Selling Franchises With Texting In a Down Economy (Without Going Broke!)

With marketing budgets being scared frozen, brands have to take innovative action with their franchise development efforts.

Otherwise they won’t recover from the economic downturn.

Today we wanted to share tactical knowledge, concrete examples and actionable advice on how to use texting to sell more franchises without raising your frandev budget. We will teach you how to scale your sales efforts in a tech forward, personal and cost effective way.

The Economic Context Influences Budgets

Why are marketing budgets in frandev frozen right now?

Uncertainty and cashflow are the biggest reason for budget freezes. Especially restaurants, retail and fitness, as most of their stores have been closed for a period of time and that must lead to lack of funds. They may be using some of their marketing budgets for payroll or operational stuff instead of on actual marketing.

Many also think people aren’t buying or investing during the COVID-19 time, but as we know, they are wrong. We're seeing texts like these come through daily:

If the economy is crashing and everyone's going out of business, you just stop all spend entirely. Frandev budgets tend to be easier to slash because in the short term they do not affect cash flow. Especially if nobody is buying anyway.

Texting As The Solution

Strategically, the channel of texting solves this problem in a cost efficient way.

People are buying right now. Even if lead flow is down a bit, candidates are more serious and have more time to focus on investment and franchise opportunities.

Now is not the time to halt marketing.

Here's another snippet from a recent frandev conversation to reiterate this point:

Assuming they have the funds to continue to generate or buy leads, FranFunnel will help them get the best ROI on those marketing dollars. It will also save them time (as they’re dealing with all this craziness) and give them peace of mind that all leads are being texted and emailed without delay.

Franchises may have made a bunch of layoffs and have a smaller team to work leads now, so FranFunnel will allow them to work more leads with fewer bodies.

$250/month is a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring a full time lead qualifier. Our platform can essentially be their lead qualifier. It would save them time and money.

If you're working with a smaller lead pool, it's more important than ever to actually get a hold of your leads. If all 7.8 billion people in the world submitted a lead to your brand, who cares if you only hear from 1% of them?

You still have the dopest pipeline in history, but if you're only getting one nibble every few days, you better believe that you want to reel that baby in. Texting is the best way to do that.

Use Cases Of Texting Savviness

We want to share powerful evidence from our database of franchises winning right now, despite tough economic times.

Here you can see an encouraging conversation between a salesperson and a potential franchise owner about setting appointments, getting financially qualified, and so on:

Additionally, check out this conversation. People are really getting into the buying mindset now that businesses have begun reopening. Note the use of our top feature, the calendar integration.

Tactical Recommendations For Selling Franchises Via Texting

Finally, let's talk about how you can more franchises, without raising your marketing budget.

1. Take those same leads you are already buying and make them more valuable. You don’t necessarily need more leads, they just need to get more of them on the phone.
2. Lower their franchise fee, which I’ve seen a lot of brands doing to incentivize people to buy. I saw one on the IFE expo recently that was offering a $30,000 discount (now only $5k instead of $35k). The selling points right now are that there are a lot more people looking for career changes, lots of retail spaces available (or will be soon), there is more leverage to negotiate lower rents, it’s cheaper to borrow money, etc.
3. Reach out with incentives and different approaches to all of the old leads in their database who may be in very different situations right now then they were before coronavirus.

Remember, just because marketing budgets are tight, doesn’t mean franchise brands can’t take innovative action with their franchise development efforts.

FranFunnel wants to help you recover from the economic downturn. Book a demo with us today, and we’ll teach you how to scale your sales efforts in a tech forward, personal and cost effective way.

Eli Rosenthal is Platform Lead at FranFunnel.  Anthony Spagnola is Director of Sales at FranFunnel. They are both SMSpecially optimistic about texting during the down economy.

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