What Happens After You Enquire? Here’s Exactly What to Expect I The Real Franchise Episode 34

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Real Franchise, a video series designed to deliver real information, real answers and real insight into franchising. The series is brought to you by James HomeServices Australia. I’m the CEO and Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses. Together we tackle all the big topics completely unscripted, no plans and no filters, no sales and no fluff.

We just give you information straight out. Today’s topic is about the process. When you make an inquiry and specifically what happens immediately after you make an inquiry, Justin, let’s dive straight in. What happens when someone submits an inquiry to us about starting a business with James?

Justin We will call you, that’s the first step.

Rhiannon It’s kind of a simple answer, isn’t it? We’ll call you. Is this an odd thing to do? Does everybody call? Why do we call?

Justin Well, apparently it is an odd, thing to do, because, well, we get hundreds of inquiries every month. I call hundreds of people every month. And so often the responses like get shock. Yeah, what? A real person called me. I just thought you’d send an information kit or whatever. And, yes, we can do all of those things. But I guess and I guess part of the point of this video is to sort of really highlight that we will call you, and that call is what we term a discovery call, because it’s not it’s not like a sales call because it’s too early on to sell.

You know, we’ve just recently done another episode of this on ethical sales. So we’re not going to sell you a business in that first phone call or even attempt to. The purpose of the call is to say hi, what are you looking for? And is this possibly even a fit?

Rhiannon Yeah, you might say.

Justin And if it’s not, that’s great. You know, wish you all the best and we’ll talk that through. But if it is a fit, then we can go to the next step. Because you’re on an information journey. Right. And I often find we were just talking about that. People at the end of the first phone call again, okay, we’ll come back to you with a decision.

That’s like, but you haven’t got any information yet to make a decision. Yeah, but yes, it’s really about discovery.

Rhiannon The discovery call is about taking that pressure completely off the table and saying, hey, total safe space. We’re going to ask you questions to better understand your current situation and what’s really triggered your interest in starting a business, because it’s a really big decision right behind getting married, starting a family and buying a house, starting a business is probably the first big decision most people will ever make in their lives.

And so many of our network are making this decision before they’re getting married, buying a house, starting a family because business ownership is now fantastically being normalized as a very legitimate way to create wealth, which I love. It’s great. I’m so proud. Business. So the discovery call is about us asking you questions. What’s your current situation? And what about that current situation has triggered you to be interested in such a big decision, right.

And so we also ask questions that help us to understand exactly what it is about that current situation that’s got you thinking about a business as well as if everything worked out. What are you hoping? Starting a business will help you to achieve. And it’s that that we’re really interested in, not just in why are we so interested in?

Like, what do you want out of this? Why is that a question we even ask in that first coat? Because it’s such a big picture question. Why is it that we’re interested in understanding what someone’s trying to achieve?

Justin Because we need to be confident that this business can deliver that. Yeah. Because if if it can, then that individual is never going to feel happy, confident. They can very quickly regret the decision, you know, because it’s not delivering at night what they were looking for. You know, and everyone comes with different reasons. And desires. You know, we frequently have people that just want two days a week.

I’m just looking for something that I can fill in my Thursday and Friday, and that’s great. I understand that getting older on in life, I would love to be able to just do Thursday and Friday every week. But our business, it’s not you’re not going to be able to build a successful business just working on Thursday and Friday from the start, you know, down the track, you might be able to employ staff and all the rest of it.

We talk about that. But in the beginning that’s going to have to be a full time commitment.

Rhiannon Yeah. And so yeah, we’re looking for that fit. You know, what we’re looking for because we our network, we don’t kind of, you know, onboard you, train you and then push you out into the real world and say, I hope you do. Well, give us a call. You know where we are if you need anything, right? We it’s a genuine partnership.

We partner we are in partnership with our business owners. And we support them to build successful businesses in our network. And so, so much of trying to understand what it is that they’re trying to build is can we actually support them to build that? Is that something that we know with confidence that our network can legitimately help them to step toward if they’re following our system?

