what the FRANCHISE

Have you heard about conversational marketing? 

This new lead generation strategy is boldly different than what the franchise industry typically uses to generate franchise leads. Conversational marketing pair very specific, relative ads with a Facebook messenger connection and forgoes forms, phone numbers and website links. Prospects ask questions using a real one-to-one connection and a real recruiter or trained lead screen answers the message in real time. 

This provides quick and authentic answers to questions and create a safe place to have a conversation without getting hounded. It is at the prospects' peak emotional point so the results are much higher than typical.

We're seeing a 500% increase in sales activity with a 100% contact rate which makes for a much more efficient sales process.

Listen in as Thomas Scott, founder of Brand Journalists and CEO of Home Run Franchises talks with Kayla Ryan, former CMO of Home Based Franchise Group and owner of Flick Switch Marketing as they discuss the detail of this exciting new franchise marketing trend. 

Why do so many franchise recruiters and salespeople underperform or fail?

Join us as we discuss the 5 essential qualities of a successful franchise recruiter with our friend Brett Larabee, a veteran pro at franchise sales for many systems. There are huge differences in performance in salespeople and if you are considering hiring or upping the results in your franchise development department, listen to this for some key insight.

Join Thomas Scott, CEO and Founder of Brand Journalists and Home Run Franchises as he has a thought provoking conversation about the franchise industry's performance gap with franchise recruiters.

Are you worried about how the down market will affect your ability to keep growing your franchise system in the year ahead? There has been a significant market shift and understanding what you need to do differently next year from what you are doing now could mean the difference in success or failure. 

Listen in as Thomas Scott, Founder of franchise development marketing firm Brand Journalists and  Founder / franchisor of Clozetivity, Frost Shades, Dryer Vent Squad and The Lighting Squad talks to The Joint Chiropractic Area Developers about important keys for turning a recession into an amazing opportunity.

1851 rolled out their top franchise development website awards for 2022, and Brand Journalists' produced websites were over 75% of the top 10! In this episode, Thomas Scott, founder of Brand Journalists, speaks with Mike Ackley, Chief Operating Officer, as to what makes a top-performing website and why every franchise brand needs one.

1851 rolled out their top franchise development website awards for 2022, and Brand Journalists' produced websites were over 75% of the top 10! In this episode, Thomas Scott, founder of Brand Journalists, speaks with Mike Ackley, Chief Operating Officer, as to what makes a top-performing website and why every franchise brand needs one.

CEO and Founder of Brand Journalists, Thomas Scott, is joined by franchise recruitment expert, Brett Larrabee, on the What The Franchise Podcast to share the top 5 qualities all franchise sales professionals must possess.

Scott and Larrabee share laughs, wisdom and personal experiences explaining why successful franchise recruiters are curious, enthusiastic, positive, urgent, disciplined and natural-born storytellers.

In this episode, we welcome a very special guest. John Francis, better known as Johnny Franchise, lets us in on what the year 2021 has in store for the franchising world.

Why is Facebook so difficult for franchise salespeople to get good results with?

We are seeing brands we work with close franchise deals from Facebook on an almost daily basis. For franchise development, this is where the new action is at. 

Five years ago, Google was the king of franchise research. If you wanted to research or learn about franchises, you went to Google.

Today, Google is still important but it has to share time with a number of other content platforms. Google isn't the only - or even the main - source for you to create brand and build visibility with potential franchisees. Google has gotten more and more expensive - the cost to reach 1,000 people is now $3. Facebook (and Instagram), by comparison, is only .25 to reach the same 1,000 people. Linkedin is .75 per 1,000 consumers. 

When it comes to lead costs, the average good quality Google Adwords leads run $100-300 a piece. A facebook lead, which might not be the same quality, costs $5-20 per lead.

"Facebook could double or triple its rates and it would still be the best bargain for digital marketing in town," Jack Monson, CDO of Social Joey.

Here's the deal:

To combat and deal with the onslaught of digital content coming at consumers today, the typical person is now compartmentalizing digital information. People are not at a desk, working on a laptop, doing research. 

Today, consumers have shifted - the typical behaviour is different than it was five years ago. Today, people spend blocks of time - mostly on their phone - sifting through the content channels they subscribe to and they do it in sequence. They might look at Linkedin, then Facebook, then Instagram, then email, then messenger, then a news feed and on and on. They might do this 3-4 times a day in blocks. 

The key is - if you can create visibility during this channel surfing - you have an opportunity to broadcast a relevant piece of content to someone and hit them 3-4 times on multiple platforms. This is the key to recruitment in the years ahead.

Frustrated with Facebook? Been telling yourself stories about why Facebook doesn't work for Franchise Sales? Keep telling yourself that - your competition will steal your prospects from you!

If you've ever managed franchise salespeople, you've certainly heard the feedback "talking to lots of people but nobody is financially qualified."

No salesperson or recruiter wants to waste valuable time on a prospect that they think doesn't have enough money to purchase a franchise so they make decisions early in the process, often in the first few minutes on whether or not to invite that person into further conversation.

On the surface, this sounds smart. In real life, it is the reason salespeople lose 70% of the deals they could otherwise close. 

When we try to troubleshoot a lack of sales results, we look for the kill rate after initial contact. If we see a call screener or salesperson killing out 95% of the leads the same day the lead comes in OR if we hear the feedback 'nobody has money,' we raise a red flag.

The truth in today's market is that prospects don't come to the table with an understanding of what financial qualifications really mean. They don't understand the basic terms 'liquid capital' or 'net worth' and even worse, the financial filters we see on many lead forms are misleading and provide mostly useless, inaccurate data. 

In our experience working with hundreds of recruiters at hundreds of brands, you don't really know if someone can fund a deal fully until you have an application of some sort that gives you details on the prospects' financial ability. Getting to the application stage in any sales process determines the sales result and good salespeople get them in larger numbers.

Poorly skilled or trained salespeople don't. 

Imagine wanting to shop for a new car or SUV and the minute you walk on the lot, you are ushered into a high-pressure sales room and forced to fill out a credit app before you can even look at a car or ask questions. What type of experience is this for you, the customer?
Does this make you trust the salesperson? Are you excited about the car or really disgusted by the stiff process?

We see recruiters doing this daily and it's one of the main reasons we lose so many potential deals.

Listen in as David Sparks, Brand Journalists' Chief Development Officer and Thomas Scott, CEO of Brand Journalists discuss this important sales topic and offer some simple solutions on how o avoid falling into the performance sucking trap.

If you like this podcast series, please subscribe on iTunes!

According to Forbes magazine, more women are buying franchises than ever before and at the same time, women are making huge inroads into franchise development and company leadership.

Many of our role models in the franchise space are women and we see increasing numbers of younger women turning to entrepreneurship and franchising in particular. To discuss this topic, we invited two recruiters we admire to join us: Jennifer Benjamin, VP of Development for Lennys Grill and Subs and Kim Robinson, VP of Development for Aamco Transmissions and Hybrid Repair. We've worked with both of these top performers at several brands and have a lot of respect for the way they approach their work.

David Sparks, our CDO, is fond of saying 'The best way to sell is simply not to sell' to explain why so many, mostly male, salespeople oversell and push too hard. As franchise buyers have changed dramatically, getting younger and bringing with them new expectations of the sales process and the salespeople, we believe these two guests have some valuable insight into what drives franchise sales results.

Listen in!