Like every business, creating the right sales process and locking clients is hard. Many excited potential customers will come to you at the end, saying they won’t move forward.
This process is more painful and hard for franchises. However, it could also be easier because you have a larger customer base than a business with one location.
Improving this sales process and creating a funnel that will generate constant sales require effort. There are many things to take into consideration if you want to increase your sales gradually.
While gradually increasing your sales, you also create a sales process for your business.
You should remember that not every franchise business is the same. The special efforts might change depending on which sector and location you are working in.
Yet, whichever business you are in, there are things that will improve your sales processes. We listed 5 tips to improve your franchise sales process. You can use these to start creating your sales process.
Focus On Lead Nurturing To Find Quality Leads
Owning or buying a franchise is not something you do on a whim. You plan for it and take the time to understand the basics and the customer base.
Whichever business you own, if you don’t care or know about your potential customers, you are not going to have a successful sales process. Your franchise must provide useful resources to the right people at the right time.
This is not just throwing off brochures and sending random generalized emails to everyone on your mailing list.
You have to nurture your leads with customized offers, deals, and content that they resemble themselves.
By offering these customized approaches, you carefully create your buying center. If the buyer feels that they are connected with your business, it is easier to make the sale.
There are many ways that you can help your clients and help them to understand more about you and your product. Perhaps the most popular way of lead nurturing is creating content.
The most general way is to blog. You can write on topics that your clients will be happy with. You can also do it via shooting videos or offering special offers.
Writing A Blog
Creating your blog and writing content that will attract potential customers might seem like a lot of trouble. It isn’t if you know the process.
You have to first know about your ideal customers. What they like, what they want to read, and how you can attract them. Once you understand your customers, you can develop joint problems among them.
Here are our franchise SEO services that will automate your sales process organically.
These questions can help you understand your prospects’ goals and what they are like. You can create content by following those questions and answering them.
In addition, you can also write content about your audiences‘ personalities, goals, and aspirations.
Special Offers
This is a pretty common thing in any industry. However, finding the perfect offer that potential customers can be excited about is hard.
The special offer could be anything. A discount for a limited time, a free visit or something similar, a referral program, or anything else. The main point here is to push your ideal customers to come to your business.
Sometimes these offers could also bring another person with your potential customer. You could get more quality leads if you start a referral program that will award your customers a special offer.
Use Automation To Manage Your Leads
When you are a franchise, you are going to have many leads. With this many leads, it will probably be hard to keep track of every single one of them. It is also trouble to manage the entire sales process without losing one end of the rope.
Using automation tools to help you to organize and prioritize your sales process and leads could come a long way.
Finding the right automation tool to help with your leads will not only make the process easier. You will also have more time to fix your sales process.
Automation in managing your leads systemizes, organizes, and helps prioritize your leads. You can set the automation however you like to keep track of your leads.
You can categorize the leads and create a brand-new system to send messages, emails, or even content to your leads.
This is the internal process that helps you to keep track of your leads and potential sales. The automation tool can also help you externally.
It can scan social media pages and emails to see which leads are more prone to speak with you.
Automation can also help you better understand where your leads are coming from and whether your strategies are working.
Put Effort Into Establishing A Brand Reputation
A brand reputation is not only for business. It is for everything. Most sales come from word of mouth, what people hear from their friends and family.
This is not something that you can do directly. However, you can always contribute to establishing this reputation indirectly. After all, people will be talking about your business and if your service is exceptional or bad.
To determine what people will talk about you, ensure your customer service is off the charts. Even if your service is sluggish here and there, you must ensure your customers are happy.
If you can ensure that your customers are always happy, you can create a brand reputation no one can beat.
The best way of creating a reputation is by working with professionals in the customer service area. They can help you to do what is best.
They also know how to talk to your clients who are unhappy with something. These professionals can show you the best way to treat your customers to establish a reputation.
Your After-Sale Support
Many businesses stop caring about their customers when they sell products and receive their money. These businesses can’t establish a good brand reputation.
That is because the client doesn’t feel like they are valued throughout the entire process. They might have made the sale then, but that customer will not be buying from them again.
Provide better after-sale support than you do with pre-sale. Once someone likes your after-sale support, they will talk about this to their network.
Their network will be willing to buy your product more. That is because they know that any problem will have a solution once they start working with you or buy your product.
The after-sale support should also be free-of-charge. Your client or customer should be able to pick up the phone and come to you.
They shouldn’t have to worry about additional payments. They have already made or making payments to you.
Adding an extra charge to customer support is not going to help people come to you for services.
Create A Loyal Customer Base
Whatever business you are working in, you will always be in trouble if you don’t have a certain set customer base.
If you can rely on a particular set of customer bases and know that they will always be there, you will be reliable.
This will also bring in more loyal customers because they know others are happy with you. A loyal customer base tells potential customers that you know how to handle existing clients.
This helps word-of-mouth to go around faster. Creating this loyal customer base could happen in a variety of ways.
You could offer discounts, freebies, or something your customer could benefit from. Anything that you put towards them counts. You can also create a referral program.
This referral program will give some sort of benefit to both sides. When an existing customer invites a friend to your franchise, you can provide a discount to both or give something different to each of them.
Knowing that you care about existing and new customers, they will likely invite more people who will stay with you for longer.
Sources:
MadisonMarketing, FranchiseWire
Amit Gupta is the founder of DrFranchises – a digital marketing agency that helps brands rank better on Google Maps through local SEO strategies. Amit has over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing. He’s also the owner of multiple franchises and has helped countless brands achieve success online. When he’s not working, Amit can be found playing with his dog.