x10 Home Automation - Control Lights, Irrigation, Appliances

Home Business Franchise, Which Opportunity is Better for You?

The franchise world encapsulates almost every kind of home based business opportunity you can think of, through property management, recruitment, grass-cutting, tyre-fitting, sandwich-making, chipped paint removal, drain cleaning etc.

Should one possess certain skills or experience necessary for any particular franchise then it may well be advisable to push towards a franchise specialising in that area.

However, in my opinion, and put very simply indeed, franchises fall broadly into two main categories -- those that return a residual income and those that require a new piece of work to be carried out to gain any additional income.

This is not to say that in franchise opportunities that do return residual income that no work is required to maintain the customer base but that it is much easier to maintain, the cost is not prohibitive and continuous benefit is derived by the customer from maintaining the existing contract.

Additionally, if one of the reasons for choosing the franchise was to be working from home then this kind of defeats the purpose as all the practical work will have to be carried out away from home.

This is perhaps food for thought as many people searching for franchises often do not know the pertinent questions to ask or the correct way to go about the investigation.

Furthermore, eventualities such as illness or holidays need to be taken into consideration -- if the franchise is operating as a one or two man operation then a simple event such as those aforementioned could ruin the business's reputation.

Following on from this point, when one goes on holiday, it is nice to know that all the earnings during that period do not stop.

One can just imagine, for example, a customer waiting for two weeks to get their drains sorted -- I don't think so! What about if one is ill? Net result will be a lost customer and if the other contractor is good, maybe a permanently lost customer.

There is something else to bear in mind about this type of franchise opportunity, and I'm not picking on drain cleaning, it's just an example and very, very necessary. The hard facts of the matter are that the better the job done, the longer it should be before any repeat business is encountered again? points to mull over.

Having said all of this, the types of franchise that offer residual, repeat income may require greater or more excessive selling and marketing skills and this is an area notorious for putting the fears up for many people -- generally people don't like rejection or approaching a situation where they are trying to get something.

My own personal attitude to this is that we all sell ourselves every day whether we are lawyers, doctors, architects, accountants, franchise owners, mortgage brokers, or stock brokers. Think about it?

Thus, in summary, and I say this very generally, I would suggest that unless a particular skill is present or indeed a penchant for the franchise on offer exists and one is confident of his/her ability to speak to people and thus market a product/service well, then the easier option is to look for some kind of residual income producing franchise.

Naz Daud is the Founder of the CityLocal Internet Business Franchise Opportunity. http://www.citylocal.co.uk http://www.citylocal.co.uk/frontend/franchiseinfo.php?cityid=79 http://www.citylocal.ie

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