It doesn’t matter how these rookie franchise recruiting mistakes became part and parcel to your brand’s program they need your attention straightaway.
And be not afraid since they are easily fixed at little to no cost, you will reap the benefits immediately and we are going to talk about them in detail right now.
- Bad Inquiry Forms – when your inquiry form asks too many required and/or optional questions it is hurting you chances of getting a lead to send you their contact information. Often the conventional argument to have a checklist of fields with qualifying questions so you can weed out the unqualified inquiries and that thinking is completely wrong. You want to reduce the friction for your qualified leads so focus instead on your franchise website messaging and clearly state your investment, liquidity and net worth qualifications necessary in order for someone to successfully get financed and have the requisite working capital. And how terrible would it be that you have a full calendar of franchise sales appointments and once in a while a lead slips through that does quite have enough money to qualify?
- Complicated Franchise Applications – in most instances if your franchise application is more than two pages it is almost always too long. You rightly want to sell franchises to people who possess the funds to capitalize the business and qualify for bank funding. We recommend having franchise applications that get the foundational qualifying information a franchisor needs to know since most of the time franchise applications get reviewed by the franchisor (which is important to do) and then they end up in a file for safekeeping. We all know that the lender applications will be required and as long as the franchisor team knows reliably & confidently that their candidate(s) are qualified you have an opportunity to make this part of your franchise sales process graceful and thoughtful for your prospective franchise owners. And your franchise salespeople will love you for it.
- Non-Disclosure Agreements – NDAs for Franchise Prospects – I fail to understand why anyone thinks it is a smart idea to require an NDA as a condition in their franchise sales process? Franchise Disclosure Documents – FDDs are readily available in the public domain online for free or minimal cost, franchisors should not have confidential information in their FDDs and franchisors control what information is provided to a prospective franchise buyer so in my opinion absent a strong business reason you don’t want to use NDAs in your franchise sales process. NDAs in franchise selling without a real & provable business purpose sets the wrong tone with your franchise candidates so why do that?
It is important for franchisors to have franchise recruitment standards so you attract the franchise owners you can be proud of and who are positioned for success at the outset. You can do that with sensible process & procedures that attract those candidates and not repel them.
