The design of franchise CRM software focuses on helping franchisors to manage their interactions with leads and existing franchisees. Likewise, it’s meant for managing leads, prospects, and customers by each franchisee. Besides, it’s an efficient tool that captures vital information about your contacts. The information can then be used to keep track of sales-related activities in connection with franchise leads, prospects, and customers.

There are several set features associated with franchise CRM software that you should take into consideration. For instance, the software should be able to link all franchisee accounts to a single franchisor account under which the franchisees work. With this capability, the franchisor can disseminate contacts, reports, email templates, and other resources with the franchisees. 

Here are five ways to find the best franchise CRM software:

• Best franchise CRM should be able to keep track of your leads and manage them.

When it comes to the capabilities of franchise management, CRM software should come of help to you in setting up sales pipelines of two primary types for both franchisors and franchisees. Therefore, the types of sales pipelines you should contemplate creating include the following.

• Sales pipeline for the franchisors to manage potential leads keen on purchasing a franchise.

• Sales pipeline for franchisees to allow them to be in charge of their leads with starkly different processes.

It should be able to allow franchisors to obtain real-time visibility of the operations of each franchise location, their corresponding sales pipeline for the franchisee, and the communication history between the franchisee and its contacts. In this manner, the franchisor is empowered to detect likely issues and stretch out arms to provide support as and when needed.

• Best franchise CRM should be endowed with helpful features like automation, workflows, and templates.

Automation is paramount in franchise CRM. In addition, the software should possess the ability to distribute workflows and templates to franchisees spread across multiple locations. This will result in a considerable reduction of errors and time-saving.

The same approach applies to templates as well. Franchisees will need to gain access to templates their franchisor uses. Usually, franchisees save these templates and use them when needed. In this fashion, they can bring out the appropriate template and change it to satisfy specific needs.

If the franchise CRM you choose to work with is pre-designed with efficient workflows with varying levels of automation to effectuate routine processes, the action will free up sizeable time by letting you avoid the manual execution of processes or develop new workflows right from scratch.

Thus resources such as workflows, email templates, note templates, email marketing campaigns, project dashboards, sales pipelines, and more are to be shared with franchisees for quick execution of tasks with just a single click of a button. As far as franchise CRM is concerned this particular functionality is deemed to be of critical importance.

• It should be able to generate reports and share them with franchisees and other users.

It’s one of the major prerequisites of franchise CRM. The software should have the ability in sharing reports with the franchisees and various users. This is a time-saving approach that can be adopted by franchise locations across the board and multiple users. Only they’re required to define the formulas for the reports and feed them into the software. The reports will be automatically generated and accessible to all involved parties.

A few of the usually shared reports that both franchisors and franchisees make use of include the following.

• The average number of sales per region – this report is shared and useful to franchisees in preparing better quotations for their products, services, and labor.

• Different marketing reports that give information about the number of leads per channel and conversion rates – this report finds good use by franchises and users alike.

• The total number of sales per region or per territory depends on particular date ranges.

• The expenses involved in the acquisition of a new franchise – this report typically finds its way into franchise head offices.

In order to put the reporting process in place, it’s imperative that the software is capable of connecting all franchisee accounts spread across multiple locations with a single franchisor account. This helps is data get updated in real-time and produce reports with maximal accuracy.

Currently, if you’re resorting to reports whose data are manually updated, you’ll be fully aware of the huge amount of time such a task can consume. That’s why the implementation of franchise CRM is necessary to make certain the entire process is automated and organized.

• Best franchise CRM should have the capability of incorporating email marketing features into the franchise fold.

Email marketing happens to be a very powerful tool when it comes to franchise businesses. While the franchisor can leverage the potency of email marketing by sending targeted messages to either existing franchisees or prospective franchise buyers, franchisees can be at the helm of their email marketing campaigns to knock together drip campaigns aimed at engaging with customers and leads or send out email newsletters and promotional emails.

Read on to know inside out how you can take advantage of email marketing, once you consolidate it with the the software.

• By sharing pre-defined email templates with your franchisees with absolute ease.

• By sharing email marketing campaigns with your franchisees with very little effort.

• By increasing revenue generation when you upsell and cross-sell to your existing customers.

• By automating email campaigns.

• By sending out emails containing information on promotions and special deals offered by every franchise outlet.

• By sending newsletters carrying information about your brand or scheduled events planned at various franchisee locations.

• By tracking the number of both open and click-through leads so that you’re aware of the precise information required to successfully convert leads into franchise owners.

In so far as franchisors are involved they can gain access to email marketing stats or reports from the head offices and all conjoined franchisees. The information borne by these stats most importantly takes in the open, click-through, and reply rates.

• Best franchise CRM provides customizable sales pipelines for both franchisors and franchisees

By means of franchise CRM, you should be able to generate custom-made sales pipelines intended for franchisors and franchisees. Also, it’s imperative that you get hold of franchise CRM software that gives them the authorization to bring about customization of sales pipelines to piece your workflow needs together. Ideally, you’d wish to have a system that can effortlessly keep the sales pipelines up to date. For instance, in case the need for an overhaul in your sales processes crops up, the changes need to be done only at a single place without touching the franchise accounts.

Usually, these features facilitate the easy performance of sales-related tasks for both franchisors and franchisees. They help build up an effective system where work is performed by everyone to achieve common goals devoid of any confusion as to the nature of steps that need to be carried through to match up to customer expectations or comply with deadlines.