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if you're a franchisor franchise development team whether you're a startup emerging or a mature brand now is probably the time you need to start evaluating automation ai and technology bots and how you can integrate them into your franchise sales process [Music] i'm really glad to welcome the founder of valenta who's an amazing client a couple of weeks ago i had a conversation with ash and his team where we were talking about the internal needs of our firm and the services that valenta offers and either i'm outdated or i was just blown away in terms of the technology and the solutions that valenta offers and and the very interesting perspective that jaesh brings because he's a franchisor growing an amazing franchise system valenta helps businesses improve profitability introduce technology um and improve processes but so jash is growing a franchise system he's working with businesses and he uses his own technologies and solutions to help grow his franchise brand so uh welcome josh thanks joss thanks for the introduction thanks for having me over here yeah we were having a conversation um you know i i always feel like i'm not dated with technology and then i had a conversation with you guys and i was just blown away just by hearing some of the processes you put in place for your own franchise company and then the solutions you were recommending for our team so jay ash it'd be just great because valentine's a very interesting business and for those franchisees out there or people looking for a franchise investment i mean i'm biased and valent is a client but i've the the connection between jaesh and his franchisee partners has been amazing the services they offer in terms of technology solutions probably needed now more than ever but josh is just a brief overview of what you guys are doing at valenta sure so yeah charles you know the technology always uh evolves right and so it's very important to sort of stay on top of it as well you know we've got a team of you know slightly over 550 people you know inching towards 600 right now so we have a very good uh operations team and a lot of them are heavily focused on technology itself right um but as a business you know we help organizations increase profitability right and we really do this by looking at their systems and processes implementing automation uh implementing staff augmentation and you know as a part of that you know we've implemented a lot of these ourselves in our business so you know do you want me to get uh get into it just explain a little bit about how we use some of these in our process right now yeah and josh you know in the franchise world individuals that are going to be listening to this video some of them are about to franchise their business some are emerging franchisors some have not gained traction and they're looking to do it so just you know if you guys follow jash on linkedin you'll see him all over the world he's an example of how a founder grows a franchise system so so what i would say is yeah i mean i'd love to understand or if you could share your experience of hey you guys have become a franchisor what you're focused on and you know what you saw initially for a technology solution and absolutely what how you guys are implementing your own technology yeah sure sure so you know with with technology right uh it's quite broad and doesn't matter where the business is right it could be an emerging franchise or an established franchisor and so on as well but you know most times it starts with having the right crm in place having the right erp in place right it starts there but then after that you know this with the uh with digital technology right now there's robotic process automation where you can get software bots performing work right instead of humans performing work and then there's conversational ai solutions where you have omni-channel communication and this helps um customers right this could be clients this could be franchisees it could be anyone but it's also letting them communicate with you in their preferred method right and in a timely manner as well and providing them information in a good sequence so you know for us for example one of the ways is you know when we internally engage with some of our franchise candidates we we have created franchise internal portals right where we have documented everything step by step that we want them to follow and we want them to watch right now we're making that we made this portal available to them so they can look at this at their convenience 24 7 right uh as a part of it there's a process there's a few videos we've recorded there's a few blogs there's a few testimonials there's it's a it's a nine step process that they can watch and towards the end of it they set up a meeting as well with our respective area developers or managing directors so this is uh rather than having you know in the past this would have been done by email sequences right it's sort of eliminating email sequences and it has like an internal portal kind of a setup uh you may have you may have a video sales letter as it sort of eliminates video sales letters as well because it's all made available here so this is just one example of how you know when you're looking at the discovery stage you know i mean for a new for a new franchise prospect going from start to end could sort of be automated yeah josh and i have a ton of notes here right and i'm going to go backwards in a couple of minutes about even what erp is and right but so let's talk about the the internal portal the franchising internal portal as you go through your franchise sales process could you explain a little what your process is and then really how that portal actually functions yeah yeah sure nobody so i'll take a few steps back and let's say we start off with you know is it okay if i start off with that the franchise broker therapy check introduction yeah please yeah i want to yeah this would be great because these are important questions we hear all the time yeah absolutely so look if one of the lead sources is franchise brokers you know it usually starts off with the territory check now when we get territory checks we have a bot that responds to the territory check really within seconds right um so brokers get a response instantly from us and you know private it is very important for brokers to get this response in a timely manner as well so prior to implementing a bot when we first started i was doing this myself so i understood how much time it takes uh you know my response time was within 30 minutes for territory checks i then passed this on to one of our