Many franchisors utilize Twitter to communicate their products and services to would-be customers.  But how do you know if your social media efforts are paying off?  Can you pull up a real-time report to see just how many new leads you’ve created over the past week?  If you find an interesting conversation taking place about your franchise opportunity, are you able to effectively get a business development rep involved and respond in real-time?

We’ve posted this video to demonstrate the powerful functionality that’s created by integrating Salesforce and Twitter together in your franchise lead generation process.

Check out this video for an overview of the benefits of a Google Adwords and Salesforce mashup.

Sophisticated franchise companies will have multiple lead generation campaigns in place, at all times, and in various mediums.  The ability to integrate every lead, regardless of entry point, into your pipeline in real-time and rapidly route, contact, qualify, and follow up with these prospective customers (franchisees) would have at one time put you head and shoulders above your competition.  Today, it’s a fundamental process that every organization needs to achieve long-term success.  And it’s not enough to have a structured sales process in place.  There should be quantifiable objectives and goals built into the process, along with the ability to track analytics at each step, so that a process of continuous improvement and a true reality can be seen in order to make the best decisions.  The picture below is a good illustration of various entry points and a lead capture methodology.

I hope that this video will be helpful in learning a bit more about the way that we have worked with others to develop effective lead flow management processes and tools.

A recent report by Gartner, which you can obtain for free at http://bit.ly/cJ7SmJ , sets forth some pretty exciting opportunities regarding how companies can and will need to deliver effective support experiences and the franchise industry has a lot to consider as a result.

Some key findings and recommendations from the report, which was commissioned by salesforce.com, are here:

•    Expectations for social CRM (tapping into social networks to improve marketing, sales and service processes) will dramatically exceed the measurable benefits;

•    For much of the world, Facebook will – or already has – become the dominant social networking site. Marketeers and customer service managers will need to take this into consideration when planning social networking projects, while monitoring for shifts in user sentiment;

•    A new generation of Internet Protocol (IP)-based contact center solutions with preintegrated IP interaction recording platforms will be far more effective and less expensive than previous platforms; and

•    Consumer willingness to perform all possible customer service functions themselves (self- service) will be universal by 2011.

The report shares these and other recommendations:

•    Vice presidents of customer service or customer experience should be sure to measure the consistency and effectiveness of customer interactions across all touchpoints from the customer’s point of view;

•    The popularity of social networking sites means that the service organization cannot expect the customer to come to the corporate website only, but must work on ways to reach out to the customer at these destinations as well; and

•    When developing a long-term strategic road map for contact center infrastructure, include call recording as part of this single-vendor solution.

If Cloud adoption that encompasses social media is not at the center of your business development, operations support, marketing and strategic planning you should consider talking with the flywheel group to learn more about how these solutions can benefit you and your organization.