Challenge: your customer-facing website collects leads for the entire home services brand, and it’s up to you to farm those leads out to individual franchisees. When the franchisees own specific territories, how do know which franchisee gets which lead? This can be a headache, for sure, but with the application of lead flow technologies, you can automate virtually all of the process.
Exploring Current Solutions
Many franchisors choose to solve this problem manually. They assign someone to monitor incoming leads and dole them out to individual franchise owners manually, or they dump all the leads into a poorly optimized customer relationship manager (CRM) and then leave it to the individual franchisees to check the CRM for their leads regularly.
Neither of these solutions is ideal because they result in untimely responses to leads. Research shows that a timely response to customer inquiries greatly improves lead conversions and sales. Translation: the faster that potential client hears back from the franchisee, the more likely they are to become a customer. So what do you do?
A Better Way to Address Franchisees with Overlapping Territories
At DevHub, we employ best practices to make sure leads end up in the hands of franchisees. This means utilizing a form lead distribution system, where each lead is geotagged to a service area and delivered to an email or set of emails specific to that location. For example, if a potential client enters a location of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the emails for that lead will only go to the location serving Minneapolis.
You might be asking what happens when a large metropolitan service area has more than one location. The solution there might be a drop-down menu where the client can select a location to contact. This is simple and straightforward, but it can cause leads to be sent to the wrong location, and therefore, cause service delays. Luckily, there’s a better way to ensure rapid and accurate responses to inbound contact requests.
By requiring potential customers to submit an address where service is to be rendered, it is possible to assign that lead to a specific franchisee based on territory. The territory is assigned by zip code or by a geo-territory on a map. Either way, the lead gets into the hands of the assigned franchisee faster and more accurately.
So what happens to leads that cannot be identified by location? These leads can be triaged by the regional or brand team and assigned manually. By following these best practices, though, unidentified leads should be few and far between.
Making the Most of Your CRM
Earlier, we mentioned poorly optimized CRMs. However, properly utilizing a CRM is a great way to manage lead flow. There are several potential benefits to effectively using a CRM:
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Lead Tracking: You and your franchisees can track leads through the buyer’s journey. This can produce valuable data you can use to streamline the sales process, increase conversion rates, and grow revenues. Lead tracking also enables the franchisor to verify franchisees are following up on leads in a timely fashion.
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Drip Campaigns: Not every lead is going to become a customer today. Many customers will take time to make a buying decision, which is why many CRMs include the ability to create email drip campaigns–a series of emails that are delivered automatically based on an interval set by the franchisor. Drip campaigns are another way to increase sales.
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Dead Lead Retargeting: When a lead dies, it doesn’t have to stay dead. Perhaps the potential client was simply not ready to commit to a purchase. Dead lead retargeting enables you to make a mailing list of leads that never converted and send out special offers to entice them back to your brand. You’d be surprised how many times simply reminding potential customers how you can help them achieve their goals will turn them into paying customers.
These are just three of the ways you can more effectively use your CRM to grow conversions and increase revenue. When combined with best practices in form lead distribution, the result is a rapid response system to every lead. Potential clients will recognize the timely attention they are getting, increasing customer loyalty and retention for your franchisees.
Learn More About Balancing and Optimizing Your Lead Flow for Franchisees
With over 260 brands launched and industry-specific integrations like appointment scheduling, CRMs, reputation management, and more, schedule a demo to get a firsthand look at how DevHub can help you optimize your franchise’s digital strategy and scale with ease!