In an age where we are constantly bombarded by adverts asking us to buy, buy, buy, there is a fine balance between overloading your franchise prospects with too much information during the recruitment process and not providing enough. If you bombard them every day with sales messages from the day they enquire with you, you’re likely to put them off pretty quickly or end up in the junk folder!
The recruitment process is based around building trust between you and your prospects until they are ready to make a decision and pick up the phone to you. Your communication with prospects should reflect this. Let prospects know what the benefits of your franchise opportunity are to them rather than telling them what you do and for what price. Your communications should operate in line with your recruitment process to help push prospects further through the process. Structure your communications around your recruitment process and you’re likely to see more franchisees coming through.
A successful recruitment process consists of lead generation, lead management and conversion. Different types of information through different channels are required at each of these stages. Yet, you must ensure that the messages you send out are consistent and provide a clear understanding of your franchise opportunity. This will draw prospects to you naturally.
Researching your target audience before undertaking any franchisee recruitment campaign will greatly increase your chances of attracting more leads. Understanding which media channels your target audience prefer to receive information through and which social activities they engage in will ensure that you allocate your resources as effectively as possible and don’t overload your prospects with too much information.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the first step in building long-term relationships with your prospects. To achieve successful lead generation, you need to be proactive and present your company as an attractive opportunity. You can’t just sit back and hope they’ll come to you.
Lead Management
Lead management is the process of following up your leads. For prospects, this is the stage where they consider whether your franchise is an interesting opportunity or not.
Some prospects prefer to be in the driver’s seat of procuring more information about your franchise and others might want you to provide the information directly. This will often depend on their sense of urgency so you need to establish the communication channels that permit both. However, prospects are only interested for a short period of time and online-only communication channels are often slow with long response times and little consistency so it is important to bear in mind that prospects will be considering other opportunities.
At this stage, it is important to provide prospects with all the necessary information about what joining your franchise will entail. Successful lead management will lead to higher lead conversion so it is important that you get it right at this stage.
Lead conversion
Lead conversion involves transforming a lead into a franchisee. In order to achieve this, you need to provide information about anticipated timescales and support to effectively outline the course of action. This will ensure that prospects view you as a franchisor that is professional and well organised.
In order to provide the right information at the right time, you not only need to research characteristics of your perfect franchisee but also their behaviour. No prospect is exactly like another but you can identify common themes that will resonate across your target audience. It is important to bear in mind that prospects have different information needs in each stage of the recruitment process. We recommend that you create a bespoke plan outlining which information needs are to be addressed via which channels, as well as when they are to be addressed in your recruitment process.
Think you might be overloading your prospects with information? We can help you perfect your recruitment process and communications. Contact us on info@coconutcreatives.co.uk or call 01725 511 673.