The Raulis have spent much of their 18 year marriage working together, initially running a small newsagent business. However, after a while they realised that their ambitions lay beyond a corner shop and Anita went off to learn new retail and management skills at Waitrose, with the idea that she would bring these back into a future business to be run by 'Team Rauli'. Working as a supervisor, Anita soon had to manage up to 15 employees and she learned how to organise staff workloads and rotas as well as motivate people to work effectively.

Anita and Rajesh had been looking at franchise opportunities since the early 1990s. They were attracted to the franchise route of running a business by the value in having a proven business model with support at hand. They also understood that the strength of a franchise brand name could attract the kinds of clients that a one-man band could not. Eventually, the Raulis settled on Jani-King as it met all their requirements and they bought the Central and North London franchise in February 2004.

Allocating Responsibilities A key success factor for working well as a team is knowing people's skills and allocating responsibilities accordingly. The Raulis have this down to a fine art. "I deal with the financial side and the employees," explains Anita, "whereas Raj is best dealing with the operational side, organising the extra-work, chemicals and equipment. This plays to our strengths. "Raj and I work well as a team. We know each other's qualities and we both have the same passion and drive to succeed. We work to the same agenda. Marriage is team-work, that's how we operate in the domestic sphere and work is no different!"

One of Anita's core skills is management of people, which she learned much about during her stint at Waitrose. However, now it's different: she has to be her own HR Manager rather than relying on a corporate HQ. Anita feels her experience at Waitrose of supervising a small team helped her make the transition to managing a much larger team of cleaners at Jani-King. "At Waitrose, I was used to supervising small teams and that was how it was for us in the early days with Jani-King. Because our franchise grew steadily, we were able to grow along with it. Now we have 110 part-time employees!"

The Broader Team
"Raj and I are very hands-on people," admits Anita. "That's why we enjoyed going through the Jani-King 'Clean to Learn' training programme - we could learn at the same time as growing our business. It's so important to get to know how the business works first-hand and that means rolling your sleeves up!" Now Anita knows she is in an excellent position to pass on her knowledge and experience to her supervisors so they can, in turn, educate the cleaners they employ.

The Raulis understand how important their cleaning staff are to their business. "If the cleaners get it wrong, it's our clients, and therefore our business, that suffers," explain Raj and Anita, who operate a successful reward system for their cleaners to promote a high standard of work and loyalty towards their company. "Because our cleaners are paid per clean rather than per hour, they are motivated to work rather than sit around and chat or have coffee," continues Raj. "Because our cleaners are often unsupervised, they need to have this kind of motivation. This is all part of the Jani-King model.

"We see our clients as part of the team, too," Anita adds. Raj continues, "although I am probably more customer-orientated than Anita, clients are the one part of our business that we don't divide up between us. Both Anita and I know all the clients and they know us, so we both understand the issues."

The Jani-King 'Family'
Jani-King provides its franchisees with good ongoing training and support, and 'Team Rauli' is no exception. Anita and Raj get continuous feedback from the head office team, with regular key performance indicators meetings every couple of months, which set the agenda for the targets each franchisee's business needs to meet.

"If you are not meeting your targets, then Jani-King will work with you to meet them, giving you as much support as you need," explains Anita. "After all, they want their franchisees to succeed!"

One of the benefits of being a Jani-King franchisee is that you have a ready-made network of other franchisees on hand to help. "We can always turn to them", admits Raj. "We see them at meetings about every six months, but in between we're on the phone to one or other of them at least once a week to ask advice or check out ideas. We call them 'our family'!"

Success Now and in the Future
The successful Rauli husband and wife team have grown their Jani-King franchise to a £720,000 annualised turnover with 63 clients and 110 part-time employees in just over three years, and now have the £1 million turnover target in their sights. "All you need is to have the work ethic and to implement the business model," smiles Anita. "One of the attractions of Jani-King for us was their offer of guaranteed turnover and blue-chip clients."

Guaranteeing turnover means that franchisees know they will receive a minimum level of income during the first 18 months when they are building their business, provided they implement the Jani-King system.

Anita and Raj now have an impressive client base with household names such as Odeon, River Island, Next and Spirit Group delivered via the Jani-King central sales force, plus three to four other clients which they acquired themselves. "Once the clients trust us with the everyday cleaning work, we build on this to get additional work from them," explains Anita. "This extra work covers services like floors stripped and sealed or carpet and upholstery cleaning. That is where the real margin is created."

Jani-King has met Team Rauli's expectations, particularly in respect of turnover. Anita and Raj are not daunted by hard work necessary to succeed in any walk of business life. "As long as you implement the whole Jani-King system, the hard work pays off," confirms Anita. "And, compared to when we had the shop, we can now get holidays and take time out. As long as the whole structure is in place, you can have a really good lifestyle."

As well as meeting the £1 million turnover target, the Raulis' success criteria include making their target profits and building a re-saleable business, so that they will be able to realise their investment at some point in the future. They are confident that they are well on the way to achieving this, with their Central and North London franchise now extending to West London and even to Aylesbury!

*Guaranteed turnover is not a guarantee of profit

Contracts delivered by a dedicated sales team

Jani-King (GB) employs a nationwide team of sales professionals who generate new business for the franchise network, allowing the management franchisees to concentrate on managing and growing their businesses. Jani-King (GB) offers franchisees the facility to nominate and purchase a guaranteed level of turnover* for their geographical area. This is backed by a commitment to refund the estimated profit margin on any agreed turnover level not delivered.

Director Paul Haworth explains: "If we fail to offer £264,000 of annualised turnover (subject to the franchise agreement signed by the franchisee) in 18 months, we literally pay franchisees a pro-rata loss of margin payment on any shortfall until we deliver the offer. The plan is that once you reach that turnover level, we will help you to move on to the half million mark - and then the magic one million mark."

All plans offered by Jani-King include a comprehensive training programme where the management franchisee not only learns the operational skills necessary in the commercial cleaning industry, but also customer relations skills, vital for maintaining a strong, loyal customer base. And once training is complete, Jani-King continues to provide additional customers for the franchisee to service and offers ongoing advice and technical backup.