Residential cleaning is one of the UK's fastest growing market sectors, with 2.7 million households spending around £11 billion every year on domestic help. With over 10 years of business success and a client base that stretches to thousands of satisfied repeat customers, Myhome is widely recognised as a proven leader within the marketplace and is one of the UK's leading residential cleaning businesses.

Key to Myhome's success, for both the franchisee and franchisor, is the comprehensive Training and Development Programme that it provides its franchise partners. One of the main reasons that people buy a franchise, rather than setting up their own, is to have a business partner that has been through that vital 'new business' learning curve and has successfully developed tried and tested systems that will guarantee success.

Myhome take its training extremely seriously. This starts the moment the Myhome franchise partner signs up. The training programme assumes nothing, starts right at the beginning and teaches franchise partners everything they need to know about running a successful business.

The programme is based on a system that begins with the Myhome Getting Started guide, which shows franchisees how to prepare for business. It takes them step by step through all the essential things they need to do before opening for business and advises on opening a bank account, registering for VAT and NI, accounting practice, getting Myhome vehicles on the road and organising phone and computer lines.

The Getting Started guide also prepares franchise partners for the centrepiece of the system: a five-day, highly intensive, residential training course. Using a range of development techniques from video role-plays to practical demonstrations, the course provides franchise partners with the skills they need to get off to a flying start. Winning customers and keeping them, working on your business, not in it and building and managing your team, are just some of the areas covered.

During the course, franchisees are also shown how to operate a premium residential cleaning business using Myhome's unique Tri-Colour Cleaning SystemTM. The result of extensive time-and-motion studies, this proprietary system is an organised, colour-coded plan that lets cleaning staff know exactly what to do in each room of the house on every visit, thereby organising and streamlining their work and saving them time. Franchisees will also be introduced to Myhome's proprietary software programme Myhome ServiceCEOTM, which helps track and manage virtually every aspect of the business. It can be used to manage and schedule appointments, handle billing and payroll, take control of all necessary accounting procedures, and keep constant track of cleaning teams to ensure maximum productivity - all designed to give the franchisee maximum control over their time and profitability.

Myhome's business format, together with its training and operating systems, have been perfected over the last 11 years. Richard Lambert, Myhome's Training Director, says: "Myhome has established all the necessary business systems to provide a turnkey operating system that guarantees to lead franchise partners to success. It's an outstanding programme of development, unique in the franchise world. More importantly, it's a system designed to train franchise partners to become successful...fast!"

Exceeding Expectations

Cariss Ritchie who heads up Myhome's Stirling office graduated from Myhome's comprehensive five-day, residential training course at the end of November 2005. She began trading immediately and tells us: "The business continues to go from strength-to-strength and I have exceeded both my expectations and the targets set by Myhome. I currently have a client base of almost 50 regular customers and the majority of our new business is generated by referrals from satisfied customers, which is really satisfying for us."

Business is going so well, that Cariss has now added a third van to her fleet and has recruited a sixth member of staff. "Myhome provides one of the most thorough programmes in the franchise business with ongoing training, support and advice every step of the way to ensure my franchise succeeds," she reveals. "Prior to the training course, the Myhome franchise support team took me step-by-step through setting up my franchise so that on graduation of the training course I was ready to 'hit the ground running'. Together with the daily support, I also benefited from Myhome's 90-day nurturing programme.

"During these first three months of running my franchise, Myhome carry out customer satisfaction surveys, monitor the daily running of my business and carefully analyse my overall progress. This helps to iron out any problems, reinforcing the Myhome systems and enabling us to share our experiences as new franchisees. I firmly believe that this comprehensive support from Myhome has enabled me to exceed both my expectations and the targets set by Myhome."