Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2013 | Page 56

Grow Market Lead
54

Sales
smarts
By Marc Kiekenapp

Are You Out to Lunch?
What ever happened to answering your phone?

A

fter five years of mystery
shopping, I’m frustrated.
The results never move up
or down more than a few
percentage points. What in the heck is
so hard about answering your franchise
development line? Or putting a phone
number on your website? Or not telling
callers that everyone is out to lunch, so
please call back later? Or my favorite:
being directed back to the website to fill
out a form. When it comes to professional
communication with incoming calls from
candidates requesting franchise information, 70 percent of us are “out to lunch.”
I don’t know about the rest of you, but
I’ve never granted a franchise to a candidate I didn’t talk with. (Let me know if
I’m missing something, or if you’ve had
a different experience.)
In my experience, incoming calls from
a candidate are by far the most-qualified
leads we receive. Yet many franchisors
don’t seem to have a system in place to
handle those inquiries. Instead, complicated voicemail systems direct callers
from extension to extension, only to have
them leave a message or end up back at
the front desk.
But don’t listen to me rant. Pick up
your phone and dial your franchise development number and try it for yourself. If
you are satisfied with the result, you are
one of the few.
Franchise Update conference workshops are a fantastic opportunity to learn
and achieve better results that can be
implemented on our return home to
the office and reality! (See AFDR, page
34.) But I’m still puzzled that year after
year we don’t implement the ideas and
great information shared by speakers
and our peers.
What ever happened to answering
your phone? Calling candidates back who
requested information quickly? Communicating with a person through words
Franchiseupdate Iss u e IV, 2 0 1 3

that aren’t typed and emailed? Training
the receptionist and office staff about the
most important phone call of the day?
Enthusiasm and excitement with the candidate? Not having the first question out
of your mouth to a candidate be, “How
much money do you have?”
Last year, only eight franchisors called
our office after the Leadership & Development Conference to receive the results
of the mystery shopping phone survey!
Yes, only 8 franchisors out of 130 wanted
to know how they scored! Were you one

Learn to
communicate
in person again.
Talk to people.
Stop writing and
sending emails.
of the eight? Interestingly, the franchisors that called all did fine on the survey.
Okay, enough about what’s wrong.
Here are some basics to help improve
your responses to inquiries:
1. Get your phone system right.
This means having a dedicated line for
franchise development; a system that
someone answers live and who can take
information from the candidate; and
training the staff and backups to do this
correctly and represent your brand professionally.
2. Call leads back in a timely manner.
This means within the hour (or sooner) if
you didn’t answer the phone immediately.
Create a relationship with the candidate.
Don’t push for financial information on
the first call. Give them an opportunity
to learn about your franchise concept. Be
enthusiastic and ۛ