Bryan Schielke 0:00

You've helped franchise systems boost conversion rates by as much as three to five times. What are the most common mistakes you see leaders making in their sales process?

Dave Hansen 0:08

Well, that's a great question, Brian. Franchise brands are strapped for resources and expertise sometimes. Nobody realizes how most franchise brands are operating with a skeleton crew, right? Uh they always just assume they're huge operations. And we work with some of the biggest brands, and you'd be shocked how small the teams are, right? So what we often see franchise brands struggling with when it comes to lead conversion. So whether that's on the FRANDEP side or we do a lot in home services. So I both places kind of the same problem is they don't have enough systemization. They actually don't have enough standardization on what the process should be. They've never really thought through intentionally. When a lead comes in, we're going to immediately email, we're going to use video in the emails, we're going to send a text within a minute. We're going to then follow up the text with a call within two minutes because that's going to increase our conversion rates 40% on the phone call. Like they don't know the playbook, so they don't follow the playbook. That's probably, I'd say, the number one issue that we see. And they're also not, their salespeople are not following up. What they often will do is invest in marketing, right? There are a lot of good marketing firms out there. So franchise brands invest in a great marketing firm, which then increases their lead rate, but then they're not operating with a system to that will automate the follow-up. So Bob in sales at the unit or in Frandev, right? Like he doesn't have enough system behind him to handle the 2x increase in lead volumes. So what happens is Bob reports back to his management because he doesn't want to look bad that the lead quality sucks. Of all the times I've heard that, maybe one in 20 has that been accurate. It's almost always a sales problem, not a not a lead quality problem. So I hear like I got like consult franchise consults. We work with hundreds of them. And some of them were like, oh man, those biz buy sell leads are terrible. Meanwhile, their peer across the aisle who's using like a solid tech like client tether or something to follow up effectively. He's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on the same leads from the same source, even advertising for the same brand. So like, promise, I've got enough data. So usually 95% of the time it's a sales system and process problem and technology problem.

Bryan Schielke 2:11

That makes sense. Well, that's yeah, sounds like you've definitely seen it. That's that's fantastic. All right. Good work. You've led growth across multiple companies before becoming CEO of Client Tether. What experiences shaped your approach to leadership today?

Dave Hansen 2:24

Wow, uh there are a lot. Yeah, I'd love to say that I well, let me start with this. First job out of college, I worked for a company called Altieris. It was a rocket ship, new technology, bleeding edge stuff, high-end technology. It was really cool. I was a scrub, like just an inside sales guy. But our leadership team was awesome. You know, Greg and a whole bunch of the folks that are I live in Utah, so a whole bunch of them have gone off and they they own private equity groups and they coach businesses now. But the and Jan Newman, like I saw a lot of like true leaders who were there because they wanted their team and their company to be successful. And they didn't care if anyone saw them driving around in a Lambo, right? There, there's so much of that now that just makes me a little ill. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, they want to be a leader because they want the spotlight, they want the love, they want the social, they want the likes, they want the, you know, they want all the social equity that comes with that. And some of the best companies I've ever worked for didn't have leaders that were all over themselves, right? So I I think uh I hate using the term servant leader. Whenever I see someone put that on there, I'm like, yeah, if you got to say it, then maybe it's not 100% true. Like I feel like it's important that we focus on the needs of our clients. That has to be number one, the needs of our people. It has to be right up there at the top, and the needs of the of like the business itself. Oh, and then there are my needs, right? Like those fall in probably fourth in line. And so I guess that's one of the biggest things I find in leadership is you have to not be a selfish prick and focus on what's best for everybody else. And that's ultimately what's best for you. You know, it builds a better company.

Bryan Schielke 3:54

100%. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, great lesson. That's awesome. All right. Client tether focuses heavily on automation, but relationships still matter. How do you balance technology with genuine human connection in business growth?

