Let’s start with a solid piece of advice… finding and recruiting the best franchisees is more than just a numbers game.
Author: Suzie McCafferty, Founder of consultancy firm, Platinum Wave Franchising
Many franchisors are reporting that whilst franchise recruitment enquiry numbers are down, the actual number of quality enquiries has remained the same, so they continue to grow at the same rate as before, only with fewer applications to wade through. A dream scenario you might say?
Yet the mantra “it’s a number game” has been so deeply ingrained into all recruitment activity for decades now, that the quantity of enquiries is often prized in equal measure to the quality.
There’s no denying that the more people you can tell about your franchise, the more people you are likely to get an enquiry from, but what you really need, if you’re going to keep your conversion ratio (and your cost per lead) low, is an honest and compelling story shared with the right people, in the right place.
The commitment required to buy a franchise is enormous. Leaving aside the obvious financial commitment, you are essentially asking people to take a massive leap of faith with their future, so your marketing and recruitment processes need to be pretty persuasive to attract and convince the right/best people.
If you get 10 enquiries and they’re all perfect, you’re a marketing genius. If you get 100 enquiries and none of them are worth looking at, then you’re doing something wrong.
From looking at a lot of portal listings and company websites, you could be forgiven for assuming that most franchisors are trying to attract the exact same person. Every click takes you to the same, safe, generic sales messages – in fact, if you took away the company logos, it would be hard sometimes to tell which company you’re reading about.
Have you ever followed up an enquiry and had to spend the first couple of minutes reminding the person which franchise you’re calling about? Lacklustre marketing content and the ease with which people can apply for multiple opportunities on franchise portals, are certainly contributing factors. Fill your details out once and within a couple of clicks you can request info from every brand in the sector.
To be fair to the portals, we demand they send us high volumes of enquiries every month so why wouldn’t they want to make life as easy as possible for the readers to get in touch? It’s up to those of us doing the recruiting to make sure our content is more attractive, and memorable, than our competitors.
Right, enough of the challenges – what are the solutions?
When researching opportunities most of today’s content hungry franchisee prospects are just as interested in understanding the culture and personality of your brand as they are in prospective returns on investment. You need joined up marketing that shows in addition to your franchise being a sound financial investment, you, the franchisor, are an expert in your field, an innovator in your sector and an inspiring leader to work with!
You’re asking people to make a long-term commitment to you, so who you are and how you do what you do, is incredibly important.
The public has long moved on from being hooked in with headline promises of overnight riches and early retirement. Today your prospects are very well-informed individuals who will put in an incredible amount of research before engaging with your emails, let alone picking up the phone to you.
This means if you want to have any influence in their decision-making process, you need to be providing the right information, in the right format, exactly where and when they want it. You won’t get a chance to shout “no wait, come back, there’s loads I haven’t told you” – so create a coherent information journey that delivers the goods.
Yes, figures are important, but you need to tell them your story and be honest about what they can expect as a franchisee in your network. At a very basic level that’s how you stand out – your story is your story, and your company culture is unique.
Sound like a lot of work? It is. But it’s crucial if you want to recruit the best franchisees. And we’ve not even discussed who’s going to do it, or what ‘it’ even means for your brand.
So, who’s going to take on this incredibly important role for your brand?
Adding to your headcount and payroll, particularly in the early stages of growth is not something most businesses can afford. But you still need the skills and man hours to effectively launch your brand to the thousands of people out there looking for the perfect franchise opportunity.
Inevitably you’ll find yourself facing a chicken and egg conundrum… you can’t afford to invest in a marketing team until you sell some franchises; you can’t sell franchises without good marketing.
Here’s a basic list of the things you’ll need:
- A franchise page on your website with content that accurately reflects your brand and your opportunity.
- Listings on the most suitable franchise portals (once you determine which those are).
- E-Shots to the portal databases that promote your opportunity in a clear, engaging voice.
- Google Ads to draw in those people not looking for opportunities on the portals.
- Well placed expert opinion pieces that identify you as a leader in your sector or industry.
- Print Ads in franchise media, trade magazines and marketing collateral for events.
- Quality copywriting and branded imagery.
- Someone to build a database of enquiries and manage a flow of content to each prospect that relates to their level of engagement.
- Someone to manage that database using the latest technology to establish levels of engagement so that the best people are followed up quickly and personally.
