Best Practices

Franchise Prospects Indicate Preferred Sequencing for Initial Contact Channels

March 27, 2024 – Most franchise prospects (42.4%)  prefer to be emailed on initial contact by a franchise they have expressed interested in according to fresh data in the March 2024 Franchise Insights Mystery Shopping survey. Another 30.6% indicated a desire for a phone call for the initial contact. This order preference is consistent with prior monthly “mystery shopping” surveys, including when we last shared franchise prospect contact preferences data.

Best Practices For Initial Response to a Franchise Informational Inquiry

The optimal order for following up with franchise prospects is about playing the odds. Segments of the pool of franchise leads prefer one of the nine permutations of three contact methods (email, voice and text), but to have the highest expectations of fruitful contact, especially given the 24/7 nature of lead flow, it pays to listen to what prospects want overall. 

Surveys Show Franchise Prospect Initial Contact Rates Improve in October. Is Live Voicemail Helping Franchise Development Teams?

November 29, 2023 – Prospect initial contact rates are up, as reported by the latest FranchiseInsights.com survey in October 2023. Almost 52% percent of respondents say they were contacted by all of the franchises they inquired about, up from 46.2% in June when we last reported this data. Aside from the efforts of franchise sales teams, what could be driving this improvement?

Prospects Give Feedback on Improving the Franchise Sales Process

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”

Coming Apple Feature May Help Overcome “Silence Unknown Callers” Barrier to Initial Prospect Contact

July 26, 2023 – Apple announced a new “Live Voicemail” feature for its anticipated September iOS 17 iPhone software update. 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.

How to Initiate Conversations With Prospects and Achieve Better Results

Norfolk, VA, May 10, 2023 – Research shows that only a fraction of franchise prospects are likely to return your call before receiving an introductory email from you. In an April 2023 survey, only 12.9% of respondents are “very likely,” and another 22.6% say they are “likely” to take a cold call. The traditional “call first” approach will likely lead to your frustration with at least a third of franchise leads.

Franchise Inquirers Give Feedback on Improving the Buying Process

March 15, 2023 – Aspiring business owners talking with franchise sales teams were largely satisfied with their experience, according to recent mystery shopping surveys over the last six months ending in February 2023. Almost half (48.7%) said they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”, and only 12.4% said they were “unsatisfied” or “very unsatisfied.”

Top Ten Franchise Lead Generation Insights

January 18, 2023 – Analyzing our content viewed over the past year, we developed a “Top Ten” list of the most popular topics among our insights in 2022 based on the readership of articles in topic categories. Along with each topic, ranked in descending popularity, are a few key and most recent articles that address each particular subject.

Franchise Lead Generation Portals Drive Discovery and Consideration of Options

August 24, 2022 — A minority (6.2%) of aspiring franchise owners are already “very familiar” with the franchises they inquire about, and another 20.8% are “already somewhat familiar” with them, according to surveys of interested franchise seekers to portal sites collected from May through July  2022. They come to franchise directory sites for the convenience …

The Role of Franchise Lead Generation Portals in Awareness and Consideration

June 8, 2022 — A minority (6.4%) of aspiring franchise owners are already “very familiar” with the franchises they inquire about, and another 23% are “somewhat familiar” to them according to surveys of interested franchise seekers to portal sites collected January through May 2022. They likely come for the convenience of comparisons in one place, …

Update on Decline in Facebook (Meta) Franchise Lead Generation

May 18, 2022 — Since February 2022 when we last wrote about the decline in Facebook (Meta) Lead Generation after Apple’s iOS 14.5 release, three more months of data show that advertisers for lead generation shouldn’t expect results to improve any time soon. Meta’s own CFO estimates that consumers opting out of tracking will cost …

Decline in Facebook(Meta) Franchise Lead Generation Explained. Now What?

February 23, 2022 — If you have not heard about the $300 billion drop in the market value in Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook), perhaps it is because you have had to work double-time to mitigate the volume dip and effective cost of franchise leads to achieve your franchise system growth goals.  The introduction …

Franchise Leads Lagging Behind Employment Recovery in the U.S.

December 16, 2021 — In a dramatic recovery, employment in the U.S. reached 95.8% in November, as the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Indexed to January 2020 before the pandemic emerged, November employment at 95.8% was back to 99.4% of the employment rate seen in January 2020 (96.4%). …

Impact of Facebook’s Outage on Franchise Lead Generation

October 13, 2021 — Over the past few years, paid Facebook advertising has become an attractive source of paid franchise leads for development teams, given its broad reach and extensive targeting options. But 2021 has become a challenging year for this resource. On Monday, October 4th beginning just before 12 pm Eastern time, Facebook and …

Online Portals Drive Discovery and Consideration in Franchise Lead Generation

September 15, 2021 – When you’re looking for information on an unfamiliar subject, you might “Google it.” But what if you don’t know what you are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography or category or price range? How do you satisfy yourself …

Apple Call-Silencing Feature Underscores Importance of First-Touch Channel

June 30, 2021 – Apple launched a “Silence Unknown Callers” feature in its September, 2019 launch of iOS 13, but the April 26, 2021 release of iOS 14.5 featured prompts to set it up when viewing the “recent” call list as seen in the graphic above. This development means that many consumers are not going …

