MultiUnitFranchise Program and Lead Qualification

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:09

Hi everyone , I would like you today to meet David Schwartz , ceo and owner of Franchise Clique . David welcome .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 0:18

Thank you , good morning , glad to be here .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:21

Well , david , I say Franchise Click , but I mean you have several brands and several websites and I've actually personally bought leads from , I think , all of them , or at least the main three .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 0:36

Yeah , we do . We actually have six companies in our network . We've got Franchise Click , we've got FranchiseBuycom , veteransfranchisecom , multiunitfranchisecom , which I'll get to in a second CallVerifiedLeadscom . Those are our platforms that we've created , not to for more attracting certain audiences , for certain franchisors or franchise consultants . We launched MultiUnitFranchise , which is our hottest program at the present time . We actually engaged I talked about it to you earlier that we work with about 300 franchise systems , high-level systems like Slim Chickens or Inspire Brands or Fajita Peets , and we do outbound reach to them . So we do outbound reach to franchisees that we've qualified over the last 16 years . We present franchisees as opportunities to these brands . So we develop engaging scripts . We do an outbound reach . We do reach the LinkedIn and a few other channels , but then we do a really high-level handoff for a franchise or even a franchise consultant if they're looking to target franchisees . But that's our hottest program at this point . I actually spend probably about 70-80% of my day doing MultiUnitFranchisecom .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 1:49

Well , I know that I've worked with you guys over the last five years and it's always been profitable and I really like how you guys personalize things . One of the things is , if you have certain financial requirements , whatever it is , you guys can usually accommodate that , which is astonishing to me , that you have the ability to segment your audience and target these things , but it's always been great . Can you talk about the different ways that people can qualify their audience and select what they're looking for ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 2:21

Yes , so you mentioned , we maintain a certain minimum liquidity with every lead that we send out . So we don't provide a maximum because there is a wheelhouse where people are qualified or people who are in pain and need to make decisions . We didn't make a few changes over the last year or so . Some of the data that we call on to start with based on ZIP codes and a few other characteristics . We've decided not to call as many of those and stick with the formulas of people in high-level areas , where there's more liquidity and where there's more fluent people . And calling higher-level data obviously produces better candidates , better business accumens . Those translate into better leads .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 3:01

But , yes , so typically we're trying to , at a high-level , qualify people best way possible . So we go through a 25 to 26 questions script and then that's about it . We spend three , as I mentioned , we spend three to six minutes with a candidate and then it's off to the next franchise consultant period . There's really not a lot of great area there , as long as they're maintaining liquidity of 100,000 plus and a net worth of 250,000 plus or above that . We feel like people are at least checking off one of the boxes , as they actually have money , or they say they have money on paper .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 3:38

Right and then . And so when you do that I have worked with these leads myself and I have found certain ways that I'm able to connect with them . I personally will call them , email them Well , not always email them , but I try but I'll call them , leave a voicemail every time , because I figure if I don't leave a voicemail it looks like a spammy number . And then I text them and I'm surprised at the responsiveness of texting . What have you found with helping people connect with these leads once they receive them ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 4:15

So that's a great question . You know a lot of people we've worked with . They've been trained a certain way . So the ones who have that got experience , basically have , like yourself , they've got their own systematic way of following up with leads . New or franchise consultants just getting into it definitely need some assistance and how to handle some of those . We generally say follow the rules that you're trained with . But I don't think a lead's ever dead if they haven't responded . Some people just continuously get leads sent to them and they just forget about the leads that were sent before . So I think they should always have a certain pipeline of people to go back and drip against and go through a kind of a lateral follow up strategy with them . But I say , you know , whatever you're trying to text , whatever gets a contact , as long as it's professional , as long as it's you know it's a way to engage them for the right reason , I don't think there's any wrong way of doing it .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 5:08

Right and I have found that if I've connected with a lead , I'll definitely put them in on a at least at the minimum a one to two times a year check in and surprisingly , that does continuously pull up a stream of people from the past that already know me , that are like Lance yeah , I would like to talk . And as long as those emails are conversational , like like you're actually writing it to them right now , like you know hey first name , you know how's it going , it's been a while and then , like that , people respond really well to that they do .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 5:46

