When you Franchise your business, a significant portion of your daily focus will be selling and marketing your franchise to potential investors. The process to sell a franchise can be tedious and first-time Franchisors get emotional and frustrating quickly.
First, it is important to remember that sales are sales and selling a franchise, although unique for a sales process, is still just a high-ticket sale selling intellectual property. We’ve found that those of you who have had success selling consulting or some form of intellectual property tend to pick up on how to sell a franchise quickly whereas others who are maybe more accustomed to selling a tangible item might have a bit of a learning curve before they get completely comfortable with the model.
Step One – start your franchise lead generation campaign. When you franchise your business your biggest obstacle to overcome initially is that not that many people are familiar with your brand and certainly very few are familiar with your franchise offering. You need to promote the heck out of the fact that you have a great opportunity for new entrepreneurs and franchise investors. There are many great organic ways to do this, but we also recommend having a budget to promote your franchise brand and get in front of your first franchise buyers. Get your campaign in order and begin your franchise lead generation model.
Step Two – figure out your franchise sales CRM and get a solid system in place. Franchise sales are definitely a numbers game and require managing a large volume of leads efficiently and effectively in order to qualify and find your franchise buyers. We recommend a good franchise sales CRM that has auto-texting, lead nurturing and email marketing tools incorporated into the platform.
Step Three – Get your follow-up shoes on. If you aren’t going to be the one chasing down your franchise leads, get someone in place to take on this responsibility. Franchise buyers are a finicky bunch, they want to start a business, but their scared, nervous and generally unfocused on where they should take their entrepreneurial dreams. Your job as the point person for contacting franchise buyers is to reign in this buyer and get them to have the first call. It seems like a simple task, but it takes diligence, consistency and a whole bunch of follow up to get them to talk with you on a phone call.
Step Four – Get your franchise buyers to complete a buyer application and franchise evaluation form. This again may seem like a simple task, but it requires a great deal of follow-up and strong communication to get a buyer to feel comfortable to share personal information and commit to the franchise NDA. By doing this, you are in effect getting buy-in from the franchise buyer and showing some signs of investing time and energy when they get a completed form back to you, it’s a big step in the right direction.
Step Five – Do a zoom call meeting to dig into the model more deeply. When you franchise your business, you are presenting the value of not only your business and brand but also your industry and the market potential of them joining your industry as a whole. Create your presentation and take pride in the way you communicate the opportunity to the franchise buyer. Your goal, get them to want to come to meet you in person. If you run this zoom meeting well, they should be willing to get on a plane and take a trip to meet in person.
Step Six – Discovery Day. The Franchise Discovery Day is the official meeting and test drive that a Franchisee will take before making the decision to purchase the franchised business. It can either be very formal and very structured or in other cases very informal and very relationship-focused. There isn’t a right answer to how to best run your franchise Discovery Day, but you definitely need to plan it out and make sure that the time spent efficiently gets the point across to your buyer that this is a great franchise business and you are a credible, trustworthy franchisor.
Step Seven – Present the FDD and Franchise Agreement. Some might tell you to present this prior to Discovery Day, but my advice, in particular for new franchisors, is to wait until you’ve built up the most value possible in your franchise system, then provide them with the 150-page FDD to review. It’s not going to help your sale, you may as well have put your best foot forward first and then hit them with the reality of the Franchise Agreement. Get your receipt page signed (The last page of the FDD) and then wait your 14 days to execute the Franchise Agreement.
For more information on how to franchise your business and the steps to sell a Franchise, contact us.
FMS is a team of expert franchise consulting professionals based in Canada that provides solutions for franchise development, franchise consultation, and expansion of businesses globally.