- Someone to be ready to pick up the phone and talk expertly and professionally about your brand, answer tough questions, maintain dialogue and then identify the right people to invite to a discovery day, webinar, or one-to-one meeting.
- Discovery Day or webinar presentation.
- An engaging franchise prospectus.
Daunting, isn’t it? And that is by no means an exhaustive list, it’s just the things that have to be done. It can, however, be broken down into three essential parts: lead generation, lead management and lead conversion.
You might find one person you can employ full-time who has all the skill sets required, but to be honest, we haven’t yet. It takes a team – and everyone on our team has at least 15 years’ experience in their chosen field.
Outsourcing can bring you a team at a fraction of the cost of bringing it in-house. You don’t need an enormous budget to get started, but you can’t do it for free and it’s not advisable to do it on the cheap.
So, who is going to do it? You’ve built a great business that’s ready to franchise, so there’s a good chance you could take on most of it yourself – but do you have the time, which after all is your most valuable resource?
There are some quite specific skills required here and anyone who has them all to a high standard will be able to command a very good salary. But is it really a full-time role at this early stage?
An agency will work for a retainer and doesn’t need an employment, holidays or sick pay. They will also have all the skills you need because the tasks are spread amongst a team of specialists. They should also be able to offer you plenty more besides the basic list of requirements above, such as social media management, pay per click, photography, video shoots, branding & design, copywriting, media engagement and campaign strategies.
That would be your lead generation taken care of, but what about lead management and selection & recruitment? If you can find a company offering all three services, you can expect to pay a monthly retainer with a commission on each franchise sold. An experienced team will be able to hit the ground running – there’s no single approach to recruitment that works for every franchise (and it involves a combination of many different things) but a good agency will have solid and proven building blocks upon which to create the right strategy for your brand.
However, outsourcing isn’t always the right answer. There are many franchisors who have done it all themselves, only adding a team member when they had simply too many franchisees to manage alone. Only you know your budgets, your existing in-house skill sets and the speed you want to recruit at, but it’s good to know you have options.
Effective recruitment activities that you should consider as a starting point
Your own website
Some brands have an entirely separate franchise recruitment website from their primary b2b or b2c site, and that’s certainly something to inspire to, but probably not necessary from day one. You don’t need to write War and Peace (you won’t sell a franchise on the strength of one web page) but enough to articulate that franchise opportunities are available, where and what the person should do to get in touch.
A simple contact form works well here. Enough so that you get a name and contact number and/or email address. If the person can’t be bothered to spend 30 seconds filling in these basics then they aren’t particularly interested, but you don’t want to put up something resembling a mortgage application at this stage either. They’re on your page, you have their interest, don’t make taking the next step too labourious.
Franchise Portal
Once upon a time this was all you needed to guarantee a decent stream of enquiries and many brands would pay to advertise on all of the major ones. The truth is, some are better than others – but more importantly, some will perform better for your brand or market sector than others. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential franchisee looking for an opportunity in your sector and use Google – see what sites comes up first and offer the most relevant content – that’s probably where you should be.
LinkedIn
If you know precisely who you’re looking for, then LinkedIn is phenomenal for recruitment. They even have a tool called LinkedIn Recruiter.
- I want a graphic designer – 2 million people
- I want a graphic designer in Glasgow – 1,000 people
- I want a graphic designer in Glasgow with more than 16 years’ experience – 250 people
- I want a graphic designer in Glasgow with more than 16 years’ experience who has worked in the education sector – 12 people
That’s a nice concise list to approach, isn’t it? But it requires you to really know the attributes of the franchisees you’re looking for. Also, if you’re going to try LinkedIn, please make sure your own profile is up to date and professional looking – first impressions matter.
Social Media
Channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok can be great tools for recruitment, but it entirely depends on who you’re trying to attract. Never make the mistake of thinking “well, I don’t use Facebook so I’m not going to advertise there” – you’re not trying to recruit yourself, you’re trying to recruit franchisees – the big question is, ‘are they on there?’.
Again, what works for one franchise won’t necessarily work for another – Tik Tok might struggle to deliver you candidates for an accountancy franchise, but you can be sure that some children’s activity brands are using it to great effect.
Trade Media
Prospective franchisees are going to want to see that you’re a player in your own sector – otherwise what value are they getting from your brand. Print advertising can be expensive depending on the sector, but most will offer digital options too. Could you submit an opinion piece or perhaps secure an interview or podcast appearance?
