Recruiting
Franchisees
Ultimately,
a franchise system is only as good as the franchisees within it.
It is therefore vital to commit the resources required to find
high quality franchisees.
Franchisee
recruitment can also be a very expensive and time consuming process,
so it is equally important to carefully plan and execute the recruitment
process to ensure maximum return on your investment.
The key elements
of a successful recruitment strategy are:
Lead Generation
The choice
of advertising options are numerous. Internet portals, magazines,
exhibitions and newspapers will all take your money, but which
ones work? - Do plenty or research and testing to find out which
media work, but more specifically, which media work for your type
of opportunity.
However; don't rely of direct advertising. It is important to
explore other options, including PR, trade media and franchise
consultants to help generate leads.
Most franchisors
initially under-estimate to volume of advertising required to
generate sufficient leads, which is the lifeblood of the recruitment
process.
Lead Management
Having spent
significant amounts of money on lead generation, many franchisors
fall down on lead management.
Most are good at responding by sending literature to the candidate,
but what next? - Do you follow up by phone?, if so, how quickly?,
If you don't get through, do you keep trying until you do?, Do
you log all the responses that you get?
We run regular
mystery shopping exercises on franchise opportunities. 100% of
companies promptly send us some glossy literature. An astonishingly
low percentage follow up our enquiry. - So; not only do they miss
out on a possible sale, they can't meaningfully analyse the feedback
from candidates.
Selection
Process
A good franchisor
with a strong proposition will have a clearly defined recruitment
process. Although a prospective franchisee will be investing into
the business, a successful franchisee will be able to follow the
system and operating procedures of the business. The recruitment
process is a good test of this!
You may have detailed application forms, psychometric tests, profiling
tools and structured interviews, along with significant time to
answer prospects questions and schedule validation visits.
A good selection
process will be different for each franchise; what is important
is that the process is clearly defined and made clear to the prospective
franchisee up front, including anticipated time scales.
This will
demonstrate your professional approach to business, help keep
the prospects on track, and quickly identify time wasters.
Budget
Franchisee
recruitment can be an expensive process. Not only can advertising
and promotion budgets balloon, but the management time involved
in recruitment is usually under-estimated.
Your budget
should allow for the cost of all of the activities discussed above,
not just the raw advertising.
Summary
Constant
focus on lead generation is required to keep the pipeline of new
franchisees full.
Pro-active lead management will put you ahead of most of you competitors.
It is vital that you can measure the effectiveness of your recruitment
process, so a good CRM system is highly recommended.
Ensure that you have a clearly defined process for managing franchise
applicants
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