Dave Hansen 4:07

Love that question, especially let's talk about AI right now, right? Like AI is everywhere. And AI, I grew up in the language industry before this. So we were in the industry that was building LLMs, right? So when AI started hitting the industry, I'm like, yeah, that's been around forever, guys. Like, welcome to the club. It's not ready, it's not ready. We'd have people hit us up all the time, like, look at our new AI caller. It's so good. And they were garbage. But in the last 18 months, it's gotten good enough that we're actually integrating it into our platform. We got a bunch of great stuff there. But AI, it still does not create relationships, right? Automation, where we can automate emails and texts and phone calls, we're still the only company in the world that does that. That seems weird to me. We've done it for 12 years, man, almost 12 years. Still the only ones. The reason why it's so important, though, so automation, you have to have an engagement. Somebody has to be responding to you. It has to be a give-take, or else nothing, you got nothing. So uh, and that window of time in which you have to initiate the conversation is so small now. Attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. We've like 10 years ago, they were publishing data about five minutes, the five-minute follow-up rule. This franchise industry is kind of screwed up because like everyone still talks about four hours, like that's a real thing. That's like a 1988 rule. And we got to stop talking about that. But it used to be five minutes. Now it's shorter than that. People are like, if you haven't responded to somebody with a with a meaningful text and tried to get on the phone with them, now, in that order, by the way, then you can't have a meaningful conversation, but it's all about the conversation. So automations should lead to conversations. Conversations can lead to relationships and trust. And trust is the, it is the currency of transactions, right? You have to build the trust first. So you can't do that. Texting doesn't really build trust. Like you can get questions answered, you can start, you can start it. It's a longer pathway, it's slower to build. But if you can look somebody in the eyeballs, like right now, Brian, and we sit and talk for a while, and I hear how smart you are, I see your great haircut, and I'm like, dang, I like I like this guy. You know, he's a Notre Dame fan. Well, how can I dislike this guy? My buddy from high school, her son just got a scholarship to run cross-country there. Sweet. Right? Like now we're building a relationship. We got context, but texting, no context, right? Emailing, not very much context unless you're embedding video, right? So you can build relationships with technology, but technology doesn't build a relationship. Does that make sense? It augments the process, but it doesn't replace the process.

Bryan Schielke 6:27

I think that makes a ton of sense. That's fantastic. That's great. Good stuff. All right. You've built, scaled, and even exited businesses. What is one hard lesson about scaling that most founders learn too late?

Dave Hansen 6:40

Boy, that's a hard one. So I've I mean, I started my first business when I was five. I snuck out of the house and sold. We have we have time. I'll show this. This is just kind of funny. But uh, I wanted money for baseball cards, didn't grow up in a family, had much money. Uh, we had, you know, my dad was a great entrepreneur, but hadn't quite gotten into a stride yet. And and baseball carts were awesome in the 80s. So, and I love the Dodgers. So I I didn't have money though. So I I found some whistles and I made some paper trinkets, snuck out of the house when my mom thought I was taking a nap next to her and I was five. And then I went knocking doors in the neighborhood to try to sell the stuff so I could get some money. And as it turns out, and I knocked on all of her friends' doors, just to be clear. And one of her friends, real friends, invited me into the house and had me go play Nintendo with her son Jeremy. She calls my mom and she's like, Hey, do you know where Dave is right now? And she's like, he's downstairs playing. She's like, he's not downstairs playing. He is going door to door trying to sell your unwrapped tampons as whistles to all of your neighbors right now. So that was my my first foot in the door to entrepreneurship as a kid. And I'll just say I've never had to sell anything quite so hard in my life ever since then. But but exiting, so scaling and exiting. And I've done it on small scales and I've done it on large scales. So we did e-commerce, had a great Amazon business we built up and ran and exited. My wife and I were multi-multi-unit franchise owners. We built that rapidly and then we sold our franchises. It wasn't the plan to do it so quickly, but I'll say this scaling, I saw someone say this yesterday. If you want outsized, oversized results, you have to put in oversized effort. And that's true, but it also has to be sustainable, right? Like you can burn yourself out all the time. And I just wrote an article yesterday about that that's getting a lot of attention in comments. And I appreciate that because we tend to try to burn ourselves out thinking I have to oversize my effort 24-7. I got to put my family on hold. I got to put my life on hold. You have to be disciplined with the effort. And so I'll just say this. Like for me, it was, you know, I'd work, you know, early, you know, let's say 7, 7:30 a day, 6:30 every day. But I also would say, I'm sure I try, I'm not always the best, but I try to shut it off and big 6:30 to 10, that's my family time. Or I'm gonna go work in the yard. I'm gonna mow the lawn. Like I've got to unplug, and then I'm gonna reconnect if I have to more work to do. I'm a night owl. So I'll I'll work from 10 to 10 to, and then I'll get up and do it again the next day. But I have, you have to create space for yourself because you can't infinitely scale if you're not taking care of yourself. That's the one thing I just I hate the hustle porn crap. So I just want to make sure we're being real about this. Like you can do it, but it's also about the systems. Like you have to create systems that help you scale. Your sales system, your lead gen system, your business development system are critical. But then how do you deliver services? Is your operations keeping up? How about your technology keeping up? So, so it's it's like spinning plates, and you'll see the plate that's spinning and getting wobbly, and you're like, oh crap, my technology, and you'll spin that sucker and then, oh, my marketing. So you also have to have optics into all your plates. The worst, the worst situations when you don't have know which one's about to fall. And then you can't spin it and pick it up. Then you're picking up broken pieces, right? So that's, I guess, that's more metaphorical than specific, but hopefully that gives you maybe some ideas of how I've I've seen scalability work.

