The Top 7 Features Every Franchise CRM Software Should Have

Franchise CRM software is a powerful tool that allows franchisors and franchisees to run their business more efficiently. In addition, it can help sales reps manage day-to-day operations, such as sales and customer service. This blog post will discuss the top seven features every Franchise CRM should have to help you find the right one for your franchise needs.

What is Franchise Customer Relationship Management Software?

Franchise Customer relationship management (CRM) software is designed to help franchisors manage interactions with their franchise leads and current franchisees. It can also serve as a CRM each franchise can use to manage their customers, prospects, and leads. In addition, it’s an effective tool for capturing important information about your contacts, which you can then use to track sales activities related to each customer, prospect, or franchise lead.

The CRM system also keeps track of your interactions with prospects, which your franchisees can follow up on potential customers who have expressed interest in their business. CRM software can also help you forecast sales-related activities, manage leads and other outreach efforts related to new customers, new franchises, schedule customer service tasks, create reports for each of your contacts, and more.

There are specific features related to a franchise CRM that you should consider. For example, a CRM built for franchises should allow all franchise CRM accounts to be connected to the main franchisor account. This allows the franchisor to easily share email templates, reports, contacts, and other resources with their franchisees. This blog post will cover these features in more detail below.

1. Ability to Track and Manage Your Franchise Leads

CRM software with franchise management capabilities should allow you to set up different sales pipelines for both the franchisor and franchisees.

Sales Pipelines You Should Consider Setting Up:

• Franchisor Sales Pipeline - This sales pipeline would manage your franchise leads interested in buying a franchise.
• Sales Pipelines for Your Franchisees - These sales pipelines would allow your franchisees to manage their leads and have entirely separate processes.

A franchise CRM should allow the franchisor to have real-time visibility over each franchise, their sales pipelines, and communication history with their contacts. This enables the franchisor to spot potential problems and reach out to offer support when needed.

Pro Tip: How You Can Use Franchise Lead Management Software to 10X Your Franchise Sales

2. Email Marketing Integration for the Franchisor and Franchisees

Email marketing is a potent tool for franchise businesses. As the franchisor, you can use email marketing to send targeted messages to potential franchise buyers or existing franchisees. At the same time, individual franchisees can manage their email marketing campaigns that allow them to send out promotional emails, email newsletters or set up drip campaigns for their leads and customers.

Here is a list of benefits of having email marketing integrated with your franchise CRM software:

• Easily share pre-built email templates and email marketing campaigns with your franchisees.
• Increase revenue by upselling and cross-selling to existing customers.
• Automate email campaigns, which can send out emails about special deals or promotions at each franchise location.
• Send newsletters with news about your brand, schedule events related to your franchisees' areas, etc.
• Track the number of opens versus click-throughs from franchise leads, so you know what information effectively converts leads into new franchise owners.
• As a franchisor, you will have email marketing stats on all emails from headquarters and each of your franchisees. These stats include open rates, click-through rates, reply rates, and more.

3. Time-Saving Features Like Templates, Workflows, and Automation

The franchise CRM you choose must have the ability to share your templates, workflows, and automation with your franchisees. This will save you a ton of time and reduce errors.

As a franchisee, you want to access the same templates your franchisor uses and then save them as needed. That way, you can quickly pull up a template and edit it to meet your specific needs.

The same goes for workflows: if your franchise CRM software has efficient workflows pre-designed with different automation for routine processes, this will free up time so that you don't need to manually do these processes or create new workflows from scratch.

As a franchisor, you need to share resources like this with your franchisees and do it quickly. Here at Pulse, you can share workflows, email marketing campaigns, email templates, note templates, sales pipelines, project boards, and much more with a click of a button.

This type of functionality represents a critical piece of what you should be looking for in a franchise CRM solution.

4. Ability to Share Reports With Other Users or Franchisees

Franchise CRMs should allow you to share reports with different users and each of your franchisees. This will save time for other users or franchise locations having to set up the formulas for the reports they need to access.

Some of the typical ways that both franchisors and franchisees can share reports:

• Share the average sale amount per region to help franchises quote their products, services, and jobs better.
• Marketing reports on the number of leads per marketing channel, conversion rates, etc., and you can share with other users or franchises.
• Total sales by territory or per region based on specific date ranges.
• Share data with other headquarters users on the cost of acquiring a new franchise and other franchise sales reports.

Having a franchise CRM that connects all franchise accounts to the franchisor account is critical for the reporting process. This allows data to update in real-time, giving the most accurate reports.

If you're currently manually updating data for your reports, you know how time-consuming this task can be, and that's why it's essential to have software to make this process automated.

5. Franchise Management Features That Are Integrated with the CRM

As a franchisor, you want to manage your franchisees and their respective locations as part of a more extensive network or family.

With the right franchise CRM software, this should be possible with features that allow for:

• Manage all of your franchise onboarding processes, and set automation to streamline the process.
• Keep the important data you need on each franchise location in one place.
• Give your franchisees the resources they need to succeed with a click of a button. The training, documents, manuals, templates, automated workflows, quote and invoice templates, and much more, all of which are important to your franchisee’s success.

This way, you can manage the entire process from a new lead interested in your franchise opportunity all of the ways through the process of getting their new franchise location up and running.

Pro Tip: The Power of Using Franchise Management Software with Sales and Marketing Automation

6. Customizable Sales Pipelines for Both the Franchisor and Franchisees

The best franchise CRMs will allow you to create customized sales pipelines for both the franchisor and their respective franchises.

It’s also essential to look for franchise CRM software that allows you to customize sales pipelines to fit your workflow needs. You want a system that makes it easy to update the sales pipelines as well. For example, if you need to change your sales processes, you should only have to update it in one place and not for every franchise account.

These features should make the sales process easier for both franchisors and franchisees alike. They create an efficient system where everyone works together towards common goals without confusion about what steps need to happen next to meet deadlines or keep customers happy.

Pro Tip: 10 Strategies Franchisors Use to Fill their Sales Pipeline

7. Personalized Quotes & Invoices

Finally, a franchise CRM should give your franchisees the ability to generate personalized quotes and invoices for their prospects and customers. This is a great way to keep track of forecasted sales numbers per franchise, by territory, or broken down by region.

This functionality should be easy-to-use, so your franchisees can create professional-looking quotes quickly. As your franchise system grows, this type of functionality will save a tremendous amount of time for your franchisees.

Having a CRM that has all of your franchise accounts connected will also update sales data as soon as a quote is created, giving you real-time visibility on what’s happening.

Conclusion

Franchise CRM and management software is an essential tool for any franchisor. The right CRM will help you track leads, manage franchises, and grow your franchise system. So if you’re looking for a CRM that has all of these features plus more, contact us today! Our team will be happy to give you a demo of Pulse for Franchises.