The two most important concepts to consider in finding the right franchisees are defining the profile of your ideal franchisee and finding the ideal franchisee who is looking for your type of opportunity. It’s obviously more cost-effective to define who you are looking for first, before you spend money trying to generate leads.
Defining the profile of the ideal franchisee is one of the most important tasks for a franchisor to perform. It is important that the people you want also want you. Make sure that your ideal prospect aligns with what such a prospect would be seeking in terms of financial rewards, quality-of-life returns, and the day-to-day responsibilities. For example, we want a franchisee to be actively engaged, competitive and driven to build a business, and have the heart and personal experience to also be in the business for the right reasons. We therefore seek and attract those who want to build a scalable business, want to make a difference, and are willing to work a lot of hours early on to establish and grow the business.
The kind of people you want and who want an opportunity like yours directly impacts the lead-generation strategies you will implement, but it also should influence the design of your sales process. Effective lead generation is about attracting high-quality prospects that match what you are seeking in a franchisee. Some prospects want more information—such as understanding a day in the life of a franchisee, client and caregiver stories, and key performance indicators (data) of the business—and some want only the key bullet points and have the ability to drill into areas important to them.
The Foundation of Successful Franchise Recruitment
- Create Your “Ideal” Franchisee Profile: details such as ideal gender, age range, experience level, capitalization, liquidity, education.
- Tip: For franchisors that are just beginning to sell franchises, recruiting should be focused on candidates that are similar to the Founder.
- Use Technology to Track Success Patterns: gather information on all franchisees early so that after you have 20-25 franchisees in the system, you can begin to establish patterns of character qualities and experience consistent with the culture and with success.
- Set Clear Day-to-Day Expectations: For example, some concepts want their franchisees to be actively engaged, competitive and driven to build a business and have the heart and personal experience to also be in the business for the right reasons. These concepts seek and attract those who want to build a scalable business, want to make a difference and are willing to work a lot of hours early on to establish and grow the business. Some concepts require a franchisee to be actively involved daily in the business and other franchises are designed as an “investor model” where the day-to-day operator of the unit is hired. Just be clear on what is required and this messaging as “Owner-operated” or “Investor Model” will be very important in your franchise sales marketing messages.
“One of the most powerful things we’ve learned from using a sophisticated profile tool is that there are components common to poor performing franchisees that are missing from top performers. For example, we’ve determined that franchisees whose profiles show low levels of self-awareness of their weaknesses will generally perform poorly in our system. Their lack of self-awareness makes them less willing to receive feedback, actively seek learning and experience to overcome weaknesses, or hire to mitigate these limitations.”
Shelly Sun Berkowitz, Grow Smart, Risk Less
Read More: Grow Smart, Risk Less by Shelly Sun Berkowitz is now available to read online!
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