Because we’ve got 30 years of experience of doing this right. We know what works. We know what doesn’t work. And so it it’s really easy for us to be able to if we’re asking the right questions in that first call. It’s really easy for us to be able to give a very objective assessment to someone of whether the product, the service that we offer in a business in support is actually going to help them achieve their goals.

So, Justin, how long would you normally spend on an on a discovery call with someone and what type of questions like, what are some of the questions that someone might expect that you might ask them?

Justin Yeah. First question I find at least 15 minutes. And in fact, a lot of our people that in our book we use this great app we’re on a lot of the marketing way. I can jump into my calendar, find a gap, and I book a call and that’s a 15 minute call. So I find sometimes it goes over, but it could 15 minutes and the sorts of questions, really just phoning out, you know, what they’re looking for, what they want out of the business.

What have they been doing? You know, what sort of work do they enjoy doing? Do you like being inside? Outside? You know, do you have family? Do you have support around you? Is it you on your own, or do you have, you know, all those sorts of things help us get a very clear picture. Because, yeah, everyone is so different.

You know, there’s there’s some common themes we find in what we call and what deals. You know, we often find, the people who really love these businesses and do exceptionally well, you know, stuck in the 9 to 5. Yeah. Want to get some control back, but understand the be successful. Got to put in effort and work hard.

You know, this isn’t the business to, you know, do a day or two and you’re going to make a million bucks. It doesn’t work like that.

Rhiannon It’s not a get rich quick scheme at all.

Justin The other one that I often, I’ve had a couple in the last week this way is. And our businesses, you know, our foundational businesses like cleaning and lawn and garden area take it. And both of it are very physical. So I had a go at this week that, you know, has had an injury and been out of the workforce for quite a few years, has a super bad back, can’t do anything physical that came up because I was asking these questions and I was able to say, well, look, these are physical businesses.

In the beginning, you would have to be the one out there doing the job. You know, once you build your customer base, yeah, then you can employ staff. You know, I in my own businesses at the end or I wasn’t doing any of the jobs or I had stuff out there, but it would be unrealistic to expect to be able to do that from the beginning.

Yeah. So those are the sorts of questions and rabbit holes we go down, just about whether they’re a good fit.

Rhiannon Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And as well as that being a question, you know, what are you hoping that this business gives to you. And often as a response to that we get things like, well, hey, I’m stuck in a 9 to 5 grind. I spend two hours every day commuting and that’s wasted time. I could be spent.

I’ve got a young family and I feel like I never get to say them. I am passing ships in the night with my wife and have been for the last five years. You know, I have spent the last two decades working in Fifo work. And so my kids have grown up and I have barely been home. And we get all of these things and all of these reasons that have triggered someone to inquire with us.

And those are very common things that our network does very genuinely help to alleviate, because we do give a lot of flexibility to how you run your business in the time that you spend running it, and how you make it work in with your life. So let’s switch gears from questions to what I observe sometimes is that, in this first phone call, this first interaction, this discovery call, naturally, the person who’s inquired also has questions of us.

You know, they are also trying to do their research and their due diligence about us. So in this call, do we dive into copious amounts of information or overload them with stuff about us, or do we really focus on finding fit first? What’s our process?

Justin Yeah, a process is is finding fit first?

Rhiannon Yeah.

Justin And then if we think, hey, this could be an option, you know. Yes, you could be. And I feel the same then what we do is book, I book a Zoom meeting, for an information session so we can actually talk face to face. It’s not just a phone call. We can talk like this. Get to know each other a bit more and then go through all the questions and concerns and, and and answer them and, and show them.

So it’s, it’s very much a personal tailored approach to.

Rhiannon And that zoom call can be up to an hour even more longer, you know, with that kind of time cap, those calls, because it really is. But once we figured that we think there looks to be alignment and a fit, then very much at ease that we switch gears and, you know, we do want to make sure that we are answering all of the questions that an inquiry has and that we are enabling them to be doing their research and their due diligence on us.

