IAM2484 – Unlock Collaboration Opportunities with Networking

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless addresses the challenges in the franchise consulting industry, such as lengthy sales cycles, difficulties with lead qualification, and the emotional strain of slow progress, especially after learning that it often takes brokers over a year to close their first deal.

Gresham shares his experience with shifting lead generation strategies, the decline of organic outreach on Facebook, and the need to refine his sales approach, particularly in understanding a lead's financial readiness.

Gresh remains focused on growth, networking, and self-awareness, urging persistence, authenticity, and long-term vision.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:01

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:28

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO Podcast.

And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out.

I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there.

So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the, from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube, check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this.

So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build and needs you to be your unique self.

So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that there's a lot of collaboration and opportunities that came out of go into this networking group.

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One of them I went to, there was collaboration, other one not so much. But I know one of the things that is kind of a little bit more of a challenge is I'm in this B2B and B2C mode where there's people that wanna start businesses, they're like pre B2B.

But they could be a B2C, but there's also the industry of like B2B where I'm trying to focus on that.

So I'm not sure what ends up being like a really great fit as far as like where I should be.

But, needless to say, I want to continue to kind of like work through those things and think through those things and ultimately see what happens.

So we'll see. And then I'll take it from there. This is day 160 of this franchise broker journey.

We're juggling a bunch of different things. I'm looking into networking groups to potentially join.

I'm also looking at collaboration opportunities. One of the things that was really difficult, I think, is that there's a lot of people that didn't close their first deal within a year.

And I thought that that was just crazy. Or they closed one, maybe smaller deal, business opportunity.

That was something that was kind of startling for me to hear, but I feel like that could be reality now.

I feel like I'm losing a little bit of my gusto, my energy, the thing that was kind of driving me through.

But the good thing is, is that we're still generating some leads with Google ads.

I'm not getting as much through Facebook as I was organically. I was, literally just searching and DMing people and that's how I was getting some leads.

But now I need to really dial back into that and get a lot more focused.

I feel like I had my moment of my dip where I was like, oh, I'm feeling sorry for myself.

And now we just got to get more leads and opportunities. So has some leads kind of come in. I would say I'm averaging, if you count the broker leads, looks like I might have around a hundred and let's just say 40 or so leads.

So we got to figure something has to close at some point, right? You get that many kind of leads, calls, things like that.

Something has to really come throughout that process. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's just continuing to kind of sharpen the saw, continue to kind of move things forward and see what ultimately might happen.

I think it's not losing your spirit as far as like going through this process, because it is a longer process.

It is a longer sales cycle than when I've done like websites and things like that.

It becomes to some degree, maybe not even like need based. Like I did have a candidate I thought might be really good as far as like moving along.

He said that he looked at the brands. He didn't see himself doing in the brands.

But then he said, thank you. So it's kind of like a indirect way of saying I'm not looking for anything anymore.

But it was one of those things where I asked, you know, is there something else that you want to go?

And one of the things that I'm seeing, like it's a major kind of sticking point is your maximum investment.

When you ask that question, you try to stay within that, but there's probably some better ways I could try to ask that question to get an idea, to let people know exactly what they're ultimately kind of looking for.

It was kind of it was kind of because he hasn't replied back, he got busy he missed the call but he kind of said thank you which made it seem like he didn't want to be followed up with anymore.

But I asked to you know directly no so I'll probably maybe give him a phone call before the end of the week.

Or I'll just at the very least reply back to the email just say hey making sure you saw this just saying if you do want to hop on a call or you're just saying hey i don't want to say they want to do the uh franchise thing anymore.

He said he talked with his girlfriend at the time. He never really got the financing part kind of cleared away either.

So there was always that question of whether or not he was serious, and I think those are one of the things that I'm starting to use to, to see like how serious people are.

If they don't necessarily do the financing information, then maybe they're not necessarily going to be the best possible candidates.

So with that being said, I still have some quality candidates, at least one or two quality candidates.

I got a new concepts for one of my candidates that had to get, if he's getting financing needs, location and also potentially need something that has more concepts to be able to get that financing.

So we'll see what happens from there. And then, we just continue to kind of move on and continue to chop at the tree and see ultimately what happens.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:33

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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