Prospects Sound Off on Their Satisfaction With the Franchise Sales Process
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
September 25, 2024 – Persons inquiring about franchises were mostly satisfied with their experiences, according to recent franchise prospect surveys over the five months ending in September 2024. Almost half (43.5%) said they were either “satisfied “or “very satisfied”, and only 19.2% said they were “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied.”
Only 19.2% said they were “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied.”
But those respondents who provided negative responses – and the 37.3% who were neither satisfied or dissatisfied – suggest that there is potential room for improvement.
An analysis and categorization of five 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 over the years.
About 18% of respondents provided unstructured comments which were categorized into buckets of specific suggestions. Over a third (37.2%) of those with suggestions made either positive or neutral comments about their experiences. For example:
One prospect says she was “very impressed with [franchise A] sending information over by email, and texting me instead of calling 100 times. Unimpressed with [franchise B]; they have called over and over, I don’t even know what kind of business they are…”
Almost 19% of those offering suggestions just wanted more in-depth information than was provided in the dialogue about the costs, royalties, training, suppliers among many other specific questions. Apparently some franchise sales teams are trying to qualify prospects further before getting into these kinds of details. This may be another factor in why about 72% end up visiting franchise development websites after inquiring on the portals.
Another 9.3% had comments about representatives not showing up, or showing up late for calls, or reported that they were just never contacted. This is a substantial improvement from 17% in our last summary in May 2024. While lack of proper follow up is hard to explain as a business practice, this is consistent with our most recent surveys showing that about 20% of inquiries receive no follow up within seven days and only about half are contacted by all franchises they inquired about.
Similarly, over 9% got calls immediately before receiving any information by email or text, and expressed their preference that they have the time to do a bit of research and prepare themselves before a call. We regularly repeat this suggestion from years of survey data showing its effectiveness. This behavior is underscored in the significant share of prospects who go on to visit franchisor’s websites right after inquiring at a franchise directory site because they “wanted to learn more” or “prepare before a call.”
About 7% of respondents suggested less calling, in favor of more texts and emails at this stage. Another 4.7% suggested that franchise representatives “not push so hard” in the early innings of the process. 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.
Just under 5% didn’t receive the level of financial detail they were looking for concerning the financial requirements, capital necessary for launch, and subsequent operation of the franchise.
When “people are looking at getting a franchise, they want to know what the total is, not spending their capital thinking it’s going to work that way, and then getting nickel and dimed to death. [Knowing] the entire cost to start up is much preferred.”
Note that “N/A” responses were interpreted as neutral (neither bad nor good), and not included in this analysis.
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 the FranchiseVentures lead generation platform.
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, September 24th, 2024.