Franchisee Ryan Wooley and his Operations Manager Jose Areizaga have been networking in a big way, and many of the connections they’ve forged have become part of their unofficial sales force.
Industry partners make up 67% of business
“We have earned 67 per cent of our business so far from our ‘channel partners’ – people that are selling for us,” says Jose. “We got out there – to trade shows, to bridal shows. We made phone calls, we knocked on doors, we put in the face time. And really when you do that, you start making these personal connections with event planners and venues, they understand your customer service and they begin to trust you.”
These third-party partners do multiple events a month. They have the connections, and their own infrastructure and customers.
Ryan notes that it’s a different kind of sales pitch when trying to build relationships with industry partners: “You provide a value-proposition to the reseller. You share revenue with them and gain access to a large volume of potential clients.”
It’s working like a charm. Ryan adds that many new TapSnap franchisees aren’t yet in a position to hire their own sales force, but if you can find people in the industry and get them selling for you, it’s actually more effective and easier because they already have events and connections.
Their goal is to add sixty new channel partners every quarter, which leads to their next tip.
Have a plan
You have to have a plan, says Ryan. Write it down. That’s what makes it happen.
“We plan absolutely everything,” says Ryan. “Every day, every week, every month, every quarter.”
And then they measure the results. They use a combination of their historical reference (which is still quite short since TapSnap is a new franchise), and their expectations to measure their performance.
“We want every machine that we have to be booked twice a week. Two events per unit per week is our goal at an average unit cost of $1,200. That’s our financial goal,” says Ryan.
Their other goals include increasing the density of units, so they have the flexibility to provide a second unit at a large event that increases the average value of that event. “If we could get $1,800 per event instead of $1,200 it still is equitable to have more units,” he says.
“We continually press forward and challenge ourselves every day,” says Ryan, adding that he believes in the saying: Failure to plan is planning to fail.
Jump on those leads
It goes without saying how important it is to return any customer calls as quickly as possible. When Jose gets a lead, he jumps on it, calling then back immediately.
When he finishes an event, he calls the event hosts within 24 hours to make sure they were happy, satisfied and to get feedback. He always asks them if they’d be willing to put a testimonial on business review sites like Yelp or The Wedding Channel.
These may seem like little things, but they go a long way to growing your TapSnap business.
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