Over 300 companies advertise on Franchise Gator, and about 2/3rds of those companies are on their second 12 months agreement.  The decision to re-sign after 12 months only indicates that there is success being had.  While each company has a unique sales process, there are common procedures and objectives that they share.

1. A dedicated sales rep is following up on the leads -  A diligent follow up schedule is paramount when working franchise portal leads.  Should a VP or CEO be tasked with following up on the portal lead, then inevitably there will be days when calls will not be able to be made.
2. A clear goal is set for that first call -  Each part of the sales process should be clearly defined, but many who struggle with franchise portals overlook this important fact when it comes to call #1.  Those that are successful set a goal and stick to it.  They do not “wing it”, relying on their sales skills to engage the prospect.
3. Email is not overloaded with information – The prospect must have a reason to want to follow up with the franchisor.  A successful string of follow-up emails provides just enough information to pique the prospect’s interest to want to learn more.
4. Clear, concise voicemail – A rushed voicemail or a rambling message might be enough to turn the prospect away.
5. A professional website –A website that lacks in content, useability, or simply in professionalism, will tell a prospect that the website was not properly invested in.  In turn, they will question whether they should plunk down a $25,000 check for a franchise fee.
6. Clearly defined metrics -  Setting a goal for number of sales is barely half the battle.  Other metrics to follow are leads to application, application to Discovery Day, Discovery Days to sales, and cost-per-sale.  All of these figures should be aligned.
7. CRM tool – Those metrics previously described must be measured efficiently.  The most common thread I see amongst companies that have success with franchise portal leads is their use of a CRM tool.  The proper software will help them monitor the metrics previously defined.  Microsoft Excel is not a CRM tool, and cannot be configured to properly assist a marketing campaign.

Stay in touch with your portal rep and review each of these points with them.  Not only will it help to ensure you are on the right path, but a rep will be more motivated to help a customer that offers constant feedback.

Potential franchisees are looking for a roadmap to build a successful business for themselves and their families.  They expect the franchisor to accurately explain the business model and show them how to duplicate it. The Operations Manual is that roadmap and used properly can be a tremendous sales tool.  Franchise candidates are about to take a huge leap when they purchase a franchise and a comprehensive, easy-to-use Operations Manual is their warm, fuzzy blanket to hold onto during the process. If impressed by the Operations Manual, they are saying to themselves, “I know I can follow this, this is how you replicate this business model.  I can do this.”  However, if the manuals look confusing and over simplified, no amount of sales sizzle will overcome their anxieties regarding business start-up.

Every franchise should have the following suite of manuals:

• Operations Manual – it needs to be extremely detailed and comprehensive but written in easy to read language.  It needs to walk them through a task-by-task progression for each component of the business, complete with timelines and filled with every possible contingency but be so easy to navigate that answers to any question can be found within moments.  It needs pictures and examples that illustrate clearly the task at hand.
• Jumpstart Manual – Every franchisor should have some type of Jumpstart Manual that takes the brand new franchisee step-by-step from the day after signing the franchise agreement to their first day of training class.  Every incremental task of starting their business should be covered so they don’t miss a thing and everything is completed before they step foot in their first training class.  They need to be concentrating on learning the business, not skipping out of class to talk on their cell phone with the guy installing the internet cable.
• Grand Opening Manual – Grand Openings are vital to every successful business start-up and your franchisee should have a separate Grand Opening Manual that walks them through every detail of planning and executing a successful Grand Opening.

Now with a complete set of manuals, your Discovery Day can offer the prospect the opportunity to look through your manuals spread out on a table.  They will see no detail of the business has been left out and every aspect of building their successful franchise is at their fingertips. They may not verbalize it but this one act may be what seals the deal.

All franchise prospects have one thing in common; eventually they have to make the leap to get started no matter what kind of business they decide to pursue. If they are interested in the pie business, they may love the taste and look of the pie, they may be excited by how much money they can make selling pies, but if they don’t have confidence that the recipe is well written and easy to follow, they will never bake the pie.

Your manuals function like blood pressure medication prescribed by a doctor, they are not the sexiest pills on the planet and they are not miracle drugs, but you need to take it the rest of your life or eventually it will kill you.  Good manuals can close a deal, good manuals are essential to getting successful franchisees on the road to growing their business, good manuals can be just what the doctor ordered – when was the last time you checked your prescription?

The importance of being ranked in Google is something that is becoming more relevant by the day, and quite frankly if you aren’t there now you should have been yesterday.   This past week was a perfect example of why every business needs to be capitalizing on their web presence.  I walked up to my front door and saw that a yellow pages book for my local city was on my porch, I didn’t even go in my house because I walked straight to my back yard and dropped the phone book directly into the recycle bin.  I personally haven’t used a phone book in probably 6-7 years.  Business has changed; and when both of my 60 something parents are on facebook, you know the way people search and go about their daily lives has officially done a 180!

