One of the most important things in franchising is to build a Confidential Operations Manual that will explain every single part of your business so your franchisees will have them available and can study them. Unfortunately, you also must be careful that your Confidential Operations Manual does not fall into the hands of competitors.
In Mr. Gerber's book; The E-Myth, he explained the necessity of being able to put together an operations manual and it is more important in franchising than probably any other industry. This is one thing that the future franchisor must do for himself and yet so many companies specialize in making franchise operations manuals. In other words because it is so hard to do; there are people out there who you can hire to do it for you.
As a franchisor I spent six months twelve hours a day at my favorite local coffee shop writing my own franchise operations manuals. It turned out to be over 2000 pages and that is quite a few binders. There were companies that offered to do it for me, but it seemed to important and I wanted to do it myself.
Too many franchisors do not do their own manuals and pay other people to do them and this is a huge mistake. It would be better to write their own manuals and have someone else edit them, check them for legality and custom typeset them. Please consider all this in 2006.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
Source: www.isnare.com
