Choosing a franchise involves more than assessing profits, training and operational support. Dan Archer, UK CEO of in-home care franchise Visiting Angels, explains why prospective franchisees should also examine the franchisor’s influence on the industry, its ability to anticipate change and its willingness to challenge established thinking.
Buying a franchise is a significant investment, and due diligence is essential. Prospective franchisees typically examine turnover, profit margins, initial fees, marketing support, training, territory rights and the strength of the business model. These factors help establish whether an opportunity makes commercial sense, but they reveal only part of the picture.
There is another question worth asking before signing an agreement: Does this franchisor help shape the industry it operates in, or does it simply respond to changes after they happen?
The distinction matters because franchisees are not investing solely in an established business model. They are also committing to a brand, a leadership team and a network that must navigate changing regulations, shifting customer expectations, workforce pressures and emerging technologies. A franchisor that understands these forces and contributes to the conversations shaping its sector may be better positioned to prepare its network for what comes next.
Industry influence, however, should not be confused with visibility. A large social media following, a packed conference schedule or an impressive list of contacts does not necessarily translate into meaningful leadership. Genuine influence comes from contributing informed perspectives, challenging accepted practices and helping develop solutions to problems that affect the wider industry.
For prospective franchisees, understanding how a franchisor approaches this responsibility can provide valuable insight into the business they are considering joining.
Look Beyond the Franchise Model
A franchisor’s understanding of its industry should extend beyond the immediate priorities of running its own business. Regulations evolve, recruitment challenges intensify, technology changes established practices and customer expectations develop. While no business can predict every change, an effective franchisor should understand the forces affecting its sector and have a clear perspective on how to respond.
In social care, recruitment and staff retention have remained persistent challenges. Visiting Angels entered the UK market with a caregiver-first model, challenging the assumption that high staff turnover was simply an unavoidable feature of the sector. Its approach was built on a straightforward principle: delivering consistently high-quality care starts with looking after the people who provide it.
That philosophy has influenced the business’s approach to recruitment, remuneration, workforce support and development. It has also informed its contribution to wider discussions about caregiver retention, dementia care and the future of social care, including engagement with policymakers in Westminster and organisations across the sector.
For a prospective franchisee, this offers a useful point of distinction. Rather than focusing exclusively on what a franchisor sells or how it differentiates itself from competitors, examine the problems it is trying to solve and the thinking behind its approach.
Ask what the business believes needs to change within its industry. Find out whether its leadership understands the challenges facing customers, employees and operators beyond its own network. Most importantly, look for evidence that its stated principles influence the way it actually runs the business.
A clear industry perspective becomes more meaningful when it is reflected in the franchise model itself.
Follow the Evidence, Not the Microphone
Having an opinion about an industry is easy. Demonstrating that the opinion is informed by experience, evidence and a willingness to listen is considerably harder.
Franchise networks have a valuable source of insight at their disposal: their franchisees. Operating across different territories, local markets and customer communities, franchisees encounter the practical challenges of running the business every day. Their experiences can reveal emerging customer needs, workforce difficulties and operational problems that may not be immediately apparent at head office.
The real value lies in how effectively a franchisor uses that information.
A well-connected network should allow local experiences to inform the organisation’s wider strategy. Equally, insights gained through engagement with policymakers, charities, professional bodies and other industry stakeholders should be communicated back to franchisees in ways that help them understand changing expectations and prepare for new challenges.
This exchange can strengthen decision-making across the network, helping franchisees benefit from knowledge that extends beyond their individual businesses.
Prospective franchisees should therefore look beyond the number of industry events a franchisor attends or the senior figures it knows. Instead, ask what it has learned from those relationships and how that knowledge has influenced its decisions.
Has engagement with the wider sector led to changes in the business? Does the franchisor share useful insights with franchisees? Can its leadership explain how developments outside the network might affect individual operators?
The answers can reveal whether industry engagement is an integral part of the business’s thinking or simply a way to raise its profile.
Look at When They Turn Up
The timing of a franchisor’s involvement in industry discussions can be just as revealing as the discussions themselves.
Does the leadership contribute consistently, including when there is no immediate commercial benefit? Does it build relationships before a regulatory change or industry challenge directly affects the business? Or does it become vocal only when a development threatens its existing model?
Long-term engagement can help a franchisor develop a more informed understanding of the forces shaping its sector. It can also create opportunities to communicate the practical realities of running a business to those involved in developing policy and industry guidance.
Visiting Angels has continued to engage with major questions affecting social care, including discussions surrounding the Casey Commission and work with Alzheimer’s Society. Such engagement provides opportunities to contribute practical experience to conversations about care provision, workforce challenges and the needs of older people.
