It takes a recruiter up to 30 minutes to ‘speak with’ one new lead! Think about it. It starts with manual or auto entry in a CRM, error checks, research, territory lookup, 1st call + voicemail + email; 2nd call + voicemail + email and finally 3rd call + voicemail + email. The more personalized your message(s) to the new lead the longer it takes to think it through and make it relevant. Time, time, time.

As an experienced franchise recruitment executive, I know about handling and qualifying leads on behalf of franchisors. Heck, I’ve been doing it successfully for over 12 years now. When I look back to how I used to do things, it goes to show how combining a new philosophy based on changing buyer behavior along with investing in a complete recruitment management solutions can transform efficiency as well as results…

In 2003, when I first started working leads (many recruiters will identify), I used to copy the details into an Excel spreadsheet, and also send out an email with more information and usually leave a voicemail.

I became pretty efficient at manually working leads this way. So in my first 4 years I tried all kinds of different systems and approaches – As well as Excel, I also tried Act! and Outlook, among others, as well as simply printing the lead information out and then following up each bit of paper and making notes on that bit of paper!

I started using a stopwatch to time everything I did in relation to working leads and, as efficient as I got, 15 minutes was the basic time I needed to ensure that: I had saved the lead details in a place I could find them; sent an email to the lead with more info; given them a call (which 70% of the time led to a voicemail, and 20% of the time people weren’t ready to talk); then set a reminder to do it all over again if I didn’t hear back in a week (which usually meant calling back 90% of the leads).

Time is money

I realized all this as I was working around 300 leads a month on behalf of two brands at the time. Busy yes. Unproductive, massive. Effective, yes and no.

I was spending 75 hours a month simply doing the basics trying to speak to leads! This is exactly 2 weeks (working a 37.5 hour week), or half of my time every month!

This shocked me so I started to seriously look at more efficient methods to work new leads as well as a solution to help me identify the top 10-20% of leads who were most serious and could turn into Qualified Prospects.

Why today is different

That was a long time ago and times sure have changed.

I spent three years (2006-2009) creating a franchisee recruitment solution, and a further five years refining it. Every year sees new developments and evolution as the solution adapts to new franchise shopper behavior online and offline.

So here we are in 2016. Recall it used to take me 15 minutes to work a new lead on average. With a great recruitment pipeline management solution I can say with all humility and confidence that I take virtually zero minutes to work new leads.

Now I concentrate on real Qualified Prospects. I’m free to make sure my franchise opportunity story-telling is complete, clear and consistent. Bottom line, my goals are met regularly and my clients are happy.