It's no secret that franchise sales teams have high turnover and you can chalk some if it up to a bad hire here and there. But in my experience that's not the reason why most of the time.
The turnover happens mostly out of frustration. You fire under-performers or they quit because they know they are failing. You find a new person and cycle repeats itself. Every 18 months.
Stop being set up for disappointment and having to get a new team, every 18 months.
You can do something about it now to make things better for this year.
Here is how to do something different? Try improving on one of these dimensions.
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Confirm your team actually follows your franchise sales process - You will be surprised at what you learn.
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Find the leaks in your sales funnel - Where are your franchise candidates losing interest & dropping out?
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Rebuild your franchise sales process - Most processes have too few or the wrong steps to match your prospects timing and decision making.
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Become expert at using your franchise sales CRM software - You need to be great at it so you can coach your team and know what's happening.
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Read everything out loud that you are sending out to prospects from your auto-response to closing letter - These emails & letters have changed over-time and need fixing.
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Listen to your franchise sales scripts - They have to make sense to prospects and your sales team or they won't use them or work.
Do these six things faithfully and you will have a killer franchise selling machine.
You will get more sales out your team and your disappointment will vanish.
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Joe,
Reading your recent article about firing your franchise sales team every 18 months motivates the following vent. I've been vetting franchise applicants now for the last 14yrs. as a franchise consultant, manager and now into my retirement on behalf of a government agency. When a franchise manager ask that question, "HOW many Franchises will you expect to sell next year". IT Reveals the poor management skills of the franchise director or management. Does a sports coach ask his players how many games will they win next year, or a anyone with true leadership abilities actually expect result with that statement.
Make a goal as a manager and give the sales wolves that target with well defined rewards and defined support from management. What resources of the company be directed toward that effort. My last few years I worked with a wonderful franchise sales executive who came up with a 4 silo approach, (his term not mine). The franchise inquires passed from one Silo into the next on criteria outlined by qualifications, more than the applicants financial statement. In short they would move thru this Silo process, SO Management could predict the closing ratio numbers from the most qualified applicants who progress to the 4th Golden Silo. The larger that pipeline grew the more accurate a picture of franchise growth.
So my retort would be to FIRE your FRANCHISE SALES DIRECTOR every 18 months or sooner if they ever uttered the phrase your headline article provoked.
A faithful reader.
david
Thanks David for adding to this discussion.
Many franchise sales teams are not doing as well as they could at recruiting talented and capital qualified franchisees.
One of the biggest errors I commonly see is the sales process is designed for a transactional sale and it needs to work for a complex sale.