A PR firm can advise you on the best way to go about this – but please note that the days of getting free advertising disguised as a press release are long gone. Nowhere worth appearing is interested in content that isn’t of value or interest to its readership.
British Franchise Association (BFA)
Perhaps the biggest strength of the BFA is that fact that it’s not an organisation you just decide to join – you have to pass accreditation no matter how big or well-known you are. This accreditation (and there are plenty of other good reasons to join) gives your prospective franchisees a serious helping of comfort when deciding if they can trust you or not.
Franchise Awards & Business Awards
Awards work … they really do. These days we’ll barely part with money for a new toaster unless a reasonable number of complete strangers have given it a 5-star rating on Amazon (other retailers are available). Third party endorsements are always more powerful than your own claims to greatness.
You might not be ready to enter ‘franchisor of the year’ just yet, but have a look at what’s out there – in particular, do your competitors have any awards or accreditations that make them look more attractive than you?
Go for it – you’ll either win or you won’t – but remember to answer the questions and keep your entry relevant. It’s not about telling them what YOU want to shout about, it’s about demonstrating that you’ve excelled at the very thing they are giving the award for. Also, you can still get a lot of PR and marketing milage out of a finalists place even if you don’t come first.
Dealing with enquiries
At Platinum Wave Franchising our recruitment team never refer to an enquiry as a lead. An enquiry only becomes a lead once it’s qualified. A name on a spreadsheet who’s never answered their phone or replied to any emails shouldn’t be taking up space on your hot list. For an enquiry to become a lead, you need to have communicated with them and confirmed that they understand what you’re offering and declared that it is of interest (and ideally, affordable) to them.
When a good candidate gets to the point of contacting you, it’s usually because they have given it some thought and are ready to take a step closer to properly engaging with you. Not to be rude, but it’s unlikely you are the only brand they’ve reached out to. Therefore, time and first impressions are of the essence.
Have a proper plan in place so that there is a process to follow. This gives everyone a consistent experience and means you don’t need to think on your feet and shouldn’t forget anything important. No-one’s going to buy your franchise on the first call, so don’t terrify them by going for the close.
Whether you decide to respond by phone, text, email or smoke signal – do it promptly, confidently, and establish their level of interest, suitability and where they are in their own research. You should have a prospectus to share and a timeline of next steps so that expectations are managed and no-one gets disappointed.
If the end goal is for them to sign a franchise agreement and join your network, what do you need from them to get them to that stage – and what are they going to need from you?
- Do you have all the facts and figures they’ll need?
- Do you have additional information beyond what’s shared in the prospectus?
- Do you have an application from that asks for the right information?
- Will you be requiring an Non-Disclosure Agreement before meeting them?
- Where are you meeting them and is it for a casual ‘get to know you’ or a proper Discovery Day?
- If you’re going to let them speak to existing franchisees – how and when, and are your franchisees prepared for that?
Basically, whatever your process, you don’t want to be making it up on the hoof infront of a good prospect – make a plan and give them confidence.
Good luck
Once you’ve decided on a process, put yourself through it, and then ask a friend or colleague to do the same. Why not go through a competitor’s process so you can compare and contrast – you can be sure your candidates will be familiar with several application approaches.
In summary, you have options. If you only have budget for one piece of activity, make sure it’s the most effective one and nail it. If you can afford a 10-channel strategy, then make sure you’re not ignoring quality in favour of quantity – it really is much more than a numbers game.
About the author
Suzie McCafferty, with nearly 25 years of first-hand international franchising experience, is a well-respected personality in the franchising world.
Having franchised her own printer cartridge business from a single store in Edinburgh to a network of 70 locations across six countries, McCafferty’s consultancy comes with an authenticity that few can match.
Prior to founding the now multi-award-winning Platinum Wave Franchising in 2010, she was Managing Director and Board Member of the £30m turnover franchise network at Select Appointments.
McCafferty is a Non-Executive Director with one of the UK’s leading franchise brands, Right at Home. She is also the Onboarding Director at HERO Brands, owners of multiple international franchises including German Doner Kebab and Island Poké. She is also Chair of the BFA’s Regional Forum and Encouraging Women Into Franchising, Scotland.
Suzie McCafferty, with nearly 25 years of first-hand international franchising experience, is a well-respected personality in the franchising world.Posted: 9th December, 2022