Strategy
Background
Belvoir’s marketing ensures a flow of leads to its recruitment department, which typically receives over 100 enquiries from potential Franchisees in a year. Of these enquiries, approximately 70 potential Franchisees are interviewed and up to 18 franchises are offered each year. Belvoir is focused on increasing the number of Franchisees and therefore its objective following Admission is to grow the Belvoir Network from its current 142 franchised offices to over 200 franchised offices by 2016. To achieve this, a new head of franchise recruitment, Chris Watkin, has been brought into the business with a mandate to increase franchisee recruitment to at least 15 new Franchisees per annum.
Prior to being accepted as a Belvoir Franchisee, each applicant undergoes a rigorous vetting process including interviews with Belvoir’s head of franchise recruitment and other members of management, and an assessment of whether a potential Franchisee has adequate resources to start and maintain a franchise office.
Belvoir has divided the UK up into franchise territories determined by reference to population demographics, with a territory size typically being approximately 50,000 residential properties. The territories are identified by postcode and the Company has set out a total of 503 territories, of which only 142 have been awarded. This map shows in red those territories in the UK which have been awarded to Belvoir Franchisees at the date of this document. Some territories which the Directors would expect to be more lucrative, (located in London and the South of England, for example), are yet to be awarded to a Franchisee.
The Group’s immediate strategy is threefold:
- to expand the Belvoir Network through appointing Franchisees in new territories;
- to increase the MSF revenue through additional support to grow the businesses of individual Franchisees’; and
- to establish a number of Belvoir owned outlets in addition to the Grantham office, which could be franchised in due course or retained for the long term as Company owned branches.