- August 9, 2024
Defining the perfect franchise recruitment process can be challenging. It’s almost like trying to fit Cinderella’s shoe into everyone’s foot – there’s no one-size-fits-all. The franchise development process will always differ slightly for every brand.
However, despite these variations, we noticed that there are core tools and concepts that, in fact, remain exactly the same across different types of franchises.
Whether you are a mortgage broker, a burger joint, or a dog washer, best practices in franchise recruitment can be universally applied to ensure efficiency and success – which ultimately brings you to your perfect franchise development process.
Some Key Factors Influencing Franchise Recruitment Across Brands:
Brand Demand and Lead Generation: The level of demand for your brand directly influences the number of leads you generate and the process you will run. Low demand may require more intensive efforts along the recruitment process to ensure you make the most of every lead.
Initial Franchise Fee: Of course, the cost of the initial franchise fee plays a significant role in the recruitment process. A $2M upfront expenditure for a franchisee will take longer to find the right candidate and requires more due diligence than a $25k personal services franchise.
Resource Availability: This depends on how resourced you are in your fran dev team and your suppliers, including your lawyers, operations team, and onboarding and training team. A well-resourced team can handle a larger volume of leads more efficiently. And more hands involved means a more complicated recruitment and onboarding process.
Sector-Specific Requirements: What sector your franchise sits in, and what your requirements are also play an important role. At times, candidates may be abundant whereas real estate sites are lacking (or vice versa). Every franchisor struggles with different blockages in their franchise sales pipeline.
Brand Appeal: The general “hotness” or public appeal of a brand can dictate the ease of recruiting franchisees. Brands that are trendy or have a strong market presence typically attract more interest and higher-quality leads.
Why is it important to have a clear, defined and functioning franchise recruitment process?
Let’s take a look at recent published statistics that reveal franchisors have an average close rate of 1% on leads to unit sales. Putting it into perspective, this means that for every 100 leads or franchisee enquiries you get, you will sign 1 (yes, only 1) franchise agreement.
The numbers are frightening when you consider the marketing spend and effort put into recruitment. In the attempt to push everyone along your funnel, only to have just 1 in 100 leads convert in the end.
But don’t be disheartened! With a well-structured and efficient recruitment process, you can significantly improve these conversion rates. A successful recruitment process is clearly defined, system-supported, efficient, automated and most importantly, FAST. By following through on the best practices, you can optimize your franchise recruitment efforts and achieve better results.
The recruitment process also dictates “what” actions to take with candidates and “when” to take them as they progress through your sales funnel.
We often see franchisors who focus heavily in generating leads, thus filling the top of the funnel, but neglect the “what” and “when” that happens next. For example, an effective sales funnel can include sending an automated welcome email and SMS immediately upon lead generation, increasingly we’re seeing success with deploying AI Chat Bots to help answer Candidate questions and kickstart them along the sales process. Then following up and scheduling one-on-one consultations within the next few days. The stats prove that moving fast in this initial stage closes more franchise sales – remember that Candidate is likely to be enquiring with your competitors at the same time – you need to be first and best to get the good ones.
If you are able to lift your close rate from 1% to 2%, then you can double your new franchisee units every year. How can you make this work? The answer lies with good processes, good materials, and good people.
So… What exactly are those best practices you can put in practice for your perfect franchise recruitment/fran dev process?
Here, we summarize all the key best practices you can implement in your franchise sales system:
All these elements are described in more detail here. But, that’s just the beginning.
In the next series of blog posts, we will dive into each element, explaining how you can implement them, and showcasing what we see being done as best practice in the industry. We will also demonstrate how you can leverage systems, automation and AI to do some of the heavy lifting for you.
Stay tuned and keep an eye out for upcoming articles that will guide you step-by-step towards perfecting your franchise development process today.
