The Quick Response Advantage: !Transforming Leads into Opportunities!

FranConnect invited two of our joint customers to share their insights about how to have great first meetings, focusing on both speed and quality:

• Sean Fitzgerald, President of TruBlue Home Service Ally, which is one of five brands at Strategic Franchising.
• Brandon Mangual, Managing Director of Franchise Development at Batteries Plus.

Keith Gerson, now President & CEO at Gerson Advisory Services, anchored the conversation. I participated as well, though I considered my voice to be the least important on the panel.

Keith began by asking what interesting technology each team uses to optimize for meeting speed and quality.

• Sean described using HubSpot to track candidate behavior, foreshadowing his later comments about catered content.
• Brandon mentioned starting to work with an AI-based voicemail scheduler.
• Both use Lumin.ai.

Need for and obstacles to “speed to meet”. The discussion revolved around the need for velocity throughout the development process, and how to achieve that.

• Brandon, Sean, and 79% of the live webinar audience quoted speed-to-meet times under 3 days, with plenty happening within 24 hours.
• When asked for what we’re seeing across 100+ brands, I pointed out a big dependence on the developer’s appetite for short lead times and ability to maintain calendar availability.
• Unresponsiveness was identified by 68% of the audience as the biggest obstacle to achieving speed to meet.
• Sean cautioned that you can have really good leads who want to go slowly, and really bad leads who want to go fast.
• I pointed out that some of the best leads are sometimes also the busiest, so unresponsiveness may not necessarily be a sign of low lead quality.
• Sean highlighted that getting first position is critical: a significant number of people purchase from the first brand they talk to. Exceptions are possible, but their experience with a second brand has to be significantly better. “With so many options on the table for them, don’t worry about seeming too desperate.”

Achieving “speed to meet” and high conversion.

• The panelists agreed that speed to meet and conversion are somewhat intertwined because being first to the relationship reduces fallouts attributable to competition.
• Brandon said that Lumin.ai raised their conversion from 15% to 22%, and that their sales cycle has shrunk from 120 days to less than 60 days.
• Sean said Lumin.ai doubled their conversion rate for portal leads, causing them to roll it out to all lead sources. This solved a key problem: because portal leads are such hard work, the sales team was less diligent about calling repeatedly.
• Brandon emphasized the need to expedite through out the process, and the value of being up front with the prospect to get ahead of any hurdles.
• Sean underscored the need to understand where fall-offs are occurring in the process. For example, if an initial call seems to go well but the prospect falls off at the confidential questionnaire (CQ) stage, it means you’re not getting them excited enough

Role of content in facilitating “speed to meet”.

• Brandon offered the importance of tailoring content to knowledge of whom the candidate may be considering as competitors. Those may not be in category; often, they’re in different industries but at the same investment level.
• Sean agreed and added that the nuances of brand positioning can really matter. TruBlue, for instance is not “just” a handyman opportunity; it’s about aging in place. Many top owners are team builders with experience in sales and marketing—not people with experience as a handyman.
• Both send out videos via Lumin.ai to help prospects get a feel for the brand and the value proposition.

Types of effective content.

• Brandon and Sean both highlighted franchisee testimonials as the most powerful source, especially for a brand who might not have budget for a sizzle reel.
• Brandon mentioned videos of the annual franchisee convention, as well as cross-industry comparisons (e.g., “Why us, vs QSR or big-box retail)
• Sean advocated paying the most attention to “swing voters” (my term). These are people who are only 60-70% likely to buy, and don’t enter with a sense of urgency. Giving that person the right content can shift their thinking. Summing up, he said “It’s not getting more leads; it’s getting more meets with the leads that you have.”

Catered content.

• Sean championed the value of presenting content based on the concerns and priorities of the specific candidate: “We’ve reached the age of catering content for candidates.”
• For example, an experienced multi-unit investor won’t be interested in the benefits of the franchising model.
• Catered content can include blog posts, videos, and franchisee testimonials, all selected with the candidate’s interests and concerns in mind.
• TruBlue delivers that material through a candidate portal that contains material matched to the candidate’s needs.
• They pick up that information by tracking the candidate’s path through the website.

Lead quality and meeting quality. 

• We recounted key differences between various lead sources in terms of quality: organic leads (i.e., those from the brand’s own website) tend to convert 65-75% from Lumin.ai, with a few more points from phone calling, while social leads convert lower and tend to get equal contributions from Lumin.ai and phone calling.
• Brandon declared that since implementing Lumin.ai, he can’t recall sitting down with a job seeker—in spite of having a portal-rich strategy and no brokers.

Handling no-shows.

• Brandon said that with Lumin.ai making 100% of their initial appointments for an initial meeting, he is seeing a no-show rate of less than 10%.
• Sean said it does happen: the person may have been likely to buy, but still happened to get busy and postpone following up. He described the Lumin.ai no-show feature, which absolves the sales staff of chasing and reduces slippage due to no-shows.

Converting after-hours leads.

• Keith cited that 68% of leads come in after hours.
• Sean said that for TruBlue, the number is more like 40%. In addition to having Lumin.ai follow up immediately with after-hours leads, TruBlue’s FD process expects that night and weekend follow-ups happen within the first 90m minutes of every business day. He said that makes for a very busy Monday morning!
• I recounted an anonymized prospect message shared by another brand: “Hello, I need to cancel our Monday appointment because I met with another brand on Friday afternoon, and I’m really excited about it. Thanks for your time”.

Content guidelines. In closing remarks, I recommended three content guidelines:

• Speak to their misconceptions (e.g., people think Batteries Plus is just for consumer batteries, when franchisees have access to robust commercial relationships; and they think TruBlue is just a handyman brand, but it plays into the burgeoning age-in-place market)
• Focus on the swing voters and address their biggest sticking points.
• Tease the relationship. Don’t deluge them with information; give them a reason to talk.

View the recording on FranConnect’s website here.