Franchise Recruitment

Stories are the basis of human communication and decision-making. We use stories to relate to one another and make sense of the world around us. At the root of the massive changes to Google's search algorithms in the past three years has been a push to help people find the stories they are searching for when they type in a search query.

When prospects begin to do online research, they type in questions or key phrases to get at the stories that help them understand the franchise brand and how the model works. They want to understand the history of the company, how the brand came to be, where the brand is going and who is leading the charge. They want to hear stories about who the customer is, and why customers choose this brand...

Objective: Qualify the prospect, build rapport, and establish the process
Length of conversation: 45 to 60 minutes

Now's the time to start pre-closing your prospect. As franchise pros stress, "The best close starts with the opening!" This is the most opportune time to set expectations and take control through leadership. Use this process to "establish the ground rules" and you will identify better candidates, build more credibility and confidence, and increase closing success.

1. Define your role in the process."My role is to educate you about our franchise, and to explore this opportunity with you to see if we're the right fit for each other. This is a franchise partnership, and we're interested in candidates who can be successful, satisfied owners...

Online reviews, smartphones, and social media are not passing fads. Can they be useful to your franchise recruiting and development efforts? Or are these things just distractions from the true work of sales and recruiting, and best left to the marketing department?

We believe that effective management of your online presence, including social media, is a critical component of your franchise development strategy. Why? Because there is no better way to illustrate that your organization knows how to get found and manage customers at the local level, where it really counts.

Gathering customer insight has traditionally been a marketing function, but your franchise development team cannot afford to be out of the loop in regard to socially driven customer intelligence...

The face of America's franchise owners is changing. In the traditional franchise model, the franchisee purchases a brand and follows an operator's manual. They stick to the proven methods of success - regardless of their local market or individual background.

While this model works for many, an increasing number of entrepreneurs are seeking a more individualized approach. Today's franchisees not only want to run a business with the backing of an established franchisor, they also value the prospect of investment and expansion, the ability to capitalize on a brand with their own business savvy. Instead of entering the franchising business with the intention of owning a small shop, today's franchisees are interested in managing a growing and expanding business...

Objective: Qualify the prospect, build rapport, and establish the process
Length of conversation: 45 to 60 minutes

This meeting with your prospective candidate is the most important step in the recruitment process. It's your first real "date," the one that determines whether you two have what it takes for a serious relationship. Your prospect certainly is interested in your franchise. They responded to your franchise offer; were previously interviewed by you or your qualifier; reviewed your initial franchise package and website; and submitted their RFC, providing their personal information, work history, and financial statement.

This 30- to 45-minute session presents the opportunity for you to speak more openly with these motivated respondents...

Objective: Pre-qualify the inquiry and sell the application

Most young franchisors have their sales executive initially screen and pre-qualify prospects. This makes sense during the start-up period when dollars and people are scarce. As soon as feasible, however, I strongly recommend using a qualification specialist to perform the initial follow-up of inquiries. This person can be worth their weight in platinum! Thirty percent of franchisors now employ qualifiers, according to Franchise Update's 2014 Annual Franchise Development Report. You'll save time, money, and increase sales performance.

The qualifier focuses on timely follow-up of every lead, eliminating poor and mismatched inquiries, and setting phone appointments for quality prospects to speak with your development professional...

The foundation of your successful selling program starts with your sales process. It's the anchor to embracing, guiding, and closing quality candidates who will help you build your system. It's the tightly honed script that ensures successful production from initial contact to closing. It's the Broadway hit performance that every night leads audiences from opening curtain to standing ovations; the World Series champions who mastered the execution of their game plan. Franchise development is no different: follow the plan, the plan works. This is the playbook to success for top-performing recruitment programs.

Every sales process must be refined to work most effectively for each franchisor's concept, franchise program, and franchise candidates...

