Whether you are a veteran or a newbie you need to close deals to make money. I interact with a lot of Franchisors & Franchise Brokers on a regular basis.
One thing that I have noticed is how high the highs are and how low the lows are in the sales cycles. Sometimes deal flow is so high you can barely keep up; others are in a drought and can’t close a deal to save their life.
I am a firm believer of Consistent Productive Activity = Consistent Deal Closings. Closing franchise deals is an art as much as it is a science. There are a lot of different processes, systems & preferred ways of doing things.
Regardless of your methodology, you must be consistent.
I have tested this myself personally. Here is one example of consistency that has paid off for me.
Earlier this year I started connecting on Linkedin with CPA’s & Financial Advisors. I didn’t send them a marketing message, I just asked them to connect with me. I connected with 4 or 5 of these once a week. I noticed that when I connected with them that many of them would view my profile.
After 3-4 weeks of this I received a message through Linkedin from a CPA asking if we could set a time to chat on the phone. I was pretty sure he was going to offer to become my CPA but I took the call because you never know what someone wants to chat about unless they tell you right?
We set up a zoom meeting for the following day & when I logged in, the CPA had 2 other CPA’s from other firms with him. The 3 of them knew each other from being in the industry for many years, meeting at tradeshows & online groups etc… And even though they were all in the same industry, they were all from 3 different areas. One was from Philadelphia, one from Atlanta & one from Phoenix.
My timing couldn’t have been better for requesting the connection on Linkedin because the 3 of them had just been discussing as a group about some of their clients that wanted to start new business ventures. One of the CPA’s had a client that was reviewing a Franchise model and they wanted to know if I had any other franchises that this client could look at.
Long story short, each of the 3 CPA’s referred someone to me after learning how I could help them. 2 of those 3 turned into closed deals over a 6-month period.
Not shabby for 20 minutes of Linkedin connection activity once a week for a few weeks.
Many of you are thinking “I need to start connecting with CPA’s on Linkedin” right?
Easier said than done. We are all busy, busy personally, busy professionally, busy with change etc…
What I found was, even though I had closed a couple of deals from this, I still didn’t make it a consistent priority because I was so busy already.
By not consistently performing this activity meant I didn’t have a consistent lead flow from this lead source and without a consistent flow of high-quality franchise leads I wouldn’t have a consistent number of deals closing.
Increasing my time on Linkedin sending connection requests made sense, the problem was I just didn’t have more time to invest. I would have to change the way I worked my day and in order to increase my time on Linkedin I needed to reduce my time doing something else.
Then I had a thought that maybe there was a system that could do this for me? There had to be something out there that could automatically send connection requests, right?
The simple answer was yes. And after 6 months of testing I found a solution that works for me. This system consistently sends 20-30 connection requests per day for 5 days a week (Linkedin has a max per week of 100 that you can send out) and then after the connections accept my request, they receive another message that generates some leads for me consistently.
My point with this story is that whatever you do you must do consistently. You need to find a way to consistently generate new high-quality leads. If you do this sporadically on an irregular basis then that will probably result in a sporadic deal closing cycle.
Lead follow up is no different. You might be the best lead generator out there, but if you are not consistent on follow up then your deal flow will be sporadic.
Consistently following up with franchise companies that you have referred leads to and learning more about other franchises on a consistent basis are very important tasks.
So how do you do things more consistently? I am going to share one simple thing that I do consistently that allows me to be more consistent…LOL sorry I couldn’t resist.
Seriously though, if you perform this task one time you will increase your consistency…IF you follow through.
I have 2 words for you. Time Block.
Go to your calendar right now. Stop reading this article & set 2 times on your calendar for prospecting or social media or follow up or education.
It doesn’t matter what the activity is, go set those time blocks right now on your calendar.
If you aren’t using a calendar to help manage your day, then you can probably stop reading this article as well because…well that would be silly if you weren’t using a calendar to help manage your appointments.
Now, once you have set those 2 time blocks, go set some more. Set several blocks of time on your own calendar for specific productive activities.
Here are some examples:
- Twice a week, Linkedin connection requests
- Once a week, Franchise Education
- Three times a week, lead follow up
- Once a week, (your choice of activity)
The idea is to set an appointment with yourself, that no matter what happens during that time that you are performing that activity and only that activity.
Put your phone on do not disturb, close your email box, shut down all browsers for social media (unless the activity is on social media of course) and turn off all distractions during that time block.
The ONLY activity you will be performing during that specific time block is that specific activity.
You will be surprised at how productive you will become if you implement this type of activity.
This will also increase your consistency level of outreach to referral partners for example, which should in turn increase inbound high quality lead flow, which then leads to more deals closing on a more consistent basis.
During this article I have consistently used the word consistently…(sorry last time, I promise)…but really, if you are serious about consistently closing more deals then you have to set up a consistent method that generates high quality leads, consistently follow up with those leads, consistently learn & educate on franchises etc…etc…
There is no silver bullet to closing more franchise deals.
But with consistent productive activities you should be able to increase your chances.
John Henning has been in Franchising for over 15 years. He has sold franchises, owned franchises, created franchises & has been a Franchise Broker since 2006. He has personally helped over 450 entrepreneurs start a franchise business.
You can reach John via text here: 267-417-4980 or broker@franchisebrokermagazine.com