marketing resources to manage but this marketing resource that we had was on slightly over 100 grand right it was an important process so we passed it on to someone who we knew would take care of it in a timely manner as well but then we sort of said it's not really worth someone earning 100 grand or slightly more to be dealing with territory checks as a part of the process and we wanted to make sure it gets done 24 7 because brokers work 24 7 as well so we implemented a soft software bot for that so that that's one piece the software board reads it it responds to it what we then do is we track which brokers are sending us uh these introductions um or these territory checks and we want to track if they're a new broker if they're a repeat broker and how many are they sending us each month as well right so we can sort of analyze and we've got some trends over there so we use a system called smart sheet smart it's pretty much like an online excel sheet but with steroids and we've been using this since 2014 uh so we're really well worse with that so once the bot uh completes the broker territory check the bot would then go into smart sheet and it would update the details in there as well so if it's a new broker it'll go on it'll add it and so on it'll add the broker's name and it'll add which month the introduction came in what we then do is we add these into the crm as well right so sometimes with territory checks it depends on the broker group that we're working with that we have all our brokers on our crm as well so to go in there it will add the candidate that they provide that they have asked for the territory check for and it will tag the broker in there as well so within the crm we can always drill down and we can see once again over there as well you know how many um candidates each brokers have sent what the deal stages are and stuff so that is one piece and once again this entire piece that i mentioned which is responding to the territory checks updating the smartsheet so we've got data there and updating the crm is all being done by what the entire process would really just get done within a minute right um so that's one piece now let's say this is i mean i don't know maybe it's just me but um the automation advantage there is amazing right so territory check comes in i have no idea what i'm about to say in terms of a bot just responds to territory check so is that checking of the bottle check available territory and respond to the broker yeah so we have you know at the back end when we program these bots you know we have all the territories mapped right and so this can be done by zip codes can be done there's so many different ways right every franchise is going to be slightly different but we create that and that gets updated in real time as well right so let's say there isn't a territory that's available it'll get updated on there so the bot really is check getting the territory check it's checking the back end to see if the territory is available and it's responding right responding to the broker updating your crm tagging your crm and i i i don't want to bog this down for for the viewers but when you say a bot i i generally i understand you're referring to software are there any special software systems or this is just something you guys can implement yeah look out there in the market right so think about there are three main manufacturers of software bots right uh uipath automation anywhere and blue prism these are really you think about software if you type software bots you'll get plenty of search results on google right but these are the top three that you want to be working with right and we what we do is so we we're technology agnostic so we work with all these providers we can work with microsoft automate and so on and so but they all have limitations these providers here that i just mentioned um have really taken you know these bots to the next level right so based on what the business needs we'll sort of implement the right solution for them right sometimes it'll be a combination because there again there is you know with these manufacturers that i just mentioned being uipath automation anywhere in blue prism they're great in certain areas and not in others so we'll combine the technologies and create hyper automation solutions as well but we use one of these to program our bots i love how when when you're you're talking about this you're referring to hey these tasks are not productive or worthwhile for an employee that makes x thousand dollars a year to be performing right and then in this case this part of your automation as you apply it to valenta and you help other franchisors so it's taking the front end automatically communicating with the brokers updating crm what's next in terms of the automation in your process yeah absolutely so now next you know there's a few different ways this goes right because not every territory check will result in an introduction right so if they don't result in an introduction that's perfectly fine there's no worries there but let's say it does result in an introduction then again we have an automated system we have the bot once again so what we have is in the us we've divided the us into five different regions so we have uh usn north we have mid-atlantic we have the southeast we have central and we have the west and we have area developers in each of these regions so when we have an introduction that comes in the port once again looks at that email and will automatically send it to the right managing uh director which is our airway developer right for them so they've already got that information the same thing happens where the bot if this introduction is from a candidate that has already been introduced to us like when we did a territory check we'll go and the bot will go into the crm and create a deal right which is an opportunity because we're having an introduction and we have quite a few different stages that we have mapped out as well so all of that's been done once again by the bot itself now from here with the managing directors what the bot does is it sends it sends out the can on behalf of the managing directors it'll send them an email a text and in some cases we've also got whatsapp as well right three different times saying look um so there's an introductory message that goes along with the booking link for with the managing director the managing director's booking link so the candidates can automatically select a time and connect with our managing directors um so once again they've got about email they go to what text message and whatsapp so there's really no reason for them not to be able to respond to