Best-selling business author and trainer Zig Ziglar once said, "People don't buy drills, they buy holes." He meant that people often make decisions with their end result in mind. Think about any big decision you've made -- there's almost always a deeper purpose lurking in the background. You send your kid to college because you want them to have a happy and prosperous life. You buy a home so you can foster a healthy and fulfilling family life.

When it comes to buying a franchise, which is almost always an intense, emotionally charged decision, people go even further than buying the "holes." They're buying a personal story about how the franchise adds value or solves a problem that is worthy of the risk. The narrative candidates tell themselves about what's possible influences their entire decision-making process...

Franchisee validation is driven by three factors. The first is unit-level economics. Are franchisees' financial returns meeting their expectations?

The second factor is the quality of the franchisors' training, support, and performance management systems. Would franchisees say the value of the tools and support they receive is greater than or equal to the royalty dollars invested?

The third factor is the quality of the franchisor-franchisee interpersonal relationships. Do franchisees, employees, and leadership of the franchisor trust each other and work toward crafting mutually profitable campaigns, offers, and solutions? Do franchisees feel they are heard and understood? Does information routinely flow up and down the organization or just funnel down from on high? Would franchisees say they are informed about issues important to them? Would they say they feel like an integral part of a team or more like the low man on the totem pole?

The way franchisees would answer these questions speaks volumes about the culture of the franchise organization...

Audit your advertising and increase results

What you don't know, you can't measure. And what you can't measure, you can't improve! Successful recruitment programs invest in marketing intelligence and monitoring tools to 1) determine their most productive selling sources; 2) create compelling, direct-response advertising for each media source selected; and 3) stay ahead of or in step with the competition.

Good news for you smart execs! Many franchise companies still don't track their marketing performance - which provides competitive advantages for those intelligent franchisors who do successfully monitor, measure, and modify their lead generation programs. By knowing where you are and where you want to go, you build the shortest road to get there...

Franchise Performance Group has been studying and creating franchise sales "tipping points" since 2002. In this e-book we identify and explain the 10 Keys to Creating a Tipping Point. While these 10 keys apply equally to all franchise brands, each franchisor will need to craft their own tactics for each key. Even if you succeed in all 10 areas at the same time, when exactly your company will reach a tipping point is unpredictable. But I can tell you, based on my experience, it will happen. Conversely, if you fail in one or more of these 10 keys, regardless of how many franchises you are selling now, your development program runs the risk of coming to a grinding halt.

Strong unit-level economics. This single key is the greatest predictor of a franchisor's future success! All enduring franchise brands are built on a foundation of both the consistent successes of its existing franchisees and almost certain future financial successes of future franchisees...

This is the first of a three-part series on how to optimize your franchisee conventions. In this first part, we examine how to get more franchisees to attend your convention. In the second, we will address how to get the maximum benefit from your conventions. Finally, in the third part, we will look at how you can extend the life of your conventions and ensure you derive the maximum benefit from them.

No singular event is as powerful as your convention in terms of communicating with your franchisees. It is the single most effective form of franchisor-franchisee communication. According to Katrina Mitchell, CEO of Speak!, "A key investment for most franchise systems is their annual franchise convention. With careful planning and a focus on what you want your franchisees to take away from the experience, your annual meeting can have a tremendously positive effect on a franchisee's productivity, profitability, and passion for the brand...

Note: For part 1, Discovering the Power of Public Relations, click here. For part 2, Hiring a PR Agency, click here.

As a bootstrap franchisor, there certainly are ways you can gain public attention through your own personal efforts. Ask some franchise PR firms for general advice on how to stir up some publicity on your "franks 'n' beans" budget. They can often help out with suggestions. Their valuable direction may help accelerate your initial PR successes and avoid costly mistakes, so you can use their services in the not-too-distant future! Let's take a look at three franchisors who triggered extraordinary media attention through their personal PR efforts.

1. Margaret McEntire, founder of Candy Bouquet International, was a walking news story...

Jersey Mike's has developed a recruitment system that's strong on speed, efficiency, and good communication, says Brian Sommers, vice president of franchise development for the Manasquan, N.J.-based franchisor.

