We’re going to talk about why I failed at selling franchises in my first year in particular. So one of the things I want to talk about today is the fact that I did not have a sales process, I did not have a candidate evaluation process, it’s so important to narrow down the things that you have to do, the things that you know are working, and to document it, and to do it the same way, each time. I promise you, you’re gonna get kind of bored with it, but you’re going to be bored all the way to the bank, because once you find what works for you, it’s going to make you money faster. So no sales process, no candidate evaluation process was one of the things that was holding me back from being successful in my first year.
Another thing is that once I got a candidate, boy, I just wanted to pour on the information, I just wanted to overwhelm them with how fantastic I was and how fantastic my brand was. So what I was doing is, I was giving them too much information too quickly, and they got to a point very early in the process of feeling like they already knew it all and made a decision that they weren’t interested. So, the amount of information in your sales process and the pace with which you give it away with which you provide that information is critical to your success. It’s almost kind of like I use a silly analogy of a baby, you know, you could put a piece of meat in front of the baby, no mouth, or no teeth in the mouth yet, you put that piece of meat in front of the baby and you go, well, there’s great things in there for them. And it’s everything the baby needs, but they can’t chew it and their system can’t digest it. It’s the same thing in this example, you give them too much information, and they can’t digest it, you give them too much information, and they may just walk away saying, “okay, I get it”, or you give them too much information too quickly and you overwhelm them. So you need to control the amount of information and the pace with which you provide it.
The third thing is that I didn’t respond to the leads quickly enough. And what I mean by that is, I would call a lead pretty quickly, you know, the day I received the lead, and then I would wait a couple of days for them to respond to me. And I’d go “oh, well, Sally didn’t respond to me yet.” So I would text Sally or then I would email Sally. And then I’d wait a few more days, you know, so it was a week to two weeks before I had a number of touches off to them. So what we learned when I had my own appointment setting company, my own outbound marketing company, what we found is that we needed to bombard the lead right away. Quickness to the lead is huge in this business. So we developed what we call an Eight Touch System, and the candidate gets contacted by email, you can send something in the mail as well but it’s important email, text and phone, you want to reach out to them very, very quickly, and you want to reach out to them eight times in three days or eight times in 72 hours. We got phenomenal performance, we got about a 65% increase in our contact rate based on the fact that we had developed this high-touch, condensed period of time to deliver those eight touches. And we’ve scripted them here, in my online course, franchise sales accelerator, we have in there the Eight Touch System. If you want to masterclass and learn more about the FSA course of the franchise sales accelerator course, scrolling right now you’re going to find a link to our course. So we said no sales process. We said too much information too quickly. We said I didn’t respond frequently or in a condensed enough period of time. The fourth one was that there’s not enough questions about them. I’ve not asked enough about them, and I was telling them and I was talking too much, telling them all about me, all about the brand, just giving them too much information without learning more about them and without them expressing their goals, their dreams and where they wanted to go.
The fourth one is I did not ask enough questions in year one in order to make more sales, then at the end, while I want to share last thing is that I got coached by someone really experienced in franchise development. They helped me candidate by candidate, so they’d say, okay, Sally is in what step in my process and they’d say, what is Sally saying is what is she doing and what kind of conversations did you have with them? And he would say, okay, here’s what you need to do next. When I got that type of support for about six months, my sales year one, year two over year one went up 600%.
So the last thing I wanted to share that made such a difference in my success in year one to year two was the fact that I got help with sales situation coaching. I got helped candidate by candidate to help me close more deals.
So again, go to my masterclass franchise sales accelerator FSAcourse.com/masterclass, go there for more information that will help you be more successful quicker.