The way people look for businesses and services have changed and so has the way Google works.  First and foremost, I would deem that Google is where your money is best spent.  When was the last time you heard anyone say “go Yahoo that” or “hold on, let me Bing that real quick”?  In the scheme of things, Googling is the standard and they have become the Kleenex brand of the world.  No matter what type of tissue you use for your nose, it’s still a Kleenex to most people.

Google currently makes about 10 changes a week to their algorithm, so staying on top of your online marketing is key.  Optimizing a site one time is not an option and you should be very weary of a company or web developer trying to optimize your site for a onetime fee.  Why all the changes you might ask, it’s because Google wants the best companies coming up when a potential customer does a search.  What they are trying to prevent is what happened when Google first became a hit.  Web developers and coders caught on to how Google was indexing sites so they buried keywords with in a webpage so that the naked eye couldn’t see it.  For example, at the end of a webpage there would be additional words in white on a webpage that was white.  This was seen as a way to cheat the system and Google caught on real quick.  So to keep businesses honest they started getting smarter with the way they indexed sites.   Oh yeah, and they black listed sites who cheated!

One of the more recent ways that Google has changed their algorithm is by giving paid ads a quality score.  Basically what they do is make sure that a paid ad actually gets directed to an appropriate page on a website.  For instance, if you see an ad for a plastic surgeon in Phoenix, than when the ad is clicked on the customer gets directed right to a page for a Phoenix plastic surgeon.  This is a way to prevent unrelated websites to come up when people search for products and services.   It used to be that anyone could bid on any phrase just as long as they had the high bid, not so much anymore.

This is just one example of how Google is constantly evolving to ensure that the most relevant websites come up when consumers search for products and services.   If you care to learn more about Paid Search, Organic Search, Social Media or anything else surrounding online marketing feel free to check out the Lucid Agency blog for a ton of useful information.

http://www.lucidagency.com/blog/

Sincerely,

Ken Bonham

Back in the 18th century, when my house first appeared on the hill, if you needed something built you organized an old fashioned barn raising.  In order to build a barn in a day you needed a lot of manpower and you can bet that the best barns were built for the folks who knew the most people.  My grandmother was born in the 19th century and lived to be 103. I can remember her telling me from as far back as I can remember, “It is not always what you know but who you know.”  Grandma knew a lot of folks and from a very young age was always introducing herself to strangers she would meet in everyday life.  After over a century of making contacts, in the latter part of  her life she had twice as many friends as I will ever have who were knocking each other over to help her with the daily chores of living alone at 100.

The word “networking” came into popular use during the late part of the 20th century when I was already out in the working world.  I have been fortunate to have countless stories of opportunities gained through people I have met just by following-up on a chance aquantance.  I am starting to get calls from people I met at the IFA Franchise Convention while in line for lunch or at the bar or waiting for a session to start or at a stop light waiting to cross the street.  I will followup with everyone because you never know, which one will someday pass on a great franchise lead or which supplier will solve a franchisee problem.

In the 1700’s, they called it “being neighborly.”  In the 1800’s, they called it “meeting folks.”  In the 1900’s, they called it “networking.”  Fifty years from now, who knows what our kids will call it.  Who cares?  It works!

The second call was from a franchisor complaining about a situation with one of their brand new franchisees.  It seems the franchisee was constantly calling the franchisor expecting them to come over whenever they encountered a problem they couldn’t figure out how to solve by themselves.  My first question was, “did you address their support expectations during the sales process and in training class?”  The franchisor response was, “well, no, but it is all spelled out in the FDD.”

Both situations were 100 % preventable with a little simple communication.  It is wise to remember what someone else expects and what you expect might be the difference between an oil change and a complete engine rebuild.  So talk it out in detail from the beginning. It will make for a much happier, productive franchise relationship and who knows, it might help prevent you from having any spare parts left over!

It seems simple enough, you have run a business for years and years and people keep telling you — “I sure wish we had one of these in our town”.  So eventually someone says it – FRANCHISE!  Easy right, you have mastered your business and you may have even opened multiple units in your town and they all have been successful so it would stand to reason that if you were to franchise it would work out well.

What no one is telling you is that especially in the beginning, the success of your new franchise venture has a lot more to do with your franchise infrastructure and the early strategic decisions you make than the business concept you have developed and the experience you have been accumulating over the years.  There are many quality franchisors that are very successful whose actual core products or services may not be the best in their industry but they perform a lot of important aspects of franchising very well so they thrive anyway.