"Most of our prospects are already well informed and have done some due diligence. They've already been into our stores and have checked out the website," he says. "As soon as they fill out our first form, our prequalification representative contacts them. Our rule of thumb is that the contact takes place in under 24 hours." In most cases, he says, it's within one to three hours.

In addition to working with prospects to complete the requisite applications and financials, the sales rep also begins screening each person for compatibility with the Jersey Mike's culture...

Twenty years ago I first witnessed the magic of great PR. Dan Dorfman, a renowned investment advisor, wrote an article praising our small business-to-business franchise, which had 100-plus owners at the time. Immediately afterward, our phones were ringing off the hook for three weeks! His syndicated column, which ran in 300 newspapers throughout the U.S., named us one of the "top 10 best franchise investments in America." Eleven sales later, I sat down and realized what had happened - and what can happen for franchisors with excellent PR reaching the right buyer audience at the right time. Simply put, PR sells franchises. Since then, I have discovered these general truths about using public relations as a recruitment tool.

With the proliferation of more sophisticated social media, PR, web, and blogging tools available today, franchisors have a golden opportunity to tell their story to a captive pool of franchise candidates who are hungry for such information. During a Franchise Update Leadership & Development Conference only a few years ago, you could count on one hand the number of franchisees successfully recruited through franchisors' implementation of a social media strategy.

In contrast, Showhomes, then an emerging franchisor specializing in decorating and staging vacant, upscale residential properties for quick resale, stood out as an exception. Showhomes attributed $300,000 in franchise fee revenue in 2009 to their social media outreach efforts...

We asked three franchise sales executives what they are doing to improve the speed and effectiveness of their responses to prospects evaluating their system. This is what two of them had to say. For the third response (from Steve Cox, vice president of franchise development at i9 Sports), watch for the next issue of Franchise Update magazine (Q2, due out in early May).

Jim C. Brown
Vice President, Franchise Development
Comfort Keepers/CK Franchising
Over the past several years, the in-home care sector of franchising has become extremely popular, with more new concepts being launched every year. In addition to more competition, these new brands bring more visibility to the sector. Our strategy and sales system have evolved since Comfort Keepers began franchising in 1999...

Franchise shows were the champions of recruitment during the 1980s and early 1990s. Franchisors effectively sold owners throughout the U.S. by "working the circuit" 40 weeks a year. Buyers flocked to these events, excited to meet franchise executives face-to-face and get the direct scoop about their opportunities. These convenient showcases provided entrepreneurs with a great personal experience to learn, evaluate, and buy a franchise business in their own backyard. For franchisors, these events were an ideal recruitment tool for building target markets.

Then, a combination of events shattered the marketplace and threw trade show selling into a tailspin for several years: over-saturation of franchise shows and the discovery of the Internet for investigating franchise opportunities...

In the previous three issues of FUSR, we published a high-level overview of the 2012 Annual Franchise Development Report (AFDR), followed by selections of highlights from the report: first, recruitment budgets, recruitment spending, Internet spending, top sales producers, top Internet sales producers, and online alternative resources; and last month social media, closing ratios, franchise sales performance, and data about franchisors exceeding goals.

In this final article, we provide more findings from the report, which drew on detailed responses from 110 franchisors representing 109,936 total units (79,254 franchised and 30,682 company-owned).

For many franchisors, the traditional advertising vehicles - portals, print advertising, PR, and broker networks - do not appear to be working as effectively as they were five years ago. We predicted the slow decline of these once-proven vehicles in our white paper, "The Future of Lead Generation: 6 Big Changes Which Will Alter Franchising Forever," available as a free download. Since we've already written a detailed paper on this topic, we won't rehash what we still believe to be highly relevant information. Instead, we will focus only on additional insights we've had since the paper was published a few years ago.

For those who have read the paper, you may remember we took issue with franchise portals for not doing more to provide franchisors with better educated, more informed, and buyer ready leads...