In speaking with many franchise development leaders, there is a nagging challenge with getting more qualified franchise development leads into the funnel with current lead generation strategies. Once those names are in the franchise development (fran dev) sales cycle, the second challenge is to identify which folks are just “kicking tires” from the ones genuinely interested in becoming a franchisee.
Trying to pursue those “tire kickers” who have little intention of buying or can’t qualify, is a waste of resources that could be better used in pursuing those who raised their hand and want to start the discussion.
New Leads:
Image if you will, the fran dev team having visibility into everyone who visits your “become a franchise” page, who does NOT fill out the form. Today, you likely only see those folks who visit the page, complete the form and hit submit. Those names go into your CRM for follow-up.
Visitors visit the page and ‘abandon” the form for many reasons, some are interruptions, phone ringing, time for dinner, etc. Maybe they are just exploring what it takes to become a business owner. Regardless, wouldn’t you like the chance to start the discussion? Even if they are not ready now, you can always nurture them with email automation to keep your brand front and center. After all, email marketing and SEO on the rise in the franchise space.
Tire Kickers or Hot Leads:
Once those individuals submit the form, identifying who is real and who is not is a challenge. Like separating the wheat from the chaff. Understanding your ideal customer profile and building a persona for those who you’d classify as HOT and leveraging a lead/engagement scoring solution to score your leads based in part on your persona AND weaving in their behaviors.
For example:
Your ideal profile is:
A married couple, college educated, live in Illinois, MI, ND, etc. are currently employed in service or food service as a district manager or regional manager and have $200,000 available to invest.
A new lead comes in and you score that person based on how close they match your ICP. Scoring takes into account their behavior with emails, phone calls, etc. If for example a triggered thank you email has a link to “learn more”, you might assign a greater score to those folks who “click” the link and complete the secondary questionnaire, than those who don’t even open the thank you email.
That way those who have the higher score are riper for follow-up.
Lead Visibility Is Critical
Having this kind of visibility into your leads database can help to save you time, reduce sales cycles and ultimately help you meet your franchise development goals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the key to successful franchise development lies in the ability to attract more qualified leads and to efficiently distinguish serious prospects from those who are simply browsing. One solution is to have visibility into everyone who visits your “become a franchise” page, even if they don’t fill out the form. This allows you to start the discussion with them and nurture them with email automation.
Another approach is to use a lead/engagement scoring solution to determine which leads are more likely to be serious prospects. This solution should take into account the ideal customer profile, as well as the lead’s behavior.
For example, a lead who clicks on a link in a triggered thank you email might be more interested than one who doesn’t even open the email. With these tools in place, franchise development teams can save time, reduce sales cycles, and ultimately meet their goals.
