to make certain we're all set for the trip. It's been a few years since I dealt with this service center. When I got my bill and paid it, I only checked the total because in the past, they've always been very good to me and never performed work that I didn't authorize. I had a pleasant surprise when I initially looked at the bill because it was about $40 cheaper than I had estimated.…