However, participation alone is not a measure of influence. Being present in a meeting does not automatically mean that an organisation has shaped its outcome. Effective engagement also requires a willingness to listen, understand different perspectives and recognise where an industry’s priorities may need to change.
The development of the proposed National Care Service illustrates why this matters. Changes to the organisation and delivery of care can create uncertainty for providers, but they can also open up opportunities for businesses equipped to meet evolving needs.
Visiting Angels sees potential in the policy emphasis on prevention, helping people remain independent for longer and improving coordination between hospitals, homes and community care. From the company’s perspective, these priorities create opportunities for providers that can contribute to a more joined-up approach to care.
For franchisees, the broader lesson is that a franchisor should be capable of assessing policy developments on their merits rather than treating every change as a threat. Understanding the direction of travel can help a business consider how its services, operating practices and support systems may need to evolve.
Not every industry meeting produces immediate results, and policy engagement rarely delivers instant change. Its value often lies in developing relationships, understanding emerging priorities and giving businesses time to prepare rather than react.
Ask Whether They Would Help a Competitor
Another revealing question is whether a franchisor is willing to support ideas that could benefit the wider industry, even when those ideas are not exclusive to its own network.
Commercial businesses must protect their competitive advantages, and sharing every operational detail would be neither realistic nor necessary. But there is a difference between safeguarding proprietary knowledge and recognising that some industry challenges require broader solutions.
In social care, for example, better approaches to recruiting, rewarding and retaining caregivers could benefit providers across the sector. If effective practices developed by one organisation encourage others to improve their own employment standards, the wider workforce could benefit.
That does not diminish the importance of individual brands or their commercial objectives. Instead, it demonstrates an understanding that the long-term health of an industry can influence the prospects of every business operating within it.
For a prospective franchisee, this attitude can offer insight into the values guiding a franchisor’s leadership. Is the business concerned only with protecting its position, or does it recognise the importance of raising standards and addressing challenges that affect the entire sector?
A franchise network does not operate in isolation. Its reputation, workforce and long-term prospects are influenced by the wider environment in which it competes. A franchisor that takes these connections seriously may be better equipped to understand the challenges its franchisees will face.
Look for Constructive Trouble-Makers
Industry leadership often begins with questioning practices that others have come to accept.
Established ways of working can persist because they are familiar, even when they no longer deliver the best outcomes. Challenging them requires more than a strong opinion. It requires evidence, a willingness to question conventional wisdom and the determination to test a different approach.
Prospective franchisees should examine what a franchisor believes its industry gets wrong and whether it has taken practical steps to address those problems.
For Visiting Angels, challenging conventional thinking around caregiver retention has influenced its approach to recruitment, pay, support and professional development. The business’s experience of implementing a caregiver-first model gives it a practical perspective on workforce discussions, rather than relying solely on theoretical arguments about what the sector should do differently.
That distinction is important. A franchisor may speak convincingly about innovation, better working practices or improved customer outcomes, but the credibility of those claims depends on how far they are reflected in its own operations.
Look for examples of decisions that demonstrate the business is prepared to act on its beliefs. Ask what it has changed, what it has learned and how those lessons have influenced the franchise model.
Not every established practice needs to be overturned, and contrarian thinking is not automatically evidence of good leadership. What matters is whether the franchisor can identify genuine problems, explain its reasoning and demonstrate a considered effort to improve outcomes.
A business that can do this is more likely to have a clear perspective on its industry’s future and the role it intends to play in it.
Invest in the Franchisor’s Future, Not Just Its Present
No franchisor needs to spend every week lobbying policymakers or appearing at industry events. Nor does influence guarantee commercial success. A strong franchise opportunity still depends on sound financials, a viable business model, effective training, reliable support and realistic growth prospects.
Nevertheless, industry awareness and engagement deserve a place in the due diligence process because they can reveal how a franchisor thinks beyond its immediate commercial priorities.
A prospective franchisee is investing in more than the business as it exists today. They are also investing in the leadership team’s ability to respond to an industry that may look substantially different in five or 10 years.
That makes it worth examining whether the franchisor understands the forces shaping its sector, learns from the experiences of its network, engages constructively with external stakeholders and is prepared to challenge practices that no longer serve the industry well.
These qualities cannot guarantee that a business will anticipate every challenge or make every decision correctly. They can, however, help prospective franchisees develop a more complete picture of the organisation they are considering joining.
Financial performance, training, territory rights and lead generation should remain central to due diligence. But one additional question could provide a different perspective on the opportunity: When the industry changes, will this franchisor simply respond to the conversation, or will it have helped shape it?
