Last month, I talked about the value of a good CRM when it comes to tracking engagement with your leads and making the most of your email database in terms of recruitment.
If you missed that, it’s worth a read as this is one of the most important topics that always comes up with franchisors I work with: Treating recruitment leads like gold dust, or letting them slip through your fingers?
Hopefully, you can see the value in a CRM system, but whatever systems you already have in place for your franchise recruitment, there’s something else you should definitely consider:
How do you classify lead progress through your pipeline?
For a lot of franchisors, the answer is something like: new lead, initial call, discovery meeting, and then either “signed” or “cold”. That’s a good start, but it’s not giving you anywhere near the kind of visibility and detail you actually need.
The problem with a pipeline that’s too simple is that it makes it hard to identify where things are working, and where they aren’t, and where obstacles and blocks might be affecting your conversion rates.
For example, if you have 200 leads coming in, and they’re all visiting your website and clicking to find out more, but very few of them are actually booking a call, that gives you very valuable information. Somethings stopping them from taking the next step at that exact point in their journey, and without clearly defined pipeline stages, you might not spot it.
Or maybe people are booking calls, but then going quiet afterwards. That means there’s a different problem at another stage of your pipeline, and it needs a different response. Perhaps the script for the call needs work, or maybe the follow-up afterwards isn’t doing what it needs to do.
The point is, you can only diagnose the problem if you can see it clearly, and you can only see it clearly if your pipeline stages actually reflect the real journey your prospects go on.
So, what should that look like in practice?
Rather than broad, catch-all stages, your pipeline should map the specific steps in your recruitment process. What happens between someone submitting an enquiry and having their first call? What’s the stage between a discovery meeting and a formal application? When does due diligence begin, and what steps are involved in that?
When you build your pipeline around the actual journey prospects take with you, you can see exactly where each lead is at any given moment. You can identify exactly where people tend to hesitate or disappear, and you can allocate your time and resources accordingly. There’s no point spending heavily on lead generation if the blockage is further down the pipeline, and you’ll only know that if you can see it.
Once you can see where a problem is, you can fix it
So, it’s definitely worth your time to take a look at your current pipeline stages and how they are measured and classified. Do they reflect what actually happens between someone signing up for more information and (hopefully) signing a franchise agreement? Have all the important steps been captured? If leads keep getting stuck at a certain point, do you know why?
In my experience, it’s this kind of detail which can work wonders for your recruitment. If you’d like some advice on how it could work in your franchise, or even have me take a look at what you already have in place, I’d be happy to help.
Just click the button below to schedule a call.
Andrew Croney
Franchise Consultant
