Timing is Everything: A FranFunnel Finding About Your Sales Team

When I put together FranFunnel’s report on our first hundred days, I’ll admit that there was a graph that I simply couldn’t get out of my head.

On the surface, there’s nothing here that should be too surprising. It’s reasonable to think that leads come in fairly regularly throughout the course of waking hours and then there’s a drop off as America goes to bed.

However, this graph is a perfect example of why looking at averages as a unit of analysis is devastating. The above graph is an amalgamation of every single lead FranFunnel has seen. While this graph may “make sense,” it would be a grave error to think that every franchise’s lead distribution looks like this.

Let’s take a look a few of the different franchises we work with to see what the distributions look like on a franchise level.

Franchise 1:

Franchise 2:

Franchise 3:

Franchise 1 sees a lead spike at 8AM and then a relatively even flow of leads throughout the rest of the day.

Franchise 2 sees virtually no leads overnight but then crescendos to a 3PM peak before slowly returning back throughout the evening.

Franchise 3 sees a low increase in lead flow throughout the course of the day peaking between 9PM and midnight.

Before we get to the implications here, allow me to reiterate another chart. Here is how quickly leads respond to reach-out via text message:

While the nuances are debatable, the main takeaway is simply that leads excessively prefer to communicate in the immediate aftermath of declaring their interest to you.

Now back to the various distributions of leads we see in our three franchise examples. Each of them has the keen interest in having sales people ready to communicate with leads when the majority of leads come in.

For franchise 1, this means being ready to go at 8AM EST. Keep in mind, that if your sales team is on the West Coast, then this means being available at 5AM.

For franchise 2, this means preparing for a big push in the afternoon. (Maybe ideal…?)

Perhaps most importantly for franchise 3, it means having sales people available to speak late into the evening. (Or, if this isn’t possible, then focusing on changing around your lead mix to avoid this situation?)

If you elect to ignore these trends, you’re almost certain to shoot yourselves in the foot. While yes, it may be impossible to have 24-hour sales coverage and/or not generate leads at inconvenient times, that doesn’t mean that you can’t improve by making changes. You’re always looking for that next thing to give your franchise a boost. This may be one opportunity that you can work on.

When does your franchise receive leads? And what are you going to do about it?

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