Les & Jo Nobes ServiceMaster Banbury
Josephine and I bought our ServiceMaster Franchise Location in 1985, as we knew an existing successful Franchisee. Prior to this, we had been in the Licensed/Restaurant trade, and prior to this I was in the Police Service and Josephine was a Secretary. By purchasing this Franchise we were able to be earning money from day one, solely because of the reputation of ServiceMaster nationally. The phone rang at 9.10 a.m. on our first day of business and it has never stopped ringing.
The benefits of dealing with a Franchise Organisation are best summed up with the fact that you are never alone. If you have a problem there is always someone in the network who has experienced something similar. The other major benefit is due to the expertise of ServiceMaster, not only nationally but also on a global scale, and most of the time you really feel as if you are part of a family.
The other major benefit of having this Franchise was that we were quite happily able to work from home with a telephone and a typewriter with little or no disruption to family life. Working for ourselves gave us freedom to do what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it although this generally meant that we would have to work harder before, and after we had time off, to catch up.
Running our own business for the last 22 years has given us freedom, which we would not have had, had we been in paid employment.
We have always had support and encouragement from ServiceMaster when times have been a little harder in terms of turnover. Now with the National Marketing Programme it has meant that we have not had to spend time selling ourselves to Insurance Companies, Loss Adjusters etc., as this is part of the current package.
I would thoroughly recommend someone who is looking to invest in franchises to seriously consider ServiceMaster.