So there’s no kind of time cap. I mean, even to that first call, right? We say it’s 15 minutes. I’ve had first calls that have gone for half an hour because there’s just such alignment. We get chatting. They’re a great person. I’m really enjoying the the conversation. I mean, what you said before we end up down rabbit holes and I’ve ended up down rabbit holes with people talking about dairy farming and, how to raise potty calves.

Like, it’s so interesting where those calls can go, you know, because at the end of the day, we’re humans. The people who are inquiring are humans and humans like connection. And we like to find that, you know, we like to find if there is that alignment. So there isn’t a time cap, there’s no pressure. We don’t, you know, we’re not clock watching.

And often that second session, what we call the information session can be an hour long because we want to make sure that we’re answering all your questions. It leads me to another question or more like a statement, I guess, that, I’d like your thoughts on is that the part of the reason why we have, you know, several different stages to our information process because before, we’ve also talked about an opportunity to meet other franchise business owners in our network.

That comes after the information session. So discovery call information session, then you have an opportunity to meet other business owners. Then we kind of get into like the pointy end of, of you know, applications and franchise agreements, etc. but we’ve got a multitude of different contact points. The for you’re making a decision.

Justin That’s it.

Rhiannon Why do we do that. And in fact, is there a pressure at any point for someone to make a decision like what can someone expect when they in our process. So we pressuring them at some point for a decision to be made?

Justin No, no definitely not. And you know, I think so often what we’re talking about at the messaging of what we’re putting out in the marketplace, we’re really, going to, change or not change, but evolving further because it’s all about information and it’s about we as a network are very much about transparency and getting the information out there.

So we have people in that first phone call go, okay, well, I’ll think about it and come up with a decision and get back to you. Right. And it’s like, well, you haven’t got any information like you haven’t got the information yet to make it valid decision.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Justin So, you know, it’s more at that first phone call, as we said, is about fit. And then it’s about going through getting the information. And then you fill in an application so that we can decide whether we feel you’re a good fit. And if we say, yeah, yes. You then get sent a franchise agreement. So, you know, you can’t really say yes, you’re going to join James until you get a copy of the agreement and go through the agreement and check that out and get independent advice.

Then at that, you got that for two weeks. You got to have the agreement for two weeks before you can sign it. So really the pointy end of the stick making a decision is when you’re signing, which is probably most cases 4 to 6 weeks from the time of that discovery. Cool.

Rhiannon Yeah, I would say even I would say even on average it’s 6 to 8 weeks. Because we don’t rush people through that process, you know? Yes, we encourage people to take it at their own pace. And, you know, you’re not going to find that you’re on a call with us and we’re trying to, you know, at all costs, just push you to the next stage in our process.

And actually, if you indicate hesitation nine times out of ten, it’s a great indicator to us that you’re not ready yet. You’re not there. You don’t yet have the buy in that we know someone needs to make one of our businesses work. And so if you back off so to wait because we don’t want to push you because that’s the absolute worst thing we could do in that moment is keep pushing you and influence a decision.

You know, our whole process is designed to give you time, to give you information, to give us the opportunity to make sure that we are genuinely a fit and take that pressure off the whole purpose of that discovery coal is to take the pressure off the entire situation, and it’s actually us that kind of underlined the underlying message from us is kind of like, cool, thank you so much for your interest.

Let’s just have a chat. No pressure on either party. Let’s just have a chat. Let’s just feel out whether this could work genuinely. If it does, okay, we’ve got a next step that you can go to if you want to. If it doesn’t, no worries. You did your due diligence. You’ve got the answer that you need. It gives you certainty about where you might be going or might not be going in for the next step.

That’s excellent. Have a great day. So there’s no pressure. The whole our whole process is designed around not forcing someone to the next step because it’s not it’s not ethical to do that. It doesn’t work. And if somebody isn’t ready to go to the next step willingly, then that’s a really good sign. They’re not ready yet. So it’s not wise for us to force them.

Justin Not you just hit the nail on the head. It doesn’t work if you pressure someone to the next step. I don’t want to encourage anyone because people listening to this are probably talking to a range of networks and other businesses, and I wonder if you ever feel pressured. Let that be a sign to back off.

