There are over 2,000 franchise consultants in the United States today and truth be told only a small percentage are true franchise experts. Even of the industry experts, which ones truly know your market? Have you ever seen a new franchise open and thought to yourself, “why on earth would they open that business there?” Too many franchise consultants offer free advice on life changing investment decisions about opening a business in a certain market that they know nothing about. This is why working with a local franchise consultant is important.

Anyone can Google a market or look it up on sites like City-Data but do they really know your area? I live in Raleigh, North Carolina and know the area like the back of my hand. The good parts, the higher demographic areas, the traffic patterns, which areas are growing and what type of people are moving into the various parts of town. For example, downtown and midtown are booming with the younger crowd while North Raleigh and the surrounding smaller towns are thriving with families. North Raleigh is more expensive that South Raleigh, Wake Forest is a slightly higher demographic than Garner, both of which are a stone’s throw from the Raleigh city line.

If I were going to open a happening hot spot I’d go MidTown all the way yet a residential service brand like CertaPro Painters is more likely to thrive in North Raleigh. I could go on an on but hopefully you get the point.

There is no surprise that “franchise consultant near me” is one of the most popular search terms when it comes to people looking for expert franchise advice. Any franchise consultant can hunt and peck through their database and tell you what meets your investment criteria, subject matter criteria and can even tell you if it is available in your desired market but only a local consultant can tell you what else is there, would it even be a good fit, which part of town and on and on.

Working with a expert franchise consultant offers tremendous value in terms of time saved and options explored but working with one that knows your market as well as the franchise models is more than twice as valuable.

Find a consultant that knows your market!