FranFunnel Is Launching a Brand New Feature

In August of 2017, when Zack Fishman began doing sales demonstrations of FranFunnel, he always made sure to include a mention of his heritage.

“I’ve been in franchising since before I was born.”

If you know him you can imagine him saying it, a bit louder than necessary, into his iPhone’s receiver, in the middle of our open-plan office, several times a day, every day. It’s true, for what it’s worth. He is the heir to the top public relations business in the industry. He has attended the International Franchising Association’s annual conference every year since he was a toddler.*

This is not how I came to the world of Franchising.

I came to the franchising industry by pure coincidence; I would guess it was the same for many of you. What I’ve always really cared about -- before texting, or sales processes, or even baked goods -- is this: how do people make decisions? And how are those decisions influenced?

Before FranFunnel, I worked with a franchise lead generator doing digital marketing. Every day at work, I tried to answer this question: how do I put an image, or text, on someone’s computer screen, that will make them want to invest in opening a franchise location?**

FranFunnel’s genesis came from a similar idea: how you treat someone during a business deal can change the outcome. It’s not particularly revolutionary. Little things make a difference. Being an amazing franchise developer is not just about making phone calls and reciting a rehearsed monologue. There are roughly infinite places during the process where a slight change in your behavior can make or break a sale.

And that’s where FranFunnel comes in, in (at least) these two ways.

1. Most leads prefer to get to know you, at least initially, via text. Every year, fewer and fewer people respond to emails, and fewer and fewer people pick up the phone when they don’t recognize the number.
2. We humans are distractible creatures. While it’s true that perhaps the very best candidates will be patient, and wait for a response to their inquiry, the research is very clear: the faster you reach out to a candidate, the more likely you are to close that deal. People like when you respond to them quickly. It’s that simple.
   

Those two axes are FranFunnel’s bread and butter. It’s what we do every day. Quite frankly, if you’re not doing those two things, in 2020, you’re already way behind.

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But of course, there is more.

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We’ve demonstrated in the past that little changes in message can make a big difference, but we’ve never had an elegant way of helping our users test their messages scientifically. Now we do.

Starting today, we’re rolling out our Text Message Testing feature (TMT). Here’s how it works:

You give us (at least) two messages to experiment with, and we will take care of the rest. After just a few weeks, you’ll know which message is performing better, and from then on your sales process will be stronger. Then we can do it all over again.

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FranFunnel is about making things simple, and powerful, so that’s all there is to it. If you’d like to be part of the beta test for Text Message Testing, just email us at support@franfunnel.com, and we’ll put you on the waiting list.

FranFunnel is about getting better every day.

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*This might not be true, but even if it’s not, it might as well be.

** In hindsight, the most important part of that job was finding the people that already wanted to open a franchise, and reminding them, rather than convincing them.

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Eli Rosenthal is FranFunnel's Platform Lead. He tries to get better every day, but ELO is harder and harder to come by.