Batteries Plus Reaches 70% of its Annual Target by Q1 with FranConnect’s Sales Accelerator

Text message with AI over phone
Batteries Plus Logo

About Batteries Plus: Powering the Economy

Batteries Plus sells batteries of all shapes and capacities, as well as related products such as lighting and generators, and complementary services including installation, repair, and consultation. With 700 locations and a 150,000 ft² distribution center, it is an important supplier to many homes and businesses. Its commercial customers make up 33% of its revenues and see its offerings as mission-critical.

As the largest licensee for Duracell in the USA and armed with a range of national accounts, Batteries Plus is an attractive option for prospective franchisees. Relatively low staffing requirements, rapid time to revenues, and revenue diversity are a few of the factors that make it ideal for growth and legacy building. Indeed, most of its franchisees are multi-unit owners.

Batteries Plus- Exterior
Batteries Plus Interior Store Image

Opportunity: Spark Funnel Velocity

Joe Malmuth, Chief Development Officer, saw the speed of progress along the sales funnel as a fundamental success factor for the franchise’s growth. For franchise development, shrinking the time from lead inquiry to a signed agreement means growing proportionately faster.

To drive this metric, the development team has run a weekly sales-velocity report for years, showing when a lead progresses from one status to the next. The executive team reviews this report in detail as a key measurement and early growth indicator.

Buzz around the brand significantly increased organic lead flow, leading to more growth and yet more buzz. The team was excited to harness this virtuous cycle but scrambled to promptly contact the high volume of prospects.

Batteries Plus needed to drive a dual objective to get in front of leads faster and increase the capacity of the team to handle additional lead volume. As Joe pointed out, these two goals build on each other.

Sales Accelerator is a force multiplier. It makes our sales team much, much more effective at what they do.

Joe Malmuth
Chief Development Officer

Strategy: Light the Process with AI

No stranger to the concept of pairing powerful automation with human talent and a tightly knit process, the franchise development team set out to apply artificial intelligence (AI) at the mouth of the sales funnel with the express intent to keep developers’ calendars full of appointments with qualified candidates. 

Brandon Mangual, Vice President of Franchise Development, reasoned that streamlining the process from lead arrival to the first executive meeting would bear tremendous fruit in two ways.

  • First, he underscored the value of establishing, as early as possible in the sales process, a relationship with the same person who would carry the deal to a successful close.

  • Second, he pointed out that the combination of higher conversion and higher capacity (thanks to less time spent chasing) would help capitalize on the increased lead volume and even justify substantially increasing lead spend, which for their team centers primarily around paid digital.

Victor Daher, who manages the back end of franchise development, added that the Batteries Plus organization was already fully poised to take advantage of increased early-stage conversion.

We can have a new unit operational in 2-4 months, compared to 6-24 months in other retail verticals. We just need a way to get in front of as many qualified people as possible, and fast.

Victor Dahan
Victor Daher
Vice President, Franchise Development
Batteries Plus Store and Employees

Solution: Plug in Sales Accelerator

Batteries Plus arranged for the Sales Accelerator (SA) to reach out, via text messaging, to leads entering its FranConnect CRM. Workflow automation within FranConnect sent SA the lead information in real-time upon arrival. 

A prospective franchisee who fills in a lead form immediately receives a text introducing Batteries Plus and offering to schedule a brief chat with a developer. Many schedule the chat within minutes. Others do not respond immediately; prospects are often busy corporate executives or franchisees of other brands. 

The latter group receives automated re-engagement texts, always at an hour known statistically to produce high response rates, and increasingly spaced apart in time. These messages often include video media geared to coordinate with the text content, adding visual pizazz and achieving specific sales aims such as increasing brand awareness, conveying a sense of purpose, and establishing a personal connection even before the first meeting.

Even after scheduling, SA continues to nurture the prospect by including journey-appropriate media and links with immediate confirmation and reminders. Thanks to real-time bidirectional communication between SA and FranConnect, SA even knows when a prospect fails to show up for a meeting and works to get the meeting back on the calendar.

Delighted, Brandon grinned: “It doesn’t clock out at 5:00 pm!”

Batteries Plus Employees

Results: Energizing Sales Flow

Lead-to-Application Conversion

Batteries Plus lifted lead-to-application conversion from 14% to 23%, thanks to increased conversion and the ability of SA to reduce friction for qualified hand raisers while letting less-qualified leads self-select out of the running.

Sales Cycle

In keeping with the funnel-velocity needs that Brandon and Joe had articulated more than a year earlier, their sales cycle, measured from lead inquiry to a signed agreement, has shrunk to 76 days from a baseline of 120 days.

Sales Funnel Execution

What mere numbers cannot show is what increased funnel velocity has done for the development team’s management of its lead sources. Traditionally the domain of monthly reviews and guesswork, with over-steering due to time lags, lead-source management has become amenable to frequent adjustment with rapid, observable results.

Most importantly, says Brandon Mangual, prospects arrive prepared with better questions and more apt to progress—leading to faster, more decisive qualification.

We got the juice! A $5M guy in SoCal booked a first call for a Friday and is already mid-funnel on the Monday.

I’m super happy with this. I do this every day, and I have a full appreciation for what this accomplishes. Forward-thinking prospects love the AI.

Brandon Mangual
Vice President, Franchise Development
Text message with AI over phone

Batteries Plus: Charging Toward Success

Batteries Plus’ franchise development team has consistently achieved record results since adopting Sales Accelerator and has chosen to arrange and nurture 100% of its introductory calls.

Improved lead-to-appointment conversion, dynamic lead-generation planning, and shortened deal timelines have led to a virtuous cycle and the results have been quite impressive. In fact, after starting to use SA, Joe Malmuth pointed out that after only one quarter, the franchise development team had already hit 70% of its target for the entire year. The team is continuing to expand its use of SA to further use cases.

Learn why FranConnect customers grow 44% faster and outperform their competitors


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