The Importance of Selling in Earnest

Too often are franchise sales people guilty of not selling in earnest. Yes, they will say that they are giving an effort but the evidence is clear that they are not really giving it their full attention and effort—they have failed to recognize the importance of selling in earnest.

At FranchiseOpportunities.com we are responsible for generating more than 25,000 franchise leads per month. As such I am privy to many a franchise sales call “dropped-ball”. We receive feed-back on a regular basis from prospective franchisees informing us how well and how poorly the franchisor’s sales call have gone. For example, last week I received this e-mail from a prospective franchisee:

Between the unprofessional contact made today, and the spelling error in the email, we will not be pursuing a business venture with you. We would prefer to invest elsewhere. Good luck with your franchise.

Cordially, A. Kann

Clearly, the salesman failed to sell in earnest. The manner in which he could have prosecuted his duties in a more earnest fashion can be found in a line from Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest.

In the play Algernon Moncrieff quips

If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

While this line may drip with satirical arrogance franchisors would do well to find the importance in the sentiments behind the lines. To wit: that one must always be on the top one’s game when one is selling, and each sales person must be able to compensate for a short-coming in one area of his/her presentation with a stellar showing in another area.

Many are the instances in which I hear from a prospective franchisee that the franchise sales person was either unprofessional and/or unprepared. Algernon Moncrieff would have considered this person to be “under-dressed”. Of course it should go without saying that sartorially speaking being a little over-dressed is always better than being under-dressed. To extend again the metaphor to franchise sales, the franchise sales person who is a “little overdressed” will almost always come out ahead of the franchise sales person that is underdressed. For one can never be over-professional or over-prepared when one is talking to a prospective franchisee. (As an aside, I would argue that all sales people should be literally a “little overdressed”. It becomes much too easy to not give an earnest effort when one has too casual an attitude about the sales call. Therefore, professional attire should be de rigueur in all sales rooms.)

As far as being over-educated, a sales person can never be over-educated. Unfortunately, too many franchise sales teams come across as being the opposite of over educated—they are seen as un-educated. In what form does this take shape? First and foremost in the form of poorly constructed e-mails. Many are the e-mails that I read from franchisors that are replete with misspelled words and poor grammar. But I also know that many prospective franchisees find poor grammar on the phone to be a big strike against the franchise.

But education is not simply scholastic. To be educated is to understand the nuances of the sales process—specifically, when to push and how hard to push? Too many times we are told by prospective franchisees that the franchisor’s sales persistence is viewed as rudeness and/or a failure to respect the privacy of the individual and his or her wishes on when to be contacted and by what means. I am fully aware that there is a delicate line between pushiness and persistence. But the franchise sales team with the most franchise sales is the team that walks this line with the greatest aplomb.

The recession has made the franchise sales person’s job much more challenging. There is nothing any of us—franchisor or franchise portal—can do about it. What can be done is to make certain that sales people are both “over-dressed” and “over-educated”.