any of these right so that's that step there and obviously then automatically you know 99 of the times you know we have these meetings automatically set up right because the candidates have booked this time so once they book the time then this is where our managing directors have an introductory meeting it's a phone conversation um in most times very very rare with where it's a teams meeting or zoom and this is the time where they're sort of validating and they're just making sure their synergies both ways right we know what we're looking for in candidates we know who's going to be really successful so we have that we try and understand that there's a few things that we try and capture during that first meeting as well and we provide them with some high-level information about the model and before i go into the next uh step there charles any questions so far no i'm loving this actually because these are josh the the way you're handling this these questions come up so often but i'm still stuck on the bot and and the automation and i love the fact that your developers your partners just wake up there's already been interaction communication with the broker interaction with your crm scheduling no i this is perfect so now we have you have that intro meeting what's next so great so once we have this intro meeting what we then do is at this meeting itself we tell them that we're going to give them access to an online portal right and with and we tell them that they need to spend some time on this portal and go through a few resources that we have there and what we then do is before we end this meeting we would set up a time with them to say okay look once we send this um how long do you need before you know we set up the next meeting right so once you've gone through all this information and we'll try and get that meeting locked in for you know maybe a week away right or sometimes it may be three four days it really depends on what's happening with the candidate itself and after this meeting is done this introduction meeting we give them access to this online portal uh so we send them their login credentials where they we send them the link so they can set up their own credentials and so on when they get into this portal we've designed it into nine steps right so once they once they get in there's an introductory video from the managing director itself letting them know how the portal works right and it's really simple right it's a very short 30 second video that says hey look here's the portal we want you to follow every step and watch all the um read and watch all the information that's available so you can make an informed decision right and we can have a meaningful next conversation that we've already set up when they go to the next page we have an introduction to a valentine video again this is very specific where we explain the franchise opportunity to them uh some managing directors have these broken into two videos some have broken this into five right so that's individual uh preference the next page takes them to another video which talks about what to expect in the next 24 months right uh once they commence with us when they move on it then talks about we have certain blogs that we want them to read about our services uh the next page after that talks about some success stories so this is the validation piece that's taking place right we have that we have some validation videos as well that are in there as we move on then we talk about we show them some marketing resources we give them examples and say look here are the kinds of marketing resources that you will be able to to access right so we're giving them that piece then we move on we inter we invite them to register for a webinar that we host every two weeks which is more of our discovery webinar that we call meet the team so we have a registration link over there for them to complete that piece and finally they get to the end where in that step we have once again a recorded video from the managing directors sort of summing things up and saying okay look we hope you've had a look at all these resources this all makes sense to you now if you've already got a meeting schedule we look forward to speaking to you then if you don't have a meeting schedule then here's the booking link on this page click here and i look forward to connect to discussing further so in this way what we're doing is all the questions that come about from franchise partners right from prospect candidates we know those questions right so we've designed this entire step where we're addressing all those questions in a logical way when they come to the end you know it's sort of in a way there's self qualification as well that's taking place right if they get it you know when we have that next meeting with them it's really going to be like okay i get what you're doing um i'm confident i can make this work let's have so let's think about what are the what are really the next steps right how are you thinking of going to market how are you going to build the business so we're more beat to be right so our business is all b2b so we'll have com we'll have strategic conversations with them okay what are you thinking in terms of go to market strategies um what's your network like and so on as well it becomes really meaningful and it's it eliminates the need for us to keep sending them information from time to time right everything's been provided to them even with the portal i mean you're really aligning that qualification process that communication and really ensuring there's consistent communication throughout the organization how do brokers react to this process like have you taken them through this process and show them what you're doing yeah look so we've had a few uh you know from the time we commenced we've made a few upgrades and a few changes as well right so you know prior to this it was more about sending you know it was a similar process but we would be sending automated emails instead you know i mean but that was the old way of doing it so this new revamped way we're sort of taking brokers through it right now it's an education piece as well um so each of our managing directors in their region so they sort of work with brokers there so it is taking place in a couple of weeks ago we were actually last weekend i think we were at uh one of the broker conferences right so where we sort of explain to them what we're doing here um yeah so it it's it's an ongoing process right now with brokers but there's a few there's now there are also non-broker channels right charles said this this year when it comes from brokers now let's say you have direct um