People don't . People don't realize how important it is to be personable with candidates . They're a stranger . I mean , you may have reached out to them 15 times in various methods , but they are a stranger . You don't know who they are . You have never sat down and had a conversation , had a cup of coffee with them and said hey , you know , here's the deal , here's what I offer . I represent these many brands , etc . Etc . It should be conversational , it should be relationship building and , at the end of the day , that's , you're trying to build the relationship with somebody who's going to , who's going to work with you and who's going to want to . You know , take your advice to start a business .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 6:24

Right , and one of the things that I've noticed is that sometimes people they don't know who you are , like you said , so they're a little nervous . Or maybe they were interested , but not in the mindset that they were going to talk to somebody right away . So you really have to like warm them up and connect with them because they could have a life event . I've had everything you could imagine happened to me when I'm working with leads I've had somebody get cancer and pass away , I've had family members die , car accidents , you know things changing new jobs , and sometimes people disappear for a while but then they come back . So it's like , as long as you're friendly and you don't over contact them , I've found that people you know they come through , just not at your timing but at their timing .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 7:11

No question , a very simple email started here . You know something , there's a tragedy or something . Or you know everybody's got a life that they're living and everybody's got their family . So things happen . But if you engage people the right way and politely give them their space and approach them back when the time's right , that's how you should work it .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 7:32

And for me I've also found , when I went back through my numbers and I looked at the leads that went through and I looked at the deals that I've done , I found that I only really buy leads in chunks of like a hundred at a time or more , because when I looked at it there's bubbles where a group of people will start going through and they're good clients and then there's some that kind of ignore me and you just never know where those random people out of your leads are going to turn into clients . And so I've always wanted a big enough subset to where you know I catch some of those good people , I think , because I've found times where I had a good string of you know it , just nothing happened . But then all of a sudden I had a string where it was like back to back to back of awesome people . So what have you found over the years ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 8:23

So I tell this to people . I try to be as direct with new clients . One of the things that I think everybody is always looking over their shoulder at what's the next lead source ? Where can I get my lead ? But they're always think there's a golden goose out there , and sometimes the golden goose is right in front of them and sometimes they're always thinking 10 steps ahead besides what's at task .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 8:48

So our most successful clients are the ones who just work with us long-term . They've taken the time to get their deal or two done to start with . Once they get those couple of deals started , they have budget to be flexible and they can even apply it to other resources out there , and that provides even more budget and it keeps their business afloat . It keeps them in a good state of mind about having success in this space and it continues to open more doors and more doors and more doors . And it's really important because this is just about consistency .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 9:21

Consistency in getting a lead , just one good lead every day . You don't have to get 100 . One good lead every day , monday through Friday . Work them effectively and at the end of a certain time period whether it's two months , three months , sometimes five months you'll have your deal sitting there . It will happen . As long as you're consistent and it's just a lot of franchise consultants are I'm gonna go try something else and do something different . I've got my colleagues in my little group who are using this source and it's like , well , they're having success with that source , whether it's us or another group and there's great groups out there they're having success because they've been with that group for three years and that's why they have their deals and that's the way it goes sometimes .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:09

I agree , I work with a person on your team when I buy leads through you guys , guy , and I always tell him he's the best guy I know and he's awesome . But what I will do is I communicate with him , starting on week one , once or twice a week , and I let him know . Here's the story of what's happening with these leads , here's what's going on , because I know that he gets them from different places and if I don't communicate he can't adjust . He's gonna assume everything is okay . So what I don't wanna do is just let it run and kind of go oh , this isn't working out for me , and then just kind of keep it to myself and let it run and keep it to myself and all of a sudden I'm like Guy , I'm so frustrated right now and he's like I didn't know . So definitely I communicate politely , but I communicate early and often and consistently . And then he's able to change things and dial them in .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 11:08

