Like it or not, awarding new franchises and customers is an expensive process for most brands. While there is certainly an exception to the rule, most brands need to pony up thousands per deal.

To win at business development, a process you can follow is:

Step 1: Historical Data

How much did you spend on lead generation last year? How about the year before? How many deals did you get? Your average cost per deal is what? Your goal is what? Now do the math.

Step 2: The Why You/Why Now

When you land on your website, what is the first message you see? Is it a strong why you/why now? Does it clearly present the value proposition to a ghost prospect? Make this change.

Step 3: Four Wall Marketing

Do you tell the story of your brand at the unit level? Do you pay customers or franchisees similar referral fees to that of which you would pay outside of your organization (broker fees)? 

Step 4: Story Deployment

How are you deploying your message? Are you creating content around your brand milestones? Are you highlighting employee/customer/franchise owner stories and helping others see a day-in-the-life of that operator? Evaluate your storytelling to make sure it not only matches the why you/why now, but it is also delivered in a consistent way to the right personas in the right markets.

Step 5: Lead Nurturing

Just because someone didn’t take your call, doesn’t make them cold. They may have simply not been ready to buy. How frequently are you sharing your good news with this audience?

Step 6: Advanced Qualifications

When prospects are filling out the lead form, do you use minimum requirements or do you increase them so that you are finding fewer prospects who can scale? 

Step 7: Social Media Marketing

When great news hits, are you asking all stakeholders to share, like or comment on social?

Step 8: Digital Marketing Around High Performing Units with Market Growth Potential

Have you organized your target market growth plan to be leveled based on validation and market potential? You should spend more of your budget in and around markets in which the validation is strong and you can still add additional locations.

Step 9: Digital Marketing Around Sold Out Competitor Markets

When a competitor sells a new unit (look in Google News), do you market in that area? Why? They likely spent money to 1) educate the market about franchising and 2) identify a buyer. Thus, when the next buyer inquires, they tell them that no, unfortunately, they are sold out.

To best maximize your budget, look under as many brand rocks as possible. Find low hanging fruit and chop it down. And ultimately track your data properly to gain an understanding of your sales traction, i.e. targeting a market and looking at web traffic > leads > applications > deals.