Prospects Give Feedback on Improving the Franchise Sales Process
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
August 23, 2023 – Aspiring business owners engaging with franchise sales teams were largely satisfied with their experiences, according to recent mystery shopping surveys over the last six months ending in August 2023. Almost half (43.3%) said they were either “satisfied “or “very satisfied”, and only 14.7% said they were “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied.”
The results were comparable to when we did a similar analysis of prospect feedback in February 2023.
Only 14.7% said they were “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied.”
But the negative responses, and the other 38.9% who were neither satisfied or dissatisfied suggest that there is room for improvement.
An analysis and categorization of another six months of suggestions on that question yielded not-so-surprising action items if you have been following the Mystery Shopping survey and franchise lead generation best practices from FranchiseInsights.com.
The respondents’ comments were categorized into specific suggestions. Of those, about 19% suggested that more information about the total costs and approaches to financing would be helpful. Concerns about financing continue to top the list for aspiring franchisees, with 71.3% citing it in a recent survey as interest rates rise and credit tightens.
About 16% had comments about representatives not showing up or late for calls, materials discussed that were not provided, or reported that they were just never contacted. These were categorized into the suggestion to “follow through promptly as agreed.” While it is hard to explain, surveys regularly show that a significant number of inquiries receive no follow up within seven days.
In a June 2023 survey, only 46.2% of respondents had contact attempts from every franchise they inquired about within a week, and 25.3% did not receive any follow-up.
Another 13.5% of respondents commented that they were looking for more specific information about financial expectations and return on investment than they were given. “How much can I make” is a common question among aspiring franchisees.
As in the previous analysis, many (10.8% in this data set) specifically mentioned emailing with info before calling as the one thing that could be improved. This is consistent with data confirming that over 61% of prospects are either unlikely or very unlikely to take your call before receiving information from you, exacerbated by Apple’s feature that blocks unknown callers. Sending an email including your name and phone number means that your call will be received.
According to Apple, calls will not be silenced from “people that are saved in the prospect’s contacts list, recent calls list, and from Siri Suggestions who let them know it’s you who is calling based on phone numbers included in your emails or text messages.” These are the “maybe: contact name” caller IDs you see when receiving calls from individuals who are not in your contacts.
Apple’s new “Live Voicemail” feature for its anticipated September iOS 17 iPhone software update should also help. Rather than banishing the caller directly to voicemail without ringing, as the “silence unknown callers” feature does, the first several seconds of the caller’s message is presented in text on the home screen, giving the call recipient an option to pick up the call.
Over 5% suggested less calling, in favor of more texts and emails. A similar percentage suggested that franchise representatives “not push so hard” in the early stage of the process. The remainder included “patience with my learning curve” and the suggestion to stop calling after being told that the individual was “not interested.” Franchise sales teams have to come to their own conclusions about what level of sales pressure is appropriate for their offering and the stage of the prospect in the sales process.
The Franchise Insights monthly “Mystery Shopping” survey collects responses from individuals who have recently inquired about businesses or franchises for sale on the digital assets of FranchiseVentures.
FranchiseVentures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
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Published on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023.