When you begin your search for your new franchise, you need to be sure that the market is in a healthy state and you can see potential for growth for the foreseeable future. What you also need to understand is if this sector is the right fit for you. We shall cover both these areas in this article.

Consulting Franchise Working Life

In the franchise consulting market, it may be of no surprise to you that one of the biggest skills required is customer service. This is mainly due to what you might consider a normal working week for most consulting franchises. It does depend on franchise models but it is likely that you will find yourself out of the office most of the time with, on average, one day per week spent in the office. This is because you are nurturing new relationships with customers; prospecting new customers at networking events or maintaining long standing existing customer relationships all face to face.

You don’t necessarily need experience before applying for one of these roles as they often involve an extensive training course upon successful applications. A typical client for a consultancy franchise will vary in terms of the market they operate within; however, you will find that you target similar size companies. This requirement, as well with the shifting working week, means aspiring franchisees need to be proactive to ensure that they keep on top of relationship building and successfully consult in many different industries as their needs may change.

The other areas aspiring franchisees need to consider is that this job will mostly likely require you to be within an hour’s drive of your franchise. This is because a lot of driving/transport is required to do this successfully and you want to spend the minimum amount of wasted time driving each day as it will soon become a burden.

The UK Consulting Market Performance

The industry as a whole has done well in recent years with exponentially larger growth year on year since 2011, this can be seen below (according to Consultancy.uk):

• 2011 - £5.5bn
• 2012 - £5.62bn (Growth of 2%)
• 2013 - £5.88bn (Growth of 4.8%)
• 2014 - £6.28bn (Growth of 6.6%)
• 2015 - £6.79bn (Growth of 8.2%)

This demonstrates a strong market performance with an excellent forecast but doesn’t represent the industry as a whole, as many shifts are occurring. The consulting industry, as with many other industries, is being largely affect by technologies; not in terms of what their organisation uses, but what the customer uses. Management consulting is a client-driven sector which means that you have to facilitate the needs of your client, which often requires learning of new skills, such as new technologies. The reason for the growth in the market is also the downfall for the consulting firms that don’t adapt; new technologies and legislation is on the rise and is often outsourced to consultants as inhouse teams don’t have the skills to complete themselves.

The largest consulting firms have addressed this change and this can be seen in their performance where the top 4 grew 11.5% in 2015, compared to the 8.2% as seen with the rest of the market. This indicates that other consulting firms haven’t adapted and are seeing a downturn in business. For this reason, when looking at the consulting franchises on offer, be sure to check their financials to ensure that they are adapting and performing well in this ever-changing industry.

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