Franchise Update Magazine Issue III, 2012 | Page 50

Grow Market Lead

It’s closing
time
BY STEVE OLSON

Closing More Deals…
Faster

U

Why not start now?

nless you recruit only experienced franchise operators,
most of your candidates have
never bought a franchise and
really don’t know how. They’re intelligent
prospects, but unintelligent buyers who
don’t understand the decision-making
process for purchasing a franchise. They
make wrong assumptions, anticipating
you’ll divulge all the facts when they contact you so they can determine if your opportunity is “the one” for them. Logically,
they want earnings claims and answers to
all their questions now. To make matters
more difficult, these first-timers fall prey
to the mountain of overwhelming public
information, often receiving conflicting
advice from blogs, social networks, chat
rooms, newspapers, and broadcast media;
as well as from personal and business
friends, fathers-in-law, accountants, and
other armchair advisors.
The challenge

Here’s your question: When speaking
with today’s uninformed or misinformed
buyers, how do you 1) effectively engage
a prospect, 2) steer them onto the right
road to investigate your business, and 3)
quickly gain their confidence, credibility, and trust? How do you keep them
focused and disciplined as they explore
your franchise offering? Minimize broken appointments? Avoid distractions and
false objections? Prevent sidetracking
assignments and commitments? Eliminate stall tactics in making decisions and
moving forward?
Pre-close prospects up front

When you receive a completed application,
review with your prospect their information, ask and answer related questions,
and make them feel comfortable. Then

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Franchiseupdate Iss u e III, 2 0 1 2

set expectations and the ground rules for
your franchise investigation process. You
take the lead or they will! Execute this
properly, it’s smoother sailing for you
and the candidate. Here’s a successful
five-point presentation for pre-closing
during the application stage.
1) Define your role. “My role is to
educate you about our franchise, and explore
this opportunity with you to see if we’re the
right fit for each other. This is a franchise
partnership, and we’re interested in candidates who can be successful, satisfied owners.
I am not here to sell you. My responsibility
is to facilitate the investigation process. Our
executive review committee makes the decisions on offering our franchises to qualified
candidates.”
This helps puts your prospects at ease
in knowing this is a mutual decision that
has to work for both parties.
2) Introduce the review committee. “If you want to be considered for our
franchise after completing our investigation
process, you’ll attend discovery day and meet
our review committee, which awards our
franchises to qualified candidates.”
This builds the credibility and importance of your approval system for
screening qualified buyers.
3) Require open and honest communications. “Any time in the process you
have a question, concern, or want to stop, let
me know! Just ‘wave the red flag’ and we’ll
address the issue. Out of respect for you, I will
do the same. If this franchise isn’t the right
one, we certainly don’t want to waste each
other’s time. Does that make sense?”
This rule allows you to directly confront and “straighten up” or disqualify
prospects who make excuses or break
appointments.
4) Agree to a time frame for decision-making. “Candidates we work with

decide within five weeks whether this is the
franchise they want and are ready to make
a commitment. Can you?”
Most prospects agree to this timetable,
since it is logical and they have no reference point on how long it should take.
“Okay, now moving forward we’ll schedule conference calls that work for both of us
in our investigation.”
Prospects are looking for this guidance to decision-making, which you have
just defined with a specific timetable.
Disqualify individuals who can’t commit to an acceptable decision time. If it’s
a military person considering a franchise
down the road, ask them to contact you
three months before their discharge. Or
place them in a future follow-up file. Too
much can happen in between for them
to be classified as “a prospect.”
5) Summarize your process and
franchise purchase. “We have five steps
for exploring our franchise opportunity to
determine if we are right for each other.
These are the Application and Program
Review, which we are conducting today;
Franchise Disclosure Review; Franchisee
Validation; Discovery Day; a