How Express Employment Professionals Works with Franchise Brokers

We asked Bill Stoller, founder, CEO, and chair of Express Employment Professionals, “What do you look for in franchise brokers, and how have you used them to find franchisees?”

For us at Express Employment Professionals, an ideal franchise consultant partner is truly just that: a partner to help us find high-quality franchisees. This entails hours and hours of phone calls and face-to-face meetings with their candidates to better understand what motivates and drives them. They dive into candidates’ passions, hobbies, skill sets, challenges, and more. In addition, our top franchise consultants have a firm grasp on candidates’ financial constraints and capabilities. Most importantly, they uncover the why for their candidate: are they looking to own their own business, and what types of businesses best align with their skill set, passion, and budget?

While managing the above relationship dynamics, our best consultants also spend a significant amount of time interviewing and learning about Express to help find us find our ideal candidates. Franchise consultants must have a deep understanding of a franchisor’s business, for instance if it needs to be managed full-time and hands-on or if the owner can be absentee. They’ll also understand what the average day looks like, the investment cost, and other aspects of the business.

When knowing both sides extremely well, a consultant can then present a few brands to their candidates. They will highlight the high-level reasons they should be considering A, B, or C. If the candidate has interest in Express, the consultant makes an introduction to our team. At that point, they provide us with an extensive overview of who the candidate is. In many cases they are sharing personality assessments in addition to all the pertinent info. As you can imagine, this is very powerful for someone in our position to be able to schedule an introductory call with a candidate we know is qualified, serious, and ready to take a deep dive into who Express is.

A great consultant takes it even further by working in tandem with us to debrief with their candidate along the way to uncover fear points and process confusion or overall questions they may not be showing to us. This allows us to present new information.

The consultant then provides further value by explaining the process to owning an Express: introductory calls, qualification, FDD review, discovery day, validation calls, and eventually franchise awarding. By being prepped on what is customary in the process by a third party, the consultant helps to validate all the things we are doing.

As you can tell, they are a true partner from start to finish to hopefully help us find our ideal franchise fit and business they likely will own for years to come.