3 Franchise Pipeline Archetypes
Align your HubSpot setup with your archetype for less friction and frustration.
In This Lab Report
There are 3 main archetypes for Franchise Sales Pipelines and HubSpot needs to be configured to align with the archetype you’re using otherwise you’ll have friction and frustration in your process and your data.
3 Franchise Pipeline Archetypes
If your frandev sales approach doesn’t match your HubSpot setup you’ll have trouble tracking leads and opportunities, you’ll probably drop the ball on qualification because you’re working against your own system, and reporting will be a mess.
There are 3 pipeline archetypes that can be defined by how qualification is handled. The archetype you’re operating determines how HubSpot should be configured — Lifecycle Stages, Lead Status, Deal Pipeline stages, automation triggers, reporting, even views.
You’re probably running one of these right now. HubSpot should be configured to support the archetype your operating. If it isn’t, you’re fighting your own system.
Archetype 1: Basic Pre-qualification
This is probably the most common archetype in franchise sales: get a lead, an SDR or Appointment Setting does a first pass pre-qualification books a Discovery Meeting with a Franchise Director with pre-qualified leads. At that point the director would work a Deal through the rest of the sales process from Territory, FDD Review, Discovery Day and Closing. If you use a Franchise Application if comes after the Deal is created.
What this means for HubSpot: You’re working Contacts and Deals. That’s feasible it just means you need to be on top of your data model, your Lifecycle Stages, and how you manage records—your Leads can’t just be a big pool of names. You need process and systems to support the qualification workflow.
You also need a good handoff from the Appointment Setter to the Director so the process doesn’t feel clunky to the franchise candidate. You also need clear qualification criteria and a feedback loop from the Director back to the Appointment Setter.
Archetype 2: Heavy Pre-qualification
A lot of Franchises will nurture leads but require a completed Franchise Application before a Lead can meet with a Director. Brands with a high lead volume (especially if they have attracted a high level of unqualified leads in the past), high capital requirements, or with limited territory availability will often use this approach.
What this means for HubSpot: Your filtering and nurturing engine has to do heavy lifting here to drive qualified candidates to the application without alienating or losing them. Use a custom object in HubSpot for the Franchise Application to more effectively manage the process of reviewing, scoring, and accepting them.
Strong research content, a solid nurturing/retargeting strategy, and Brand recognition will help your out massively. An application is easy for a qualified candidate to “remember to do later” and never come back to, especially if similar concepts don’t require the application up front and the candidate can talk to other Directors with less effort.
Archetype 3: In-Pipeline Qualification
This is a streamlined approach that tracks the frandev process from inquiry to Closed Won using the Deal record even though information may be stored on the Contact record, Application Object etc. Most Brands using this approach still use an SDR or Appointment Setting to qualify up front they just always create a Deal to work. This isn’t a wrong approach. It has a lot to recommend it. But it does take some care to measure correctly.
What this means for HubSpot: Your Deal Pipeline pulls double duty including unqualified and qualified opportunities. An unqualified lead is one in the first stage and qualified leads are in stages 2 and later. Your reporting needs to account for that.
Handoff between the SDR/Appointment Setter and the Director is more streamlined, your pipeline velocity is easier to measure, and so are your conversion rates. You just have to be careful filtering Deals and how you define leads in conversion because its easy to conflate them. it also require a little more care to automate nurturing and reactivation.
A Note on Franchise Applications
Wherever you use a Franchise Application in your process please use a Custom Object in HubSpot. This gives you cleaner data, a pipeline for tracking the process, and much better reporting. Stuffing application data into Contact properties or using external systems will just make a mess of your process and your data.
What About the HubSpot Leads Object?
I get asked this occasionally by people who have used Salesforce in other industries. HubSpot designed the Leads object for B2B sales. Its designed to track a company and find the buyers inside it. That’s obviously not how franchise sales works. Stick with Contacts, Deals, and Custom Objects.
Which Archetype Are You Running?
Check whether your HubSpot setup actually supports the archetype of your FranDev process. Friction and frustration with your system, process, and especially data and reporting can often be traced to misalignment between your process and how you have HubSpot set up.