Service 03 · Sales & Recruitment
Find the right franchisees — not the first ones.
Most networks that fail, fail in year three. The failure was written into the recruitment funnel two years earlier. Our job is to make sure yours wasn't.
The work
Three stages, one outcome.
Before recruitment.
The franchisee profile, in writing. The discovery day, designed for diagnosis as much as for charm. The scorecard that turns "this person feels right" into something a team can apply consistently.
During recruitment.
Channel strategy across digital, broker, expo and organic referral. A qualification framework that gets to "no" faster than most founders are comfortable with — and to "yes" with more confidence than most have earned.
After signing.
The first ninety days. A training architecture that treats new operators as apprentices, not graduates. The field support cadence that catches small problems before they become network problems.
Where most franchisors lose
Four expensive mistakes.
Hiring a recruitment agency without a profile.
Most franchisee mismatches start here. The agency does what agencies do — generate leads. Without a profile, the leads are noise.
Selling on emotion in the discovery day.
A great founder is a great storyteller. The discovery day is not the moment to tell the best version of the story.
Treating territory as a marketing problem.
Territory is a unit-economics problem disguised as a map. Solve it in the model, not in the brochure.
Treating onboarding as a checklist.
A franchisee is not "trained" the way an employee is "trained." Onboarding is an apprenticeship, with the founder's culture as the curriculum.
Process
Profile, funnel, pilot, scale.
Step 1
Profile
2 weeks. Who, exactly, you want — and don't.
Step 2
Funnel build
3–4 weeks. Channels, qualification, discovery day, scorecard.
Step 3
Pilot intake
8–12 weeks. First wave of franchisees, deliberately.
Step 4
Refine & scale
Ongoing. The programme grows up with the network.
From our practice
A live intake.
Vitaland Kids Cafe — refining the franchisee profile for the next ten venues.
A ten-year-old network with eight venues across NSW and WA. The model is proven. The next ten franchisees will be decided not by how loudly the brand markets, but by how disciplined the intake becomes. The work is the funnel, the profile, and the discovery day.
Read the case study →