A franchise consultancy helps brands to franchise and helps buyers to choose one. Staff sell, advise, visit outlets and mediate between franchisor and franchisee, and pay often rests on commission.
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Share your requirementsA franchise consultancy works on two sides: it helps a brand package its model, write manuals and recruit franchisees, and it advises people who want to buy a franchise, sometimes for a fee from the brand. Staff include a principal consultant, business development executives who handle leads, advisors who prepare model documents and manuals, field visit staff who audit outlets, and a back office. Selling is long, with many calls, meetings and site visits before a decision. Pay for sales staff often rests on commission, which swings. The firm's name depends on buyers trusting its advice, so staff behaviour in selling matters. Leads go cold, and good sellers go to the brands themselves. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in franchise consultants. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A good month pays well, a dry month pays almost nothing, and the sellers who go through a dry spell leave.
Staff are tempted to push a franchise the buyer should not take, and the firm's trust slides if buyers are later unhappy.
Enquiries sit for days in one person's phone, and nobody knows who called whom.
Staff travel to outlets in many towns, with varying notes, and the audit report depends on who went.
Sellers want quick closure, advisors want complete manuals, and each blames the other when a client is unhappy.
A franchisee's complaint about the brand lands on a seller who has no authority to fix it.
Brands hire the people who know buyers, and the consultancy loses both the seller and the relationships.
Monthly targets do not suit deals that take half a year, so effort is measured against the wrong clock.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Performance Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a franchise consultants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A fixed part that covers living costs plus a commission with a staged payout tied to stages of the deal.
A fixed part that covers living costs plus a commission with a staged payout tied to stages of the deal. See compensation benchmarking.
What staff may promise, what they must disclose and what they must not claim, signed by all and reviewed with a qualified professional.
What staff may promise, what they must disclose and what they must not claim, signed by all and reviewed with a qualified professional.
Every enquiry logged with owner, last contact and next step, so follow-up does not rely on a personal phone.
Every enquiry logged with owner, last contact and next step, so follow-up does not rely on a personal phone.
A common format and checklist for outlet visits and a short briefing for visiting staff.
A common format and checklist for outlet visits and a short briefing for visiting staff. The performance management process can use the reports.
Handover points between selling and advisory work, with who decides when a client is ready.
Handover points between selling and advisory work, with who decides when a client is ready.
A named person for franchisee and buyer complaints, with a time limit for replies.
A named person for franchisee and buyer complaints, with a time limit for replies. The grievance and disciplinary process helps if staff conduct is involved.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A pay mix that is fair to sellers and advisors and steadier than pure commission.
Measures that fit a long sales cycle and a standard visit report.
A clear commission calendar and staged payouts.
A fair route when advice or conduct is questioned.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Add a fixed element and pay commission in stages as the deal moves, with clear rules written down. Staff then ride out dry months.
Set a written code, measure buyer satisfaction after the sale and review complaints. Rewards that ignore buyer outcomes tempt staff to push the wrong fit.
Use one shared record for every enquiry with next step and date, and review stale leads weekly.
A fixed checklist, a common report format and a short briefing before each visit. Compare reports across staff.
Offer a bigger role, a share in long deals and a path to lead the team. Brands win when the consultancy offers only commission.
Pay design, lead records, field visit routines and the seller-advisor handover are common starting points. We begin by hearing how a recent deal moved. Scope, timing and fees are agreed in writing.
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