Develop your Raison Home franchise to it’s full potential with Mark Sewell

Mark Sewell is the Partnership and Development Manager at RAISON Home. He supports franchisees from the very start, through training into developing their existing business.

Here Mark tells us more about his role.

“My main focus is helping to develop franchises to reach their potential, whether this is helping with B2B meetings, training or even just having a chat about what you’ve been working on. I am here from the very start for you; I am normally one of the first people you will have a chat with to help you get an idea of what is involved and whether this is for you.

I have spent the vast majority of my life working in the KBB sector; from my first job selling beds to now, my previous two roles to this were both in the bathrooms sector. I moved to Raison Home to help grow the business as a whole – I enjoy helping people to achieve their personal goals and targets and this job allows me to do exactly that.

Franchisee Training

Our initial training process is 6 weeks long and covers all that is needed to be a Raison Home home design specialist. We do ½ the course in person and the other ½ remote – We find this works best with the mix of the practical and design elements of the training. In the 6 weeks we focus on all the separate elements for you to succeed – from Setting up your social media accounts correctly to the sales process, the art of closing the sale, product knowledge and supplier visits.

At the end of the course we hold a 2 day final assessment where you role play the full sale process – including; phone discovery, first meeting and design presentation. We do this to make sure that you are comfortable as a Raison Home designer. It is also great because you get to ask any questions you may have during the process and helps us develop a further training plan with yourself.

There are 3 main people that lead the training courses, they are;

• Me – My role is to help cover the basics (opening accounts and making sure everything is set up correctly) and to teach you about sales techniques, company values and the Raison home Concept.
• Charlotte – She teaches the art of design, fusion, general product knowledge and the co-design.
• Jeremy – He is our resident social media expert, so he will be helping to set up your social media accounts and ad settings.

Ongoing support for the franchisees

After the Initial training I will always only be a phone/video call away to help with anything. I will be more focused on helping you develop the business; whether you need help with attracting fitters, or getting the attention of architects – I will be on hand. We normally start with a weekly catch-up to go through how you are finding things and how we can help.

We also have Jeremy on hand, our digital marketing guru who will hold fortnightly meetings with you to go through your social media posts and digital prospection, but if you ever need him for anything; like Charlotte and I, he is only a call away.

Our success is based on your success.

Franchisees join a proven business model with working parts already in place

I find the greatest thing is that you would be joining an already successful and developed business model, with all working parts already place- the suppliers, design software and proven sales concept. Becoming a franchisee can also help take away a lot of the initial new business stress – all you need to bring yourself, some passion and a bit of gumption.

Raison Home are also very unique with our 80/20 model – this means that you can source 20% of your product from outside our recommended network without any additional charge or issue. Need an extractor fan from a company that we do not deal with? No problem! We try not to restrict our franchisees.

A network with growth potential

I think the potential for the growth of the Raison Home network is vast, I would like to see in the next 3 years that we get up to 50 successful franchises in the UK and then continue to grow from there to about 100.

We have the opportunity to be a massive franchise network – but we would much rather build slightly slower, so that we can spend more time helping to develop each franchise to their full potential, this is part of the reason why we only hold 3 training courses a year.