Bryan Schielke 9:45

Yeah, but I love the metaphor. That's that totally works. That makes sense. And and boy, you you are literally a born entrepreneur. Again, from my dad. Five years old. I've never heard that.

Dave Hansen 9:56

I got in some trouble for that one as well.

Bryan Schielke 9:59

Of course, but lessons learned, right? That's that's that's fantastic. I love it. Okay, good stuff. All right, let's go to the next one here. In a world where speed is everything, how do you help franchise brands stay responsive without losing quality in their customer experience?

Dave Hansen 10:13

Oh man, great question. Brands have to systematize their processes first, which seems silly because the whole nature of franchising is a system. But I you'd be maybe shocked how often we start working with a brand that's trying to automate first, but they don't have a system in place first. So you gotta start with the system. Like figure out like what does that need to look like? If you want to have speed to lead, cool, like we can get you in touch with lead in literally 15 seconds or less, right? Okay. Is that actually the right way to do it though? The answer is no. There's a there's a real playbook for that, and happy to share that. It's on our website. You can just download it. But there's a proper web, like a playbook that shows people how to actually engage. But you have to know what what the messaging is. You have to have the system in place first. And you also have to have like, for example, it seems dumb, but like your leads have to be able to automatically get into the platform that you're using for your CRM, for example, and it has to have lead source attribution and it needs to trigger automation that's contextualized by lead source. Otherwise, like, for example, Facebook leads, you want to follow up with them a little differently than an SEO lead. SEO leads are gold. A AI recommended leads, if you're not getting ChatGPT leads right now, you got to fix your AEO and GGO. But like you got to know where they're coming from, and then your system should be able to engage with them based upon where they're from. You want to put a little more friction into your more top of funnel leads, like your Facebook. So understanding what's going on, building the automation of the system in place so you know what should happen when things are coming in and how the the how you want, let's say a franchiser wants to have a consistent lead follow-up in every circumstance. Think Chick-fil-A. If I go to Chick-fil-A in Charlotte, North Carolina or Salt Lake City, Utah, they're gonna greet me the same, it's gonna look the same, it's gonna smell the same, the food's gonna be the same. And so you have, but they systematize, and now once you systematize, you can then apply automation. And and AI is a great way to augment, like you can use a clientele type system where it's gonna start a conversation. Then if you use AI layered on top of that or separate from that, you can actually have AI engaging on your behalf. And it feels natural if it's happening through, let's say, let's say like a text channel. Uh AI automation and conversations over voice are a good backup, but I humans are always the best first line. So uh, but you still want to get as much automation as you can. But that's that closes the gap. Speed delete is still the name of the game. And you've got about three minutes now to follow up on that lead effectively before they go start filling out a competitive lead form, right? So, and if you're buying a lead from a portal, let's say you're a home service guy and you're buying a lead from Angie, Thumbtack, Modernize, Networks, any of those portal companies, you've got like two minutes. You you gotta be on top of that thing. It's Ricky Bobby. If you ain't first, you're last. But if you don't have the systems in place, you can't automate. Or if you do automate, it's gonna be a crapshoot. So uh hopefully that's helpful, Brian. I don't know if that answered your question.