Most emerging franchisors spend quite a while deciding to franchise and then get in great hurry to make up for lost time when they start the process…I sure wish it was the other way around.  Upside Group was founded over ten years ago by working with emerging franchisors who were struggling in their first few years of business.  Most of these initial clients had 15 units or less and would pay just about anything for a time machine to go back and make some different initial choices.  The expense of the time machine ticket would be minuscule compared to the cost created by the domino effect of the early mistakes.  Some of the initial choices they would use the time machine to change pertain to the creation of their franchise documents, creating their franchise sales process and choosing the right franchisees.  Franchising is not a transactional process.  It is a long-term relationship that requires those original seeds you plant to either blossom in to beautiful flowers or grow in to thick, unmanageable weeds.

On to the original question, to consultant or not to consultant…no it’s not a typo.  When you begin your journey into franchising you almost certainly would hire an attorney but do you hire a franchise consultant to help you create all the other critical items and assist you in making those original strategic decisions?  You don’t have to retain anyone with franchise experience.  You actually can layout your own operations manuals, design and write the copy for your website and even create the franchise development process for recruiting franchisees on your own.  With only a few choices for formal franchise education would you hire a franchise consultant to educate you on franchising?  Do you seek out a franchise professional to help you understand the franchisor – franchisee relationship or assist you in creating a development process that not only sets the proper expectations with new prospects but follows a franchise compliance program and allows you to find the top franchisees that match your culture and system?  It can start to sound daunting, so why wouldn’t every new franchise company hire “franchise experts” to work along with them?  From what I deduce it is for a few reasons.  The first reason typically is cost.  Most companies converting to a franchise model don’t budget to hire a franchise consultant so when faced with going it alone or pay a franchise consultant, they roll the dice.  The second reason is the false belief that we alluded to earlier that success in their current industry is the key to franchise success — the idea that if I make a great pizza I will be a great pizza franchise.  The final reason often is, emerging franchisors don’t know what they don’t know and no one is telling them.  A franchise consultant might tell them but it’s a slippery slope, how do you encourage the entrepreneur that franchising is a great industry without extinguishing their excitement as you begin explaining how many moving parts need creating and the intricacies involved?  How do you balance telling a new franchisor how much you like their concept while at the same time communicating that if they don’t slow down and build the proper franchise infrastructure they will almost certainly fail at this new endeavor?  Image the scenario from the emerging franchisor’s perspective; up to this point all they have ever heard was how great their business is and how they would be a great franchise — no one has ever mentioned any possible negatives and the first person informing them of the challenges is the same person who wants them to sign a contract to help them avoid all the pitfalls they just pointed out!  Franchising is a tremendous model for expansion and if the proper respect is given to the education and creation of your franchise system it will pay dividends early in your growth and for years in the future.  So back to it — to Consultant or Not to Consultant?

For me it is a simple answer, do you think your new franchise system has value to a burgeoning entrepreneur?  Should someone join your franchise system or go it alone?  Would the new franchisee in your system benefit from all your years of knowledge?  You have probably forgotten more about your industry than a franchisee will ever know…why wouldn’t they want to get all of your knowledge and not make all those expensive mistakes you made?  The proposition of franchising is simple.  Instead of trying it alone, pay a reasonable fee, (franchise fee), and I will provide you training and documentation that will greatly increase your learning curve and should make your chances at success much greater and shorten your time to profitability.  Then we will continue to work together and I will make my experience available and continue to recommend services and vendors who will aid in your ongoing success and for that you can pay me a reasonable continuing fee (royalty fee).  This seems very similar to the consulting relationship.
I guess what I took a long time to get to is — if you believe strongly in the franchise concept, you by default have to agree with the benefits of the franchise consultant relationship.  Starting any business has its challenges; if it was too easy everyone would do it.  So for the same reasons a franchisee seeks out support from a franchisor to start a business, doesn’t it stand to reason a franchisor who already agrees with that ideology would seek out an expert for their new endeavor and hire a franchise consultant?
So to Consultant or Not to Consultant likely depends on how committed you are to the ideology of franchising as the best model for starting a new business.

Instead, be honest.  Everyone appreciates being treated with respect. Once you have determined the franchise prospect will not work out, pick up the telephone and call them.  You will need to tell them they will not be moving forward and also explain to them that “they have many impressive qualities but after considerable discussion your franchise development team has determined they don’t have enough capital to qualify (or don’t have enough experience in the industry or don’t have enough ..…..whatever).” Then, talk with the franchise prospect about some things they may be able to do to overcome the deficiency which would allow them to be re-evaluated.  The honest approach takes more effort, but even if the franchise prospect decides to not pursue your franchise, they have left the process respecting your franchise system and talking positively about it.  It is never easy to turn someone down but in these cases, honestly is definitely the best policy.