Growth of Home-Based Franchises -

Part 2

The world's leading home-based franchise

The #1 home-based franchise among all franchise companies is Jani-King. The company is also the world's leading commercial cleaning franchise with more than 10,000 units operating worldwide, a number that puts it in the company of franchising giants like Subway, 7-Eleven, and McDonald's.

With over 35 years in business and nearly $500 million in annual sales, Jani-King has long since proven it can outperform the competition. Through a network of more than 100 regional centers, Jani-King contracts commercial cleaning services for many different facilities including office buildings, hotels, factories, restaurants, hospitals, schools, and sporting venues. Franchise operators perform the services on a long-term contract basis. The types of services provided include general commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning, hard surface floor care, trash disposal, window washing, wall cleaning and other specialty cleaning services on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.

Investing in a ready made customer base
According to Jeff Freeman, a Franchise Master Owner, Jani-King is attractive to potential franchisees for a number of reasons starting with a low cost of entry. "There are several investment levels that start at $10,000. You can get financing with us, too," says Freeman, "and come in with just a $4,000 investment. It's a great deal, especially in an industry where every building out there requires our service." How much you choose to invest is determined by the amount of initial business you want to start with. "Franchisees don't have to beat the bushes for their own accounts. The regional center provides the customer base so all the franchisee has to do is service the contracts. The contracts remain the property of Jani-King, but the franchise owners have the opportunity to service them and earn the lion's share of the profit,"says Freeman.

The regional centers do more than marketing the services for franchisees. "There is a tremendous amount of support available," says Freeman. He continues, "The real value in our way of doing business is having support nearby. If you need something, you don't have to get on a plane and fly to corporate headquarters in Dallas. You can simply drive to your regional center. There is an operations staff and an accounting department in every center that provide all kinds of services. For example, we do the billing for the franchisees. And during the day, customers can call us and we'll field the calls. And of course training is always available, too. There are other companies out there that might have the same type of support, but it might be located in Chicago rather than just down the road."

Specialized training for special accounts

Freeman says sometimes specialized training is required that may not be available from the regional center. "Recently, we signed on a number of significant medical facilities. This kind of account can mean there are cleaning requirements that are unfamiliar to the franchisee. For example, if you go into a hospital now, you have to sign off on things like HIPAA documents. If you are a small janitorial business, you don't even know what those are. But when special situations like this arise, people from the home office in Dallas will actually come out, meet with the prospective client and then train the local franchise owners and their staff to meet the specific needs of those facilities. This is not unusual. It happens often, virtually every month in fact," states Freeman.

Jani-King is very supportive of people who want to run their franchises from home. "We have franchise owners that do a tremendous amount of revenue working out of their homes," says Freeman. "They don't need to spend money on leasing office space, not to mention the utilities and everything that goes along with that."

With over 10,000 units, you have to wonder if there is room for more. "Here in Portland, we service hundreds of buildings, from Marriott's to Sprint to the local pizza shop," says Freeman. "And yet, I probably only serve 1% of the market. This is a $78.5 billion industry with lots of opportunity, especially for a company that has an international reputation."

Contact Information: Jeff Freeman, Master Franchise Owner, Portland Metro Area, JaniKing, www.JaniKing.com, (503)778-7777.

Franchise offers sales and sales management training

Sandler Sales Institute is a sales and management training franchise with 193 units operating in 10 countries. It is an innovative program developed by the founder, David H. Sandler, back in the late '60s and early '70s. The company started franchising in 1983. What Sandler created was a highly effective sales training program for small and mid-sized companies, Fortune 500 corporations, and individual non-selling professionals. "Our franchisees offer corporate training programs designed to help client companies boost productivity and generate more profits," says Ron Taylor, Director of Franchising.

"What our franchisees do is teach a very sophisticated selling approach," Taylor says. "It requires a lot of people skills and a lot of psychology, but basically we train sales people how to sell and train managers how to manage those sales people. What we are really known for is our President's Club training. A company or an individual in the President's Club pays the franchisee a one-time fee to enroll in a two-year course. The fee, on average, amounts to $7,000 or $8,000 per person. The franchisee then runs about 15 hours of training a month. It is like a health club membership for sales people. They can come visit our franchisees any time they want when the doors are open for face-to-face training," asserts Taylor.

Although this is a home-based franchise, only the administrative portion of the business is conducted from home because franchisees need a training facility, someplace where they can put 10 to 20 people at a time. Training is then usually provided in a 2-hour conference session each week. It's up to the enrollees to choose when and how often to attend. The sessions are open to all the franchisee's clients. Taylor says, "It's interesting to walk into a training room and find everyone there from insurance sales, real estate, computer sales, health care, financial services, you name it - because they all have the same needs. All clients are taught one basic selling approach, then we help them to take it out and apply it in their own world or in their own industry."

Nontraditional approach sets Sandler apart
Taylor says there are two real keys that separate the Sandler system from everyone else. He continues, "Number one is that we are the only sales training company that does long term training. Most of what's out there today is the quick fix, the one or two day motivational workshops. Psychologists say that 50% of what you hear you forget within 48 hours so there's no way you're going to change someone's life or change their behavior with a seminar. The Sandler method is designed to create lasting performance improvement."

"Second, we don't offer the traditional selling approaches. David Sandler put this business together because he was burned out on the way traditional sales people were taught how to sell. We don't teach the stalls and objections procedures or how to emphasize features and benefits. And we say you should only present to people who qualify for a presentation. David felt that too many times we give sales presentations to people who don't qualify for them. The result of that is you end up giving away a lot of free consulting or free product knowledge. What he created is a selling approach that is 180 degrees opposite from what everyone else does," asserts Taylor. Sandler franchisees mostly serve small to midsized companies that don't have their own inhouse training staff. Once a franchisee has been in the business for six to nine months, they may choose to work larger companies or corporations. The only difference in that case is that they will go into the company and train onsite.

Ron Taylor, Sandler Sales Institute

Great business, nice life
"We consider our franchise to be a lifestyle choice," says Taylor, "and that's the key. We look for people who have strong selling backgrounds and most of them are people who come out of the corporate world. They are people who are tired of traveling, babysitting employees, and being away from home so much. With this business, they have an opportunity to be home with their family every evening and on weekends. There are many businesses where you can make a lot of money, but you don't have a good life that goes along with it. Here at Sandler, we want people to be able to run their life - not just their business - while using all their skills and talents."

Contact Information: Ron Taylor, Director of Franchising, Sandler Sales Institute, www.sandler.com, (800)669-3537.