Bryan Schielke 12:56

No, absolutely. That completely makes sense. I love it. That is that is uh you're dead on with that. That's gonna that's gonna look good. Okay, good stuff. All right, let's hit the last question here. For leaders trying to grow in competitive markets, what does relationship-driven success actually look like in practice?

Dave Hansen 13:12

Wow, there there are a lot of facets to that. Relationships drive, I think, most success. The right relationships do. So leaders need to have relationships with other leaders in the industry so they can have sounding boards to have honest feedback, have kind of a mastermind function. I mean, it's a shameless plug, but like we created an event for that, right? The service franchise summit, only because it doesn't exist in this industry. There's not, there are a couple of like here and there people that are trying to do it, but it's more like roundtables. You need someone you can sit down with and be like, here's my soul, like, or here's my real problem. And I cannot solve this. And I can't take it to my executive team, right? I can't take it to my wife because she loves me and she'll support me, but she doesn't have a background to understand how to fix it. Although my wife, she's got great ideas about how to fix our business sometimes or how to augment things and then increase things. So, but but you need peers that you can trust, and those relationships are helping help you with the strategy, right? I also find that relationships with strategic partners is critical. We have a ton of partners in the industry that we love working with, they love us. We know we'll take care of them and vice versa. That's helped that helps us a lot as we as we grow to have people who are in marketing and they say, wow, we're doing a great job with this brand helping them get leads. They suck at follow-up. Will you please save them from themselves before they think it's our problem? They blame the leads. You know, remember one in 20. 20 out of 20 times they blame the marketer. So having relationships with people like that is critical. And then the relationships with your clients. That's you know, obviously it's the next layer down. You got to build real relationships, provide real value, stay in touch with them, don't make it transactional, you know, close them and flip them. Like that's not how it should be. So I we still get 50 to 60% of our leads from referrals from clients and people who know us. So I'm like my grandma always used to, she said, we thought she was gonna pass away. So a bunch of me, you know, me, my cousins and siblings drove up to see her in Canada, and she pats me on the face and she and first she never liked my facial hair. So she says, You look so handsome without your beard. And then she said this, and this is like such a truism. She said, she, and I was a Hellion growing up. This is why she said this. She's like, You've got to, you've got to protect your reputation because your reputation will always precede you. And in business, it's so dang true. Those are some of the relationships, but there's one more layer that we've got to focus on, and that's the relationship with our people, with our employees. They're mission critical. You got to treat them right. You got to try to give them right enough compensation that they're happy. But people are more motivated by feeling cared for and feeling like they genuinely belong. Like then almost, then almost once you hit a certain threshold to pay, then they're pay. So I think you got to create an environment where people feel cared, cared for, and those relationships really, really matter. And if you've got a toxic jerk in your organization, they got to go because they'll wreck those relationships. And those relationships important to your client relationships and your partner relationships. So it's all they're all intertwined. That's how I see relationships making a big difference for entrepreneurs trying to grow.

Bryan Schielke 16:04

Absolutely agree. You you couldn't be more dead on, especially with the the spread of toxicity inner just one person can have such a huge impact in a negative way. It's shocking. We've we've obviously been through it.

Dave Hansen 16:18

So more more than I would care to admit, honestly, but yeah, like how do we how do we not see that coming? But yeah, it's hard. People are so awesome in the interview process and even the first month, and then uh things change, right? Like to be fair to people, like sometimes things suck in their lives, and so they become a little crappy. It's not like they start that way. No.

Bryan Schielke 16:40

You just catch a bad phase and you're like, well, we got the you know, we got the worst of it, but it's it happens, right?

Dave Hansen 16:45

Yeah, agreed.

Bryan Schielke 16:46

Awesome.