Coffee & Analytics - How the Franchise Sales Process Can be Improved to Ease the Candidate's Journey

I am sure many of you will agree with me – the process of buying a franchise is super complex.

Even the sales process of form fill, qualification call, follow-up presentation, meet one time, and then invest your life savings into a brand you have little to no control over, is crazy, right?

So, what can we do to evolve the franchise sales process to help ease the process for the candidate?

The buckets I am focused on are:

1. Qualification and automation, so that the franchise team has easier tools to manage the process.

2. A few extra questions to gain an understanding of how the candidate wants the information.

3. Education on what is franchising, why the brand and how the process should work.

Qualification & Automation

We, in franchising, tend to be a little behind the curve when it comes to innovation. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

For the last 10 years or so, the form on the Website has been one of these: super simple, just capture name/email; super complex, collect a ton of information; or do some basic qualification, but not be overly simple in the questions asked (like liquidity or net worth – which some candidates have no idea what that means).

We built a form for a client that collapsed based on answers that were not in line with the ideal candidate. We still collected basic information to drip the candidate information on the franchise opportunity, but were able to put the candidates into different buckets to simplify the sales team’s outreach.

Today, innovation is coming in the form of a “quiz”, in which 7-10 questions are asked. Not far different from a form, just another way of engaging the candidate. This is evolution in qualification and automation.

For us, what we are going to try doing is use a quiz type format blended with a ‘schedule a call’ CTA so that we can drive toward a discovery discussion.

Then, we have to automate the content the candidate gets based on their qualification and answers. Different content will be delivered based on their timing and financial depth. This way, we can prioritize the candidates that are more active in the buying process.

The other bucket we are experimenting with is retargeting.

So many brands spend so much money to get the candidate into the website, but then don’t put the models in place to nurture that click. First retargeting should be a CTA to get the candidate to download something additional (if they haven’t filled out the form); second should be some sort of fear of missing out message, third should be a reminder of being in control of your destiny.

Extra Questions

On the form or within your quiz, you want to know the timing and next step. Ultimately, you want to know if the candidate is just looking for information or is ready to book a call. Knowing that outcome changes your approach – aggressive calling/texting or simple emailing. Being armed with an insight to guide follow-up prevents you from looking desperate and needy.

Over the last 12 months (through Growth Club www.1851growthclub.com) we have had success going back to “cold” leads and reengaging the candidates. Sometimes, they were “sold” versus nurtured. Think about the last time you were turned off by a salesperson. It certainly can derail your buying process and hurt the “culture” of the franchise opportunity.

Education

This has been super top-of-mind for me. The question I keep asking on my podcasts is: Go back to the day before you were in franchising. Did you understand it?

Of course not.

However, for all candidates, we almost assume they know what FDD, Item 19, royalties, lawyers, and scale means. But just like us, they don’t.

We need to add more education to the sales process. This way the candidate feels informed, which, should let the guard down a bit.

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