you know obviously every business wants that as well right you have direct leads that are coming in from your franchise website or you've got uh portals right you have franchise portals where you're getting leads from or you're doing trade shows there's so many other ways now what we do is again with those leads regardless of how they collected you applied the same approach of getting a conversational ai solution where which is again just think about it as a bot right um there's just two different types of it but over here once again the bot can then communicate do all the pre-qualification with these leads that are being collected so let's say this is a franchise portal you have leads coming in great let the bot do the job of qualification right uh the bot can communicate with them by text sms email can do all of that uh while that's taking place it can give them information from time to time as well right like there's certain videos that can be pre-recorded and let them decide if they want if it is for them right but let's give them enough information and let them choose the conversion rates usually by one to two percent but what's important is you want to get this one to two percent with the least amount of time that's being spent right so the best way to do that as well is to customize i know there are tools out there that do parts of this but what's very important is to sort of have that high level of customization to your specific brand you know i mean and that's really you know what we try to do in our business is we'll record all these videos we look record all these messages and stuff and send it to them in the sequence that we wish and also have the ability to change that from time to time as well so yeah these solutions can be used on both sides right it could be on the you know franchise brokers and non-franchise brokers as well and this gets to you know having meaningful conversations and what we have in the crm is what we have different stages and by the way we use a zoho crm in the business we have different stages now at the back end of now when deals progress to a certain stage let's say for example we need the fdds to be issued you know we just click a button uh to go ftd issued automatically your team gets a notification charles uh to say look here the candidate details here's the state please issue the ftd you know i mean so that automatically gets taken care of um when we then push the application push the candidate to the next state which is an application of background verification the candidates get an email they complete the application form upload all their details when this there's a 250 dollar fee that they pay as well once and it's all done online once that's done it takes them to the background verification portal where they complete information there and when all of when they complete submit once again your team gets a notification with all the information straight away um to each prepare and issue those franchise documents so it's sort of reducing as much of human work that that's required in this entire piece and and then who internally is managing this or it's just hitting your dashboards and you guys see all the data coming in yeah so you know we've got very good dashboards that are built in in this in the system you know i mean we have certain automated reports like i get reports so i get certain reports from my crm that come in every day and then i have some that come in every week some that are monthly right um we have dashboards obviously but you know sometimes when you're traveling and so on you can't necessarily log into a dashboard and see so that's where those reports are handy right so they sold different purpose um you know 5 p.m every day i get three emails from my bots right and it's pretty much an activity report of what the bots have done right and it's great right and it's also with these ports they can go into different systems get all the information consolidated and get you that report your process demonstrates to your franchisees the value of the service you provide to your customers yeah as i'm sitting here i hate the fact that all i do is now internally reflect on why are we not leveraging this technology internally so in the franchise world what would i mean i would put this in the category of bots and ai right so so i would imagine the percentage of brands that are using this type of technology is probably single digits or yeah it is you know people have heard about it you know i mean brands have heard about it but when it comes to adoption of this it's it's very it's very limited right so that's where everybody wants to do it the the issues that we find globally as well is you know one is they don't have the resources to be able to do it you know i mean or the second thing is the knowledge to be able to to execute these internally right and that's where you know business like us where we offer it as a managed service makes it very easy for for organizations to implement these services and and then when you speak i mean which has to be very strong value proposition because i assume that a franchisee candidate that doesn't even think about this space has a conversation like this and then reacts the same way i'm reacting and i'm assuming brokers too i mean there's big opportunity it seems on this new this next technology wave yeah absolutely you know so we you know we build a lot of uh proof of concept videos right and we have a library of them as well and in most cases this happens with our clients as well right so the minute we we have an introduction presentation or it's an educational presentation that we take them through and then we show them a few videos and that usually depending on the the audience can take up to 30 minutes right but usually at the end of 30 minutes there's a list of processors that they've already thought about and they're just sort of saying oh can we automate this what about this and you know it opens up the conversation so yeah it's it's it's quite exciting you'd mention crm and you mentioned you're using zoho what what's erp i i i yeah look when you put it in in simple terms you know when you're looking at enterprise and you're looking at consolidating all the functions into one right so this could be your hr it could be your it could be your finance could be your sales then that's that's when you're getting getting into an erp solution now it depends on the size of the business you know i mean and what's applicable uh you know for us we use um because we operate in so many different countries we try and standardize as much as possible right so on our accounting on our finance side we use