“I Just Don’t Have Time” And Other Excuses We Hate To Love

FranFunnel has been live in the market for almost 6 weeks at this point. (Wow!) And in these six weeks, our team has learned a whole lot about the status of the franchise sales industry. Frankly, a day doesn’t go by that we don’t have the chance to add to our understanding of what’s going right and what’s going wrong with your franchise’s sales process.

And over the course of the last few weeks, we’ve started to see a trend that I’m categorizing as “excuses we hate to love.”

Here are some examples of what we’re talking about here:

“I’m sorry Eli. I just don’t have time.”

“Eli,

I am so sorry, I am getting ready for the show in Tampa next weekend and the multi-unit deadlines. Can we try for next week maybe Thursday or Friday same time?

I just have too much going on to focus on this right now.”

“2017 has us swamped….”

As you can see, we’re getting pretty strong signal that franchise sales people are busy. Very busy.

Why do we hate to love these? Let me explain.

On the hate side –

• People don’t have time to talk about FranFunnel. For our current users, that means we can’t help them improve as fast we’d both like. Using our platform means starting slow and working towards where you want to be slowly but surely, making sure you’re comfortable with the changes we’re implementing. For our potential users, scheduling time for a demo is hard! How are we supposed to help your sales process when your sales team can’t spare 30 minutes during a week?
  
• There’s no slack in the system. A common principles we speak about when running our own business is how much extra workload can be handled by the team we have at any moment. When we feel that the entire team is working at 100% capacity, it’s cause for alarm. When people are going full speed, they often give far too little consideration to what they should be doing instead opting for what they are doing. Just 5–10% breathing room gives the team a reasonable chance to improve. Franchise sales has no slack. Sales people are working so breakneck, that there’s no time to self-reflect. There’s no wonder that sales teams feel like they’re always doing “the same old stuff.” There’s no time to stop and think!
  

On the love side –

• Straight from the FranFunnel homepage… “boost your acquisition rate while saving time.” This is exactly the type of problem that FranFunnel is designed to help with. Your franchise sales process is so labor intensive that your sales people don’t have any time. I guarantee you there is someone at your franchise who is concerned by this fact. (It may have to go all the way to the CEO before someone is worrying, but I still guarantee it.) Not having time means that you’re declining new opportunities and strategies left and right. You are bound to the status quo. And given that over 80% of franchises don’t meet their development goals every year, this is an equation that is truly unsustainable. Something’s gotta give, and we know that FranFunnel plays a huge part in freeing up franchise salespeople to focus on innovation and improvement.
  

You may not be free right now. But when you have a few minutes, check us out. It won’t be a waste of time.

Get FranFunnel.

‍