Text Request Talks
4 Franchise Expansion Tips with Thomas Scott of Home Run Franchises
Business texting can grow your franchise brand, but you need the right metrics for success in place.
Here’s how to use texting messaging to share resources with your franchisees, help them close more opportunities, and streamline customer service, all so you can expand your franchise.
This article takes insights from our Text Request Talks podcast with Thomas Scott, and further distills them into advice specific to texting. Thomas is the CEO and Founder of Home Run Franchises, and has over 25 years of experience in franchising with numerous brands.
The following tips expand on how to meet the same goals Scott does with text messaging.
Watch the full interview on YouTube.
1. Stay in contact with your franchisees.
Scott says that supported franchisees equal profitable franchisees. Text messaging gives your franchise brand an easy way to stay connected with franchisees, and share resources and encouragement ongoing, so you can better support them.
Mass text your franchisees everything from:
Upcoming brand events
Reminders for franchisee webinars
New partnerships or tech
Brand milestones
Customer success stories
Location success stories
Survey links to report performance
Mass texts, like BCC email, give your franchise the power to reach everyone at once. Any replies become one-on-one conversations that can be used to further help franchisees.
Scott’s ultimate goal for his own team is to make sure they have everything they need to be successful without him. Text messaging can support that overall leadership and training goal when you regularly send resources.
2. Set clear communication goals.
Your team counts on you for direction, especially when there are so many aspects to successfully running a location. That means if they’re going to use text messaging successfully, you need to help them narrow down which communication goals they want to tackle with texting.
Scott suggests teaching your team which outcomes they should be pursuing. The five biggest outcomes we recommend franchises focus on with their text messaging are:
Time saved — The speed at which tasks are completed compared to calls or emails
Responses — The rate at which people take an action after you message them
Revenue earned — The amount of sales or services that can be contributed to texts
Appointments kept — The amount of appointments booked or kept via text
Stress reduced — The overall rating of how your team feels about work day-to-day
Aligning your team around one or two common goals will improve your results, as opposed to having them scramble to tackle everything all at once. That’s why Scott says franchisees will be more engaged and effective when the parameters for success are laid out.
3. Be available at all times and for any opportunity.
You can never predict when a potential new franchisee will reach out to you. Likewise your franchisees can never predict when a potential customer might suddenly realize they need your franchise’s service or product.
The beauty of business texting is that people can message you at any point in their day without needing to drop everything. Scott says advertising this availability is what drives customer acquisition.
Text messaging gives your team the power to be available at all times, especially when you utilize tools like autoresponders.
An autoresponder automatically sends a reply to all inbound messages. It can be turned on and off depending on the time of day. The best part is these autoresponses can be customized with instructions to keep your appointment flow going, like:
“Thanks for choosing [Company]! Use this link to fill out a request: [link] Someone from our team will get back to you shortly.”
Customers will be satisfied knowing their inquiry is in your system, and you get to keep business flowing, even when it’s after hours or on the weekend.
4. Handle customer service via text.
Customers have come to expect immediate replies from businesses. That’s why 77% of them want to text your franchise for customer service.
Scott says if you give customers an instantaneous way to reach your franchisees for help, you’re going to beat out competitors. Business texting gives your franchise locations an immediate way to:
Answer customer questions and solve problems in real-time
Text pictures and PDFs to speed up back-and-forths
Improve customer retention with follow-up texts
Prioritize speed and efficiency for your brand’s customer service, and you’ll gain an edge over competitors while strengthening your customer relationships.
How Else Can Text Messaging Grow Your Franchise?
The above are just a few quick tips—but we have an entire in-depth franchise text messaging playbook for those who want to learn even more ways to implement SMS into your expansion tactics.
Our business texting software has helped hundreds of franchises grow, and we’re ready to help yours next!
