Regional Team Managers

Franchising with Regional Team Managers and Partners
By Lance Winslow

Many franchise consultants shy away from such advice as securing master franchises as a plan for expansion with a new franchising company. This is because the legal issues and the litigation are tough to deal with and for that kind of liability there just is not enough money in it. Plus most franchisor later regret giving away that much of he pie or they have one or two master franchise failures which brings down the whole system due to bad PR and litigation costs.

One method considered for our company was to set up regional team partners and use existing franchisees already under the franchise agreement to assist in regional expansion. But we decided to make them managers rather than master franchises, regional franchises, sub-franchisors or partners. It turned out we were right as we made the rapid expansion term of only 2-years to the regional team managers incase they under performed or failed to assist us in opening new units. Several underwhelmed us, yet as a whole the program worked and added many units each year in many different regions.

This is good as the goal of a franchisor is to expand. Below is the list of stipulations I put forth to insure that everyone had a fair chance in the agreement;

Regional team manager understands and acknowledges that the following requirements must be met in order to qualify as the regional team manager:

(A)The regional team manager must, at the time of such assignment, be financially responsible and economically capable of performing our objectives in this Agreement and in our business development plan.