Day: April 22, 2022

Tracking franchise applications doesn’t always go smoothly: for example, you might follow up with a lead a little too soon or lose them due to a lack of support. However, there’s a simple solution for tracking franchise applicants: CRM. We’ll explain how optimized management of your applications can be the cornerstone of successful growth and effective outreach. What is a CRM for franchising? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software or online solution that allows you to track interactions between your network and franchise candidates or your franchisees. Collecting and organizing this data—regardless of its nature—allows you to track the progress of your candidates and make the most informed decisions for the growth of your network. This sharing of information ensures that your teams are fully aligned.  Centralize Your Franchise’s Candidate Data with a CRM Using a CRM centralizes all your lead data: contact information, interaction history, documents, and more. Quickly find all the information you need about a potential candidate in one place. With a CRM, your development teams have easy access to all data, anywhere, anytime. With the collaboration of everyone involved in your network’s development, the information collected is constantly updated—manually or automatically in most cases. The time savings are considerable! No matter where your leads come from, they’re all gathered in your CRM database. Take control of candidate tracking by streamlining the recruitment process in your CRM. Integrating a CRM into your recruitment process requires you to re-examine each phase and evaluate it. What steps does a candidate go through today, from the initial contact to the opening of their retail location? Why is each stage necessary, and what is its purpose? Isn’t there another way of operating that would streamline the candidate’s progression to franchisee status? Rethink and standardize your candidates’ progression to make it seamless. Then integrate the revised steps into your CRM tool. The actions to be taken at each stage are now clear, explicit, and embedded in your management system. Your development team knows exactly what action is expected, when, and for which candidate. Automate certain processes with your franchise-specific CRM. Without a CRM, there’s a risk that certain steps will be overlooked. Imagine a candidate waiting for a document to sign. Two days, three, a week… The recruitment process stalls here due to a lack of follow-up. With a CRM solution, sending documents, opening accounts, or organizing an immersion day are all automated! Once a candidate completes an action that closes out a step, they automatically move on to the next one—without any manual intervention on your part. You save precious time.  Keep people focused on what matters most with a CRM The main concern often raised when automation is discussed is that it removes people from a process where they should be at the center. On the contrary, automation allows you to focus on the elements that require the most human intervention: relationships and communication. Introducing a CRM tool into the recruitment process allows teams to spend more time where it’s needed. Communication usually begins at the first sign of interest from a franchise candidate. Did they fill out a form on the recruitment website? A contact is automatically created in your database, an initial message can be sent, and an appointment is automatically scheduled for a time slot when you’re available. All you have to do is engage with the candidate. Recruiting franchise candidates is one thing, but what comes next? The value of a CRM doesn’t end right after a new location opens. On the contrary, that’s just the beginning of the features available. A franchise-specific CRM will also allow you to manage and coordinate the network. Once again, the advantage of implementing a CRM in your business lies in centralization. As we know, this is particularly important for franchises. The idea of being able to send the same message at the same time to all your franchisees in the field is appealing. Orders, communications, reports… Send what you need to whom you need.  Similarly, news about your franchise network can be delivered in the form of a feed, similar to how social media works.  Easier Statistics and Metrics Tracking with CRM for Franchises Tracking your performance metrics is essential for effective network management. It’s by identifying gaps between actual results and set goals that a franchise can identify the most relevant avenues for improvement. A CRM allows you to maximize your potential by providing on-demand statistics. Conversion rates, contract signing costs, data for each stage of the franchisee recruitment process, and more—your metrics are accessible at any time. You now have reliable benchmarks for optimizing your network year over year, for example. What are the results for franchise networks that use a CRM? A CRM, first and foremost, saves time. With Cerca, a franchise network saves an average of 17 % in time when signing a contract, while the cost of signing that contract drops by 19 %. The conversion rate, meanwhile, increases by 26 %. In short, everything is under control and optimized in real time. Franchise candidates are at the very heart of your network’s development. To give your franchise the best possible chance of success, candidates must feel confident, supported, and guided. That’s exactly where[…]