Business Buyer Prospects Prefer Text Messaging Over Voice for Initial Contact

April 21, 2021 –The highest percentage ever of aspiring owners seeing information about franchises cited text messaging as their preferred channel for initial contact in an April survey by FranchiseInsights.com. Almost a third chose follow-up by text (32.6%), edging out “voice” at 30.2% of respondents asked to rank voice, email and text. Likely contributing to …

Online Portals Continue to Drive Franchise Discovery

March 17, 2021 – If you’re looking for information on a topic, you “Google it.” But what if you don’t know what you are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography or category or price range? How do you satisfy yourself that you’ve …

Mystery Shopping Survey Reinforces Significance of First Contact Channel

March 3, 2021 – One thing that the pandemic hasn’t changed is the desire of franchise prospects to have some form of initial contact prior to receiving an incoming phone call. Tip #1 – Send an email or text to make initial contact Consumers have taken measures to block or silence callers whose numbers are …

Franchise Inquiries Increasingly Outside of Business Hours

December 29, 2020 – While the Internet offers great convenience for prospective business owners to research and contact franchisors at any hour of any day, it also creates a challenge for franchise development teams who want to respond to those prospects in a timely fashion. And a new analysis of the largest pool of franchise-investment …

UPDATE: Supremes Question TCPA Constitutionality

TCPA and DNC Regulations Trip Franchise Development Teams If You Call or Text Franchise Leads, Please Read This December 11, 2020 – On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments (transcript here) over the definition of an autodialer, specifically whether the “definition of ATDS in the TCPA encompasses any device that can …

‘Data’ For Which We are Especially Thankful

November 25, 2020 – Usually we use this space to share unique, proprietary data about franchise and business buyers, but today’s insight is to give thanks for the entrepreneurial and heroic accomplishments of the people and institutions that make our economy grow. We are thankful for the millions of entrepreneurs each year who begin the …

Thicket of TCPA and DNC Regulations Tripping Franchise Development Teams

If You Call or Text Franchise Leads, Please Read This November 20, 2020 – Usually we use this space to share unique, proprietary data about franchise and business buyers, but today’s proprietary data insight is that a lack of knowledge around the regulatory requirements for communicating with prospects is pervasive in the franchise and business opportunity …

Online Portals Drive Franchise Discovery

April 24, 2020 – According to an April 2020 survey of interested franchise buyers, online franchise opportunity directories and their associated mobile apps play an integral role not only as a tool for comparison shopping, but also for discovery and consideration of less familiar franchises.  Over 79% of prospective buyers chose to submit an inquiry …

Franchise Prospects Report Higher Contact-Attempt Rates in March and April 2020

April 16, 2020 – According to a survey of interested franchise buyers, more development teams are following through with each inquiry and attempting to make contact.  In April, 59.6% report being contacted by every one of the one or more franchises to which they inquired. This is all the more important, considering that almost 43% …

Mystery Shopping Survey Offers Tips for Franchise Development Teams

March 5, 2020 Tip #1 Send an email or text to make initial contact Given the unwanted robocalls that we all get, don’t we ignore phone calls from numbers we don’t recognize? Prospects want some kind of introduction to know more about your franchise before calling you or taking your call. In a 2020 survey …

New Mobile App Helps Franchise Development Teams Improve Contact Rates

Norfolk, Virginia, February 7, 2020 — Franchise Ventures released a new tool to help franchise development teams improve early engagement  with prospective franchisees. The Franchise Insights mobile app makes it easier to quickly respond to new prospects, and helps unify each prospect conversation across phone, email and text. “The mobile app helps franchise development teams …

4 Tips to Improve Your Franchise Contact Rate

Feb. 1, 2019 – What’s smarter than a smartphone? Two smart phones – yours, and the one in the hands of the local entrepreneur who wants to know more about owning one of your franchises. In less than a decade, smart phones connected to the Internet have skyrocketed to become the No. 1 channel for …

Sales Advice For Emerging Franchisors

Jan. 29, 2019 – If you’re an emerging franchise, making the leap from an owned-and-operated business to the franching model, you’ve got a tough task. Your first few sales are based on the promise of your concept, not a track record in serving franchisees. Fortunately, many prospective franchisees are looking for ground-floor opportunity, and may …

Franchisee Recruitment Starts With ‘Pre-Engagement’ Phase

Nov. 20, 2018 – So you want to grow your business – don’t we all? Internet marketing changes the franchise funnel, starting long before anyone talks on the phone or reads a contract. Industry consultant Art Coley sees a critical path he calls the pre-engagement phase, when a potential franchisee moves from being possibly interested …

5 Recruiting Tips For Finding New Franchise Owners

Oct. 8, 2018 – With a growing economy, savvy franchisors expect that competition will increase – not just for customers, but also for franchisees to own new locations. Forbes offers five timely tips for recruiting franchise owners, starting with “Profile your all-star candidate”  – read more in Forbes

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