The Secret To Closing On Franchisee Leads

It’s hard work to nurture a franchise sales lead from that initial call to the final signing. 

There are the interviews, Discovery Days, FDDs and lots of hand-holding along the way. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the sale just doesn’t come together. 

So how can you help ensure your qualified prospects sign on the dotted line?

1851 Franchise spoke to Tim Courtney, vice president of franchise development at PuroClean, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based chain that deals with property damage.

Courtney must know what it takes to close a franchise deal. When he started with the company in mid-2017, PuroClean was averaging just 22 or 23 new franchisees a year. The company now averages 41, and this year it hit 51 new franchisees.

We asked him the secrets that franchise development pros can use to help transform a franchise candidate to franchise owner. 

1851 Franchise: Tell me about PuroClean.

Tim Courtney: We’re known as the paramedics of property damage. Our business model has four pillars; water, fire, mold and biohazard clean up. We also handle odor removal and virus cleanup, which has become more relevant in today's world. The brand was founded in 2001, and we’re at over 325 franchises.

1851: How do enthusiastic franchisees help the franchise sales process?

Courtney: It's a very important part of the sale process, depending on concept, obviously. The potential franchise buyer is looking at the franchise relationship as a marriage, as a long-term commitment. Therefore, they're looking for a culture that matches their culture. They're looking for a feeling of belonging. They are interested in whether the franchise community is going to be there to support them along the way. We always say, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast every day.’ 

1851: So you think culture is what sells a franchise in the end?

Courtney: The number one thing that we hear when someone has signed on the dotted line is: “Your culture fits us. You guys made me feel warm, welcomed, not afraid to ask questions and that I wouldn’t be left to flounder all by myself.”

1851: How do you look for franchisees that will validate the brand for you?

Courtney: We give our prospects a list of franchisees, and they’re free to call any one of them and ask questions. But we also have a brand ambassador program. We have a nomination process among the franchisees, and then the executive team and regional directors choose 10 to be brand ambassadors for the year. They volunteer to take turns holding a weekly conference call for prospects, which the sales team does not attend. The brand ambassador tells their story, tells prospects how they got into the business and a little on their personal history. And then it opens to Q&A. So it’s a candid call with existing franchisees.

1851: How important is operational support to a potential franchisee closing on the deal?

Courtney: It’s important. One of the best tools we use to measure this from our current franchisees is from Franchise Business Review. It's a third-party survey that measures satisfaction of your franchisees on things like corporate systems, leadership, core values and support. One of the questions on the survey is whether the franchisee would buy into the franchise again. 81% of our franchisees say they would buy a PuroClean franchise and 90% would recommend it as a franchise opportunity. Each year our president looks at where we scored the highest and where we scored the lowest. We work with our Franchisee Advisory Council and come up with solutions on where we can improve. So it all ties together: By addressing operational support issues with a Franchise Advisory Council, we improve franchisee satisfaction, which also helps drive better validation. It's a big connected chain.

1851: Where does unit economics come in?

Courtney: We throw numbers at prospects religiously. They have three years worth of financials and an FDD. If your company produces an Item 19, certainly the franchisee candidates are going to try and validate those numbers, too.  

But what we've also done is to provide profitability training to all our franchise owners through the various programs out there like [financial education company] Profit Soup and others. We’re teaching our franchisees how to run a business, how to read and create profit and loss statements, etc. Our aim is to make them more profitable, which in turn makes them happy. So when prospective franchisees do validate, and our current franchisees talk about unit economics, they have a better story to tell.

1851: What do you do about unhappy franchises?

Courtney: That’s always the most challenging thing a franchisor has to deal with. For instance, you could have franchisees that try to scare away any potential neighbor franchisee because they want to protect their territory. So what we try to do is have conversations ahead of time with an unhappy franchisee, and say, ‘Hey, this person may call you, and this is who they are, etc.’ We try to get out ahead, before a prospect steps on that land mine. But there is no cure, there is no silver bullet, there is no one answer. But if you find one, let me know. We can sell a book and make a fortune.