The annual FranConnect Franchise Sales Index Report uses real-world data from brands across the FranConnect platform. After an eventful first half of 2021, FranConnect reviewed the data mid-year to provide an in-the-moment view of franchise development and help franchisors make better sales and marketing investments.
The first-half data showed encouraging movement across several key measures. Most verticals were improving on important development metrics compared with the second half of 2020.
Average Monthly Deals by Brand and Industry
In terms of franchise deals closed, the new year brought positive change to most industries apart from lodging and retail food. That contrasted with 2020, when the overall number of deals fell and time-to-close lengthened.
Retail Products & Services saw one of the largest changes, nearly doubling monthly deals. Personal Services, Business Services, and Automotive also increased. Lodging remained a category to watch as travel demand began to recover.
Lead-to-Deal Conversion by Brand Size
The data showed a small improvement in the Enterprise segment, but the more notable change was among smaller brands. Micro Emerging and Emerging brands improved their ability to close deals at a faster rate, moving closer to Mid-Market conversion performance.
Top Lead Sources by Lead-to-Deal Ratio
Referrals remained a high-converting and cost-effective source, although they can be difficult to scale. Franchise Referral Consultants, often called brokers, continued to perform strongly among paid channels and improved year over year.
Portals continued to generate large volumes of raw leads, but those leads typically converted to deals at a much lower rate than higher-intent channels.
The three legacy charts that originally accompanied this article were hosted on external HubSpot assets and are not present in staging Media. Those fragile image dependencies have been removed while the underlying findings remain intact.