And we've switched to different web properties that you guys have and we just found the ones . And then , once I have it , I found that if I shut them off and turn them on , I create lags . I create all of a sudden there's this big lag where I didn't have leads for a couple of weeks or a month or a couple of months or whatever , and that creates pockets where there's no new people coming into the funnel . So , like you said , to stay consistent is where I started getting good results . But I've also found that you have to communicate . You can't just turn something on because it's not like this commodity , they're dialing it into you and what you're looking for because of all that personalization that you guys do . So , yeah , have you found that to be normal ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 11:52

Yeah , I think one of the biggest things that we see and it's hard to communicate is there's so much missed opportunity every day . Every day , we probably have an additional I don't know what the exact number is probably close to 200 franchise candidates that we've qualified that it's sitting in what we call a bucket . And it's not that we don't have enough customers . We have over 100 plus franchise consultants probably over 150 every day that get leads from us , but there is another 100 candidates or 200 candidates every day that could be in somebody else's pipeline and some of those people will close and that's a hard thing for us . It's kind of the nature of the business . Sometimes we have excess numbers and sometimes we don't . This year it's been interesting . We've seen more people come to us looking to buy leads but at the same point , the ones the current clients they just don't renew as quickly as they need to . They kind of take time to make that decision and in the past we've seen people just renewing consistently every month , et cetera .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 12:55

So you have that opportunity and people aren't always there to take advantage of it . Any stories of companies where they were looking for leads started working with you guys and just found what they're looking for . I know myself . I can say that I've done very well with you guys over the years , but it wasn't again I had to work to dial things in . It didn't happen overnight .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 13:22

We've had some good success stories . Best success story we've ever had is I had a client who was testing us this is going back about six years ago and he was very can't start with us .

Strategies and Challenges in Franchise Consulting

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 13:35

He's like , listen , I need to get at least a deal or two out of the first you know 100 leads or so . He ended up getting , I think , two deals out of the first 100 leads and we sat down and talked about it . He really wasn't happy with that result . He actually , I think he wanted more . So I gave him a bulletproof plan . I said if you take , if you're playing roulette and you wanted to or craps , and best thing you could do is take some budget and spread it out over all of our different properties , all of our different programs . We offer Our county book leads , our , you know , our executive record leads , you know standard premium veteran leads , et cetera . And I I arranged it so he'd be on top of all of our inventory of his next 100 leads .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 14:21

The consultant closed 26 people out of 100 . And testing it out and I think about 20% of them opened between three and five units of three packs and five packs . He was very happy , obviously , with those results . But I had formulated this way for him to get the best inventory and he closed . He closed a lot of deals and probably a lot of that is a little bit of luck as well .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 14:46

But after that point he wanted to tweak it so much because he felt like he could improve on that incredible number , that the tweaks he made took away from all the chemistry and all the , all the different things , all the all the we were doing with getting him set up , with being here and there , and this is what you need to be doing that the next 100 leads he got two deals . And then the next 100 leads he got zero deals because he continuously wanted to tweak something that I told him not to tweak . I said this is how this works , this is what you need to do . Can't guarantee you're going to get where you were , and then at this point we don't work with them . So take advice from your , take advice from the people who know best .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 15:28

Right Cause you guys know your inventory , you know what you're doing , so we do .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 15:33

We want to put every client in good hands . Maybe not that great of hands , but as best as possible . We want you to close as many deals as possible .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 15:40

Right , so how long does it typically take for someone to get started getting leads from you guys and then and then that whole tweaking process , you know .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 15:52

So you know , if you have a like a CRM integration , you know that can take a day or so but we get things going pretty quickly . So typical client , we can onboard just in a day or two and not too long . And then tweaking you got to get about 10 to 20 leads to for us to tweak something . You know pretty much 80 , 90% of the franchise consultants , they , they do it pretty much the same way . But there is a percentage that that that had been doing it for a while and they want things done a certain way . So those just take a little bit more time to care too . Yeah .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 16:24

I think when I set up , the hardest part for me was just setting up my email parser to pull them into my , my CRM . So and that was , on my side , well perfect . Is there anything that they can do to speed up the process when getting started on their side ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 16:41

Yes , sit in their paperwork , well , you know actually . So , all joking aside , we it took us years to do this . I don't know why we waited so long , but we invested in a Dropbox sign , hello sign , and yeah , it's . It's a very minimal , the most minimal investment we'll make in anything we do here , and it's increased our our contract to close rate by about 40% , just because the simplicity of them just clicking and clicking auto signing and sending back to us is done automatically . So that that's been a very good technology which has been around forever . But it's just something we've implemented that's brought in people and it's got people signed because people sit on it , because they just they just sit on things are just very complacent .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 17:31

Yeah , well , you know that friction makes sense . I mean , a lot of people can think about that process , something as simple as printing it out and signing it , versus clicking and signing , removing that friction just , you know , added , you know , improved things by 40% . That goes through all your business processes . People could learn from that . You just gotta keep it very simple and I remember manually printing out an agreement with you guys signing it , sending it back . I've been part of that .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 18:00

Yeah , it's just you know and it's a little more professional when you do it that way . But you know some of our biggest jobs and I didn't look before the call but we probably have about I'm not exaggerating maybe 600 proposals in the last calendar year to franchise consultants across the space . That could be on the highway . It's probably four to 600 . So just the interest level and I could tell you probably 20% . We've sent a contract to that . They just sit on it , they just sit or they just end up leaving the space . So a lot of people they used a provider didn't go well . They spent all of this money plus being coming off . Franchise consultant didn't do it correctly and they leave the space and that's that .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 18:49

And it's unfortunate .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 18:50

It's hard . I know that when I was starting and learning it out , learning how to do it , it's hard . You know it's definitely a it's not a guaranteed thing . You got to work hard and the biggest thing I found is you have to have a thick pipeline . You can't be having just a few leads going in there , because things get all the way to the end and can fall apart . You know , and you got to get your hours and mileage of working with people to really understand how to work with clients and you got to know which brands to send them to . There's some brands that if you're not picking out personalized to that client that's something that they would actually want it's not gonna work . And if you're taking it to some companies that have a lower ability to close , you're also gonna struggle because they're basically not gonna be taken care of in the way that they need to be taken care of . To finish the race .

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 19:49

True , and it's got a little more competitive in the space . So there's a lot of activity and even on the franchise or level , some brands get , you know , territory checks . They can get 50 territory checks , you know , on certain popular brands that do a lot of outbound sale , they can get 50 territory checks , you know , a week or a day , depending upon the brand . So that can provide challenges for even the franchise or to keep up with the demand . And on the other end it's getting somebody registered within a brand that could really slow down the pace . You know of a candidate and you know let all that timing thing everybody talks about . That's real world stuff .

Benefits and Strategies of Franchise Click

Lance Hood (FranPro) 20:28

Well , I would say I've used franchise click with David . I've worked with several other different properties . It's always been profitable for me , I've always enjoyed it . But I do communicate early and often on the success of each of my leads so that I dial it in . But if you're interested in that , you can go to https://Franpro . vip/GoFranchiseClique and reach out to David and they'll help you . David , anything else you want to say ?

David Schwartz (Franchise Clique) 20:56

One of the . You know just getting on that we try to do a good job on the front end . I think most of the channels people have like they work with non-verified solutions and they get leads and they have to deal with riffraff , the bad phone numbers and emails and people who haven't gone through , don't overthink . When somebody goes through a three to five minute qualification process , we call it a phone survey . Those people are very unique that they actually are interested enough to actually sit through that to answer personal questions . The first time you get on a phone with somebody . Those typically provide the better contact rates , they process a little better and they only are going to yield a little bit better sales percentage , but they do yield a better sales percentage at the end of the day .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 21:40

Yeah , I agree , and you got to call people right away , and I always do surround sound . You know , an email , a voicemail and a text all helps for sure , no question . Thank you , david .