How Franchisors Can Exponentially Increase The Quality of Their Leads

Lead quality is a super nebulous concept. 

Franchise brands and vendors talk about it all the time in the industry, but there’s not really a good definition of what it means.

Luckily for all of us, the franchise lead generation industry has grown stronger and stronger over the last ten years. And the demand for technology solutions is only growing, both from potential franchise owners and from the brands themselves. 

Having now been in business for three decades as the most sophisticated franchise marketer in the world, our company has a strong working definition of what lead quality means. Let’s explore it and how your franchise can exponentially increase that quality for its leads.

The Lead Quality Questionnaire

We consider lead quality to be a composite of several pillars. Think of them as a checklist for your own lead sources. These bullets combined paint a picture of what lead quality means:

• Has this lead demonstrated interest in opening a franchise, and in your brand specifically?
• Are they a match for your geographical and financial requirements based on the parameters you set? 
• Are leads’ contact info verified and delivered to you in real time as soon as requests are submitted?

Let’s break down the strategic principle behind each of these:

Qualifying -- In order to get the right intent, you’ve got to have a system that engages and qualifies leads, as well as to collect data that can be used to suggest potential franchise matches for them. Our patented quiz on FranchiseHelp, for example, enables potential franchise owners who are interested to dive deeper, and just as importantly it enables users who are not interested to self-select out. We know this tech works because many large franchise brands have white labeled (and a few have even stolen it!) and seen top results. You could exponentially increase the quality of your leads if you qualify in this way.

Filtering -- Constraints are beautiful things. If you are rock solid with your filters, you will only garner leads that have the best chance of becoming legitimate franchise owners. And you won’t waste time on the phone, emailing or even having discovery days with the wrong leads. We suggest that the two most important filters are geographical and liquid capital. With the former, make sure your lead generator offers geo targeting down to the state or even zip-code level, if you need it. And also make sure potential franchisees indicate how much cash they have on hand to open a location. These two filters combined will elevate your lead quality tremendously.

Outreach -- It’s not always practical to call a lead the second it arrives in your inbox. You may be on the phone, out of the office, or it’s after business hours. Thankfully, there are new technologies taking the industry by storm. We recommend using an automated texting service like FranFunnel to bridge that gap and start the conversation for you. FranFunnel users see a contact rate of 35-50%, compared to an average of about 20% without texting. By having real conversations with your leads, closing deals are only a matter of time. We recommend also asking your lead provider how quickly leads are delivered to you. With solid technology on the lead generator’s part, you should be able to receive leads in your inbox or CRM immediately upon submission.

Ultimately, your franchise needs a proven lead conversion system in order to garner the highest quality candidates. Make sure you’re leveraging the best in class tools to verify and convert good leads, while keeping your data clean.

As a result, you’ll turbocharge your frandev efforts and show returns that make it one of your enterprise's best investments.

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