Sales professionals feel a certain feeling when they discover the products or services they promote are ideally suited for a specific business application. Over time, multiple customers from one industry call, chat, or email asking similar questions, and eventually, they purchase the tool. You, the salesperson, get used to the challenges they face, and you become comfortable matching the features of your product with their burning problems.
That feeling I refer to is a mix of happiness, job satisfaction, and job security. You get it at tradeshows when the line at your booth is longer than anyone else’s. You get it at the business desk when the order fulfillment mail and emails overwhelm your staff. And you get it over time when prospect after prospect asks the same questions for which you have most of the exact answers they’re looking for. Selling your business sweet spot is sales nirvana.
Sales nirvana is the feeling I get when speaking with franchise businesses. MapBusinessOnline provides sales territory management tools that are fantastic and affordable for franchise businesses.
Franchise Analysis
Franchise Industry Requirements
Franchise territory management requirements are unique to the franchise industry. Many industries use online business mapping software to manage parts of their sales process. Sales territory mapping is the most relevant business mapping feature for franchising companies. Franchise organizations use sales territories to help sell a franchise to a potential franchisee.
MapBusinessOnline combines a set of features that address the sales and marketing requirements of the franchising industry. The franchising industry as a whole is quite diverse. As I write this article, I can list a broad set of franchise industries that use MapBusinessOnline for sales territory management; they include:
- Child activity centers.
- Construction services.
- Construction supplies.
- Energy supply businesses.
- Handicapped equipment distribution.
- Home care agencies.
- Home improvement businesses.
- Maintenance services.
- Outdoor equipment distribution.
- Pet services.
- Repair services.
- Various Restaurant clients.
- Retail outlets.
- Swimming pool services.
- Tutoring services.
- Waste disposal services.
MapBusinessOnline provides a set of location-based tools that support multiple business requirements across a wide array of franchising organizations:
- Franchise Territory Maps – Sales territory maps that define franchise territory extents, address overlapping coverages, and enable the creation of easy-to-understand franchise areas of operation.
- New Market Analysis – Demographic analysis applicable by ZIP code, county, or city limit for area profile development in support of business expansion planning.
- Franchise Transaction Documentation – Franchise potential documentation included territory map images and ZIP code or county demographic composition, usually with income and population studies.
- Business Listings – Access USA business listings for competitor and prospect analysis.
- Driving Time and Distance Spatial Analysis – especially helpful for retail stores, restaurants, and traveling tech services.
- Spatial Queries – Radius and polygon spatial queries for developing appropriate territory sizes, test markets, and franchise rollout plans.
- Coverage Map – Coverage map generation for marketing and information sharing for potential franchisees.
- Color-coding & Thematic