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Franchise Recruitment
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:
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 |
