All expanding franchises need high-quality, professionally trained franchise development staff to engage with prospects.
Many franchisors begin their franchise journey as the owner, salesperson, operations director, trainer, and chief bottle washer; but as a franchise operation grows it becomes impossible and ill advised to continue this path. This fork in the franchise road leaves you with two choices; outsource your franchise sales development or hire your own franchise sales team. No matter which road you choose to travel, it is still wise to engage professional franchise help from franchise sales experts.
The current landscape of franchising has placed a premium on quality franchise sales personnel. The franchise industry continues to expand while the training ground and educational sources for true franchise sales expertise remains limited. Hiring professionals to help allows quality franchisors to step back from the day-to-day selling of their franchise while still remaining informed and continuing the development of their franchise sales team.
Because some franchisors prefer in-house salespeople, a complete outsourcing solution may not be the answer, so partial sales management solution may be the perfect fit.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when deciding to outsource your sales process or to pay for franchise sales training for inside sales staff. Are your franchise salespeople losing quality prospects by inadequate handling of objections, or, unable to close deals in an acceptable amount of time? Do you end up with issues post sale? Do some sales take a month while others take 6-months?
No matter if you’re selling automotive repair franchises or the next, great fast food franchise, franchise sales people handle many of the same objections and sales problems. A quality outsourced sales team should be comprised of experts with extensive knowledge on exactly how to handle candidates reluctant to pay royalties, prospects feeling confined by territory limitations, and any other of sales’ many curveballs. They should also spend time getting to know the intricacies of your brand and your competition.
If you choose to hire a sales group to train your existing staff they should have franchise sales skills but also experience in training which is a different discipline. A good franchise development training group will develop a step-by-step process for your sales staff to follow addressing, initial contact, follow up materials, additional phone calls, discovery days, candidate qualification, closing, fee collection, and hand off to operations.
Quality franchise sales and management groups will provide:
- Management of your sales team
- Weekly team coaching
- One-on-one personal interaction with each sales person
- Objection handling
- Profile gathering
- Lead qualification
- Handling FAQs
- How to close in fewer calls
- Sales compliance
Quality group will wrap all these management services with comprehensive reporting back to the franchisor, so you have accurate forecasting and a clear window in to your franchise sales organizations activities and development.
Whether you hire a professional 3rd party sale team as a seamless part of your sales organization, or utilize professionals to train your franchise sales employees to secure success- the team approach between a quality outside group and your firm will result in quality growth.
By: MJ Alto