zero in most countries except one that does not support zero right so that's an accounting system um we use zoho crm internally for globally again for our sales we use zoho people which does all our hr so again with zoho people and zoho crm they sort of integrate really well we use zoho recruit for all our recruitment side for uh for our staff and and team members so yeah it's it's all about trying and keeping all of that into one single platform yeah no i love that and then for franchisors that that run and operate call centers i assume the ai the bots that's a natural integration to call center yeah look call centers are a good obviously when people are calling a call center they want to speak to a human right that's really the reason they are but there are probably a few things that can be done before that as well right so having right knowledge centers having so you see chatbots have been around for quite some time but having a smart chatbot is quite different right and that's a conversational ai chatbot where you can chat with the bot and it then patches you straight away to a human when it needs to right also having bots where they can you enter certain information it can go in the back end you can get the answers that you need as well right so if you have a smart conversational ai chatbot solution the need for a call center or call center agents would decrease right drastically so this is something that again you know in our business we've had chatbots um for under six seven years now you know i mean and next week we're going to be launching our updated version which is a conversational ai solution and we've taken all the historical data that we've had in the chatbots and our chatbots have done a great job but what our conversational ai solutions got to do from next week is going to take it to the next level yeah that's amazing i i appreciate because you're a franchisor building a next generation franchise system you guys are thriving and then to combine that experience with the technology solutions and platforms you're offering many times people will present their services as really game-changing but but it seems to me the services valenta offers this ai integration and the franchise sales process even if it's incremental it's just these are big movements and improvements in the franchising process itself um this and then on a base level you just gave a great education on your franchise sales process and flow and i'm a big fan of that portal um and really providing that knowledge center for those candidates yep absolutely you know having the knowledge into having some set action times and uh timelines and so on as well is important right um you know prior to this version in our previous version we use we use a system called pressing we still use it uh for certain recordings and stuff but with prezi it's pretty cool because we can actually see how if the candidates have opened certain links how long they've spent on those videos and stuff as well right so that's again good but it's a manual process right you've got to create that link you've got to send that link and then you've got to go and analyze that right so good but that was for a year ago you know i mean so right now this is the the next way of doing it yeah i josh i don't know how every large or every franchise system doesn't contact or call you about getting valenta on board and integrating this um it's i mean the the implication especially when you're dealing with multiple levels and multiple tiers development teams and processes i mean it's just a major impact it is right and you you know when you combine this with data analytics as well so you know this is where great you know if you've got a retail service or you know could be uh food and beverage and so on as well just having analytics as to you know what products are selling at what time and being able to make informed decisions that can increase sales as well you know i mean again you implement some conversational ai solutions so you can think about this as you know where to you've got all this information let's put it to good use and increase your sales opportunities as well at the same time so for franchisors this could be great to sort of support their franchisees in their local areas including more opportunities as well you know saying i speak to uh one of our one of our franchisor um clients and you know they have a lot they have several different pos systems um they operate quite a few different brands as well you know i mean and they've got this information that they are able to use it really well right and if they have a business question as well it takes them weeks to be able to use that information to get the answer right again there's you create data warehouses data lakes right and then you can answer all these in real time what i what i love there is we we all assume we know how candidates are reacting or what's valuable information and we don't and so that data analytics is probably eye-opening for teams when they look at that yeah yeah hundred percent so js i without even having to um no board i'm proud that valente is one of our clients and and working with your team's amazing but it's interesting because i would ask sometimes talk about your franchise but really everything that you're discussing in terms of solutions really validates you know the positioning of valentine the opportunity what type of franchisee candidates are you guys looking for or that i should say are a good fit with your team sure so you know anyone with b2b consultative sales experience right they're the perfect fit in our model right um you know we do have certain candidates that may not have that sales experience just yet you know i mean but they really understand our services so if they don't have that then there's ways to sort of you know you work there right you've got a marketing budget and so on as well to be able to assist in that area but in general those with b2b sales experience do really well in our model yeah i i i'm excited for what's ahead i'm also again in the back of my mind just looking forward to following up with your team about our internal systems josh it's it's so funny like i've had these calls before i had a call with you and your team and i was blown away and so like i i didn't think i'd be this impacted by this conversation i can't tell you how much i appreciate and you know in terms of sales process technology and and um thank you for spending time today hey now charles you know great having conversations with you and uh appreciate your services as well right so uh thanks again for having me here as well i appreciate it thank you josh you