With A Billion Political Texts Per Week, How Are You Most Likely to Reach Prospects?
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
October 23, 2024 – Both political parties have discovered the effectiveness of blanketing mobile phones with fundraising texts. According to YouMail, which offers call and text-blocking apps, political texts alone may be approaching one billion per week in October 2024. How do legitimate franchise representatives get through to sales prospects who want to hear from them?
Franchise prospects consistently indicate a preferred sequence of channels for initial contact after requesting more information – email or text, then a phone call.
But beyond the channel preferences – research shows that only a fraction of franchise prospects are likely to return your call before receiving an introductory email or text from you.
With the tsunami of political texts these days, emailing before texting and/or calling is even more critical.
In four months of survey data from June to September 2024, only 9.6% of respondents are “very likely,” and another 15.2% say they are “likely” to take a cold call from you. The traditional “call first” approach will likely lead to your frustration with at least two-thirds of franchise leads, and reduce the chances of more productive conversations with informed prospects.
In this same sample of franchise prospects, 60% are either unlikely or very unlikely to accept a phone call from a franchise with which they have not first exchanged an email or text. Another 15.2% are “unsure” about whether or not they would take your call.
Over half of prospects are either unlikely or very unlikely to accept a phone call from a franchise representative with whom they have not first exchanged an email or text.
“Emailing first” and providing links to additional information are regularly among the top suggestions offered in analysis of consumer feedback for improving the sales process from the prospect perspective.
Recall from our earlier studies that the vast majority (71%) of franchise inquiries are made outside of business hours. Prospects want to acquire some more general knowledge about your franchise and set up a mutually-convenient time before calling you or taking your call.
Further, Apple phones include a “Silence Unknown Callers” feature with aggressive prompts to set up the feature appearing when a user views the “recent” call list. This development means that many consumers are not going to hear important calls from their banks or requested responses from franchise sales professionals — or even calls from a friend or family member — unless they are already in “Contacts” or meet the criteria below
According to Apple, calls will not be silenced from “people who are saved in your contacts list, recent calls list, and from Siri Suggestions to let you know who’s 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.
Our summary of franchise development best practices for first contact includes more background, and suggested content for inclusion in the initial email.
The “mystery shopping” survey of franchise inquirers is conducted monthly on the FranchiseVentures lead generation platform. This survey data was collected June through September 2024.
Franchise Ventures 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 Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024.