Internal sales or the do-it-yourself approach can be effective if you have a founder who is a great salesperson who’s also not pushy. But if you’ve never done sales before, specifically franchise sales, it can be a disaster. Hiring a good franchise salesperson is expensive, and if you are just starting out, and there aren’t a lot of leads being generated, a salesperson on staff may be premature. However, be careful if a founder or CEO is going to lead the initial franchise sales. People that are personally invested in the brand tend to over-sell which can have repercussions. It also will make the size of your organization appear smaller than you’d like. The founder/CEO can be a step within the sales process, but it is not recommended to have the founder/CEO conducting the preliminary/evaluating type calls. Those types of qualifying intro calls can be done by a less experienced (within your brand/industry) salesperson.
Generating organic leads for your internal sales team can be done in a variety of ways. However, some basics that should be immediately built or put together are a strong franchise sales website or webpage and a social media presence. You should have a profile on all major social media platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Connecting your franchise (client facing) pages to your franchise sales (franchise candidates) pages to help feed from each other. There are different marketing suppliers available to help build more social media presence, but they are not needed to get started. Your organic marketing will also come from your personal franchise website, or franchise info page on your company website. There should be a form or contact option to help drive the candidates to your appropriate personnel to follow up with the lead. Your franchise information on your site should be informative, detailed, and visually impressive. The content on your website should be reviewed for compliance by your legal team, we recommend sharing the links for review before they are published or whenever changes are made. The combination of an informative and well-functioning franchise website and a semi to loud presence on social media is going to be one of your most powerful lead generating strategies.