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Casual Articles - Franchise Sales and Use of Online Franchise Directories
The Art of Storytelling (eg. 'Branding')A few years ago at a conference for a large, multi-national corporation, I sat and waited for the keynote speaker. She was described in the program as a woman with all the appropriate credentials. At the podium, she said she forgot the notes for her speech and she would tell a story instead.The grey suited crowd shifted in their chairs, glanced left and right at each other. She began by asking for the lights to be turned down and for all of us to close our eyes. She then told a story about a young girl who had lost her imagination and, if she was to survive, she would have to find it. It was a frightening and joyful journey full of pictures, metaphors, and, as the crowd came to realize, it was also full of analogies to their present business.45 minutes later 400 people gave her a standing ovation. Some of them were crying, recognizing the little girl in themselves.
There is a definite marketing cycle, and knowing when you should market can mean a dynamic payoff. You need to be aware of the marketing cycle in your industry, so that you can know when to market.To make the most effective use of your marketing dollar and your marketing time, block out a yearly marketing calendar based upon what your client does during certain times of the year. This marketing analysis is going to tell you what to offer and when to offer it. Then, knowing what and when, you simply select the delivery method—will it be postcard, newsletter or some other method?Real life calendar months and events affecting the marketing cycle include:1. November: November starts the holiday cycle, but many end of year proposals bids and contracts are signed during this period. Expect the company to be staffed but busy during this time (with the exception of the actual Turkey day).Many company parties are being planned and held, so this can actu
Franchising Directory Sites are not doing the Industry any good. Typically they charge a fee for advertising per month or charge per sales for the lead, there must be 50 such sites. Only a few are able to generate significant leads, which you as a franchisor must pay heavily for. Each day our Franchise Company gets hit up by these online companies pitching their great lead generation sites, we cannot get them to stop calling us actually. They promise you leads that are qualified and generally none are of value, after all just because someone filling out a form says they have $500,000 to spend does not mean they do.
At $15-40.00 per lead, you get people surfing around who hit maybe ten to twelve different franchises on these sites, generating for those companies about $400.00, yet the potential buyer has signed up for 10 different franchises. Then each franchisor sends mail out packages and pays for this lead about $10.00 - 15.00 each. Costing the franchisors an Additional $150.00 then the potential buyer rebuffs calls and then after getting all the videos, CDROMS, in the mail, thinks this is entertaining and does it again with another 10-12 franchisors on the same site or maybe a
It is difficult to run a profitable store anywhere. The difficulty level rises, if the retail store is a downtown area. There are just more issues to deal with a downtown store.Most downtown areas have limited parking especially in front of a store. This is harmful especially in bad weather. It is also a problem on the busiest days.Many downtowns have a greater percentage of vacancies than other retail areas. Many of the buildings are older and more difficult to keep than in the newer shopping areas.What should a merchant do to be successful? Here are just a few things to increase the sales in a downtown area.1.The merchants must work together as a group. You must not treat other merchants as competitors.2.The stores need to have plenty of special events. Special events are a great way to draw traffic to the stores. Most store owners do a poor job with special events. They don’t want to deal with them.For example, I am doi
At $15-40.00 per lead, you get people surfing around who hit maybe ten to twelve different franchises on these sites, generating for those companies about $400.00, yet the potential buyer has signed up for 10 different franchises. Then each franchisor sends mail out packages and pays for this lead about $10.00 - 15.00 each. Costing the franchisors an Additional $150.00 then the potential buyer rebuffs calls and then after getting all the videos, CDROMS, in the mail, thinks this is entertaining and does it again with another 10-12 franchisors on the same site or maybe
When I was in college, the curriculum offered several courses on speaking, but I can’t recall a single course on listening. Yet a minimum of 50% of communication is attributed to a person’s ability to effectively listen. So if you are looking for a way to improve your communications skills with customers, suppliers, coworkers, friends and family members, consider the following six techniques designed to enhance effective listening:1. Ask well-designed open-ended questions. If you want to be more in control of your sales calls, talk less and ask more well-prepared questions. When you’re talking, you’re learning nothing, but when you are asking good questions, you’re getting inside your customers’ and prospects’ heads. You’re learning more about how they think and how they make decisions.Here are several of my favorites:Question: What criteria do you use when _____________? The reason for the blank is because this question is so flexible. You can fill i
At $15-40.00 per lead, you get people surfing around who hit maybe ten to twelve different franchises on these sites, generating for those companies about $400.00, yet the potential buyer has signed up for 10 different franchises. Then each franchisor sends mail out packages and pays for this lead about $10.00 - 15.00 each. Costing the franchisors an Additional $150.00 then the potential buyer rebuffs calls and then after getting all the videos, CDROMS, in the mail, thinks this is entertaining and does it again with another 10-12 franchisors on the same site or maybe
First and foremost, don't rely totally on interim providers to find your first assignment. Interim management providers tend to use a 'trusted'number of interim managers who they know will represent their company in a professional manner. By all means register with companies like ours but you must also go on the self-promotion offensive at the same time.Start by making up a list of companies and people you have worked with over your career. If you are lucky you might have 100+ names of people who may have an interest in your skills and experience. Contact these people by telephone or by a well constructed letter.Explain what you can offer in a precise and factual manner. Try and get a face to face meeting. If they are prepared to make time to see you it means that they are potentially interested in what you have to offer.If the situation proceeds to a point where they are contemplating giving you an interim assignment make sure you don't alienate them
Washing the exterior of a truck. Sounds easy right? Well, it’s not really. When you soap a truck, it is very important that you are careful to soap around all the handles, turn signal lights, steps, and wipers. You want to soap all that stuff by hand. Use a one-foot by one foot lamb’s wool square-not a mitt, they don’t work well. You can use a brush for the rest of the truck, but you have to get in around the handles and stuff by hand. There is no shortcut if you wish to maintain quality.Many product manufactures say you can use inline injection with certain soaps and let the soap dwell for 30 seconds and rinse. That’s great but you’ll dull the paint. If you don’t hand soap there will be huge spots where you missed, because the brush cannot get to all the nooks and crannies. It just physically is impossible. So when you’re washing a truck you want to make sure that you are soaping most of the nooks and tricky parts by hand.Now the rest of it, you can soap by
Many of these electronic leads, people have no money or job and are stuck at home surfing around the Internet. Unfortunately they are taxing the industry and raising the price of franchise fees due to sales cost increases without actual sales. They are hurting the consumers who are legit in higher fees and admin costs due to bogus advertising sites, claiming to be great qualified lead generators. The fact is many or these websites are just starting out and do not generate any large amount of qualified leads. They just charge lots of fees, which are passed onto to future team members of your franchise system. A franchisor should have some sort of web presence and strategy to get real buyers, who are really serious. Generally we fin
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