The "Business"

So off I went into the big bad world of B 2 B sales with my hands behind my back and leading with my chin.

An office was located, a handful of computers purchased. The attempt to hire sales staff began. The blind were leading the blind and having been told that the ideal sales methodology was telesales and I could expect a conversion rate of 10% what could go wrong?

After three months my erstwhile sales staff had made no sales. We followed everything the experts in head office told us with religious fervor but to no avail! There was no holy grail, no light at the end of the tunnel.

My pleas to the franchise head office were met with “to find a good sales person you need to keep trying as your success rate will only be about one in seven”. One in seven! What about all the expertise the expert sales training? I recruited from websites, I advertised, I used recruitment companies. I employed staff who could sell other procucts couldn't sell this!

But the product was good. We had no direct competitor and it worked. So the product was good but we couldn't sell it. I thought that "a good product would sell itself". I was so wrong mediocre products will sell well with good marketing, sales and advertising whilst the best product in the world won't sell without.

Then about six months into the process we got a list of previous purchasers who had purchased the product previously but had not purhcased again because of the lack of a local agent and poor service.

So could we sell to a group who were in general unhappy with the product?

Yes we could! Unbelieveable, we had lists of cold calls to people who needed our product (in our opinion) and whom we couldn't sell to and we had people who were unhappy with the product and who we could sell!

What was the difference between these groups. Well a number of things:

They had purchased before

They were open to the product

They were "qualified"

They had a need for the product

But the list soon ran out and we were back to where we were before – cold calling with no success.

We tried fax campaigns and had limited success usually bringing in more sales than the campaign cost. But we’ve got better at that – I’ll tell you more later!

We tried advertising and had no appreciable return – but we’ve got better at that too!

And mainly we tried continuing with what we had been told would work – cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. Thousands and thousands of calls and no significant success. But there was an upside we did generate lists of contacts. I didn’t know what to do with them but I do now!

But let me tell you about the misery first.

Month on month the business lost between €5k and €10k. Mainly in staff costs. The majority of your overhead walks out the door every evening at 5:00pm and if they are not selling, well you do the math.

I went through sales people like a bull in a china shop. No sales out, no sales fired, no sales out, no sales fired, the mood was depressing, the staff were depressed, I was depressed, passersby ran past our door in case they contracted the pervasive depression.

One in Seven to find a successful sales person – I think more like One in Seventy.

Then the crowing glory, I was advised by the head office that I should look at outsourcing the sales out to a third party specialist sales company. They had the ideal company which successfully sold the product in another country because they could sell, when clearly through my own ineptitude I couldn’t.

Stop I hear you cry don’t do it! But at this point I was so giddy and delusional with my continuing failure that I did it.

Guess what 3 months later I had a €20k bill and less than €0.5k of sales. So much for the sales experts!

So I needed to restructure everything or walk away.

The Search for a Franchise

And so the search was on - how to find that elusive franchise. My requirements were simple:

An established product

A proven product

An established business model

Easy money (was I asking too much?)

Preferably with little work (yes I know its been drummed into us that hard work pays off in long run, but I prefer the concept of easy work paying off or my ultimate goal very little easy work paying off!)

Surely this wasn't to much to ask given that I had the money to purhcase that elusive exclusive franchise!

So hours and days spent trawling through the usual websites franchisedirect.co.uk, fdsfranchise.com, Franchise Pit-Stop, Franchise UK, Which Franchise The Franchise Magazine, Franchise World, etc etc etc

It does strike me that one of these "purchase a franchise" sites will soon start to franchise its own business model - "buy a business franchise to sell other business' franchises" - the ultimate pyramid scheme?

So long days were spent contemplating cooker cleaning franchises, childrens furniture franchises, dog grooming franchises, sushi franchises, drain cleaning franchises, bin cleaning franchises, golf franchises, online franchises, website building franchises, websearch optimiztion franchises, burger franchises, vegetarian burger franchises, vegan burger franchises................

Eventually I came across a B 2 B franchise long established in Europe but effectively untried in the UK and Ireland. It seemed to tick all those boxes.

Established for 20 years

Successful in many other countries

An established business model

Easy to sell

And so I jumped on a plane and travelled to the head office to meet the chief exectutive.

Lesson 1- I met the chief executive and in a minute had summed him up as someone I could easily steamroll over in a business meeting and get my way. I was right and I thought this was good!!!! - wrong wrong wrong!

I had approached the meeting as a normal business transaction and intended to get as much of their product / service for the least possible price - a "normal business transaction". Buying a franchise is not a "normal business transaction", when you buy a franchise you are not only getting an exclusive distribution area but you are also buying their corporate knowledge, their years of experience. Together that should stop you falling into the pitfalls that they fell into whilst building their business. My first mistake.

Lesson 2 The head office no longer ran a sales office themselves and they focussed purely on running the Franchising aspect of their business. The business founder had recently passed away. Business changes year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour - it is essential that the Franchisor runs some hands on offices themseves to keep them abreast of changes in their own business. This is paricularly true in sales and all business is sales

The head office was now divorced from the actual nuts and bolts of running their Franchise and relied on their franchisees to give them feedback as to what works and what doesn't!

Well guess what as a Franchisee if I work my butt off to develop new sales techniques or marketing plan, without help or support from the head office do I really want to share them with my head office. The same head office who charge me a royalty for every product unit I sell - what's in it for me! My second mistake.

Lesson 3 I believed it when they told me that the best method for selling the product was telesales, that conversion rates of 5-10% were possible. My third mistake.

So three significant mistakes when selecting my Franchise and developing my business plan. So now with both arms tied firmly behind my back I set off into the boxing match of B 2 B sales.

€100,000pa MBA

I'm in the middle of a €100,000p.a. MBA course.

The course has lasted two years so far and I can say I've learned a lot a long the way.

€200,000 for a two year course! - Where am I Harvard, Yale, a secretive Swiss MBA which guarantees business success?

The answer is much more mundane - I am in a struggling business - what's worse it's a struggling franchise.

A struggling franchise - impossible I hear you say. You buy a franchise is to buy into a successful existing business plan and model. Surely nothing can go wrong - well I've learned some hard lessons there also - but more of that in due course.

My business, and I use the word reservedly, has been like a New Years Eve celebrant on the streets of Barnsley. It lurched forward occasionally, back regularly, and around in circles. In a similar fashion for the past two years I have had constant nausea and been always on the verge of vomiting!

Recovery is now on the horizon and as I emerge from this two year business hangover I thought I might put some thoughts down on a retrospective and ultimately current blog.

They may be of some assistance to some of you would be entrepreneurs and may help you achieve a respectable “doggy paddle” and keep your head above water.