Rhiannon Yeah, pull back.

Justin Like it’s yeah, you should never be pressured into it. If this is a big decision and it’s important to get the information so that you know it’s right for you and your family.

Rhiannon Yeah. You know, the other one I hear often from business owners that have chosen to go with us and start a business with James, some of their feedback is, you know, we didn’t feel any pressure throughout your process. It was so open. All the information was there. You guys were really transparent. Any question we asked, you answered even if it wasn’t the perfect answer or the answer that, you know, even if it was a really gnarly question, you just gave us an answer.

You didn’t try and duck-shovel, you know? And we didn’t feel any pressure throughout the process. At any stage when someone gives us that feedback, I feel like I feel so proud that that’s what we stand for and that’s what we do. And conversely, it’s very common for us to hear, I kind of went down the process with, you know, another network a little while ago.

But look, I kind of pulled out something just didn’t feel right. It just felt off. And, and I would say, if you’re in that situation and it just doesn’t feel right, it’s your gut sending you a signal. Pull back, do more research, take more time, and please don’t allow yourself to be pressured to the next step because if it doesn’t feel right, trust it.

It doesn’t feel right. You know, I had another question for you. Gosh, I’ve gone completely blank. It was a good one, too. What was it about?

Justin It is so important for people to back their awareness. Business coach has always said to me, back your awareness. Ignore it at your own peril.

Rhiannon Yeah. Absolutely true. What happens? What happens if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, I don’t know if I’m ready to speak to a person about this shit? Like, I’m early stages. I’m still doing my research. If I make an inquiry, you guys are telling me you’re going to call me now, that’s great, but I’m not ready to for a coal.

Yeah. Do we have other options for people who aren’t quite ready to speak to us yet, but still want to do their research?

Justin Well, absolutely. This is one of the options you’re listening to. It.

Rhiannon Yeah. It is.

Justin So there’s there’s dozens of of these, podcast recordings, in this series that cover all sorts of topics that will be of relevance to someone who is doing research. We also have a website. We have, all sorts of videos and information and blog posts. Go to our website. There’s links to all sorts of things on there so that you can do literally hours and hours of research if you’re serious.

Rhiannon Oh yeah, and often, often happens. Right. Often it’s so common for for us to get a call from someone or for us to, you know, have that discovery call. And the feedback is, oh, I’ve been watching you and Justin or, you know, you and Rhiannon on those videos for months. I’ve been actually what was it yesterday you said that the last three information sessions that you’ve done have been with people who have been watching these videos, and so that’s exactly what you can do if you’re not ready to talk to us yet, that’s totally fine.

Keep watching these videos. You can also go to our website and download our full information pack. Now that seems like everything you could want to know about us. There’s not much more that we don’t cover in that pack. And actually, I’m really excited because at the moment we’re very we’re renewing what that information packages and at the moment it to document.

It’s pretty hefty. And my feeling is that it’s probably too many pages for most people to have time to sit down and really read through it and take all that information in. So what we’re doing is we’re moving towards some short videos that address all of those key points of information, but in a more engaging form, so that it takes you less time, but you can still take on that information.

You get a little bit more of a feel for who we are, what we stand for, what we do. So there are so many ways that you could be researching us before you talk to us. So if you just don’t want a phone call yet, don’t make an inquiry yet. Do your research first. And then when you feel like you would like to talk to us and have that, could this work conversation, then make an inquiry, make an inquiry when you’re ready.

Justin Yep, yep.

Rhiannon That’s good. That’s it. I think that’s the perfect place to leave this video. I hope that that’s been informative for anybody who’s listening. I hope that if you’re listening because you were like, you know, kind of holding back on making inquiry because you’re not quite sure what happens next. I hope this has shed some light on that process, and I hope it’s given you permission to take a deep breath and go, whoof!

These guys are not trying to sell ice to Eskimos. They are just trying to figure out whether this is the right thing for both parties, because that genuinely is what we’re trying to do. So with that, thank you for listening along. Thank you for making all the way to the end of another episode of The Real franchise, and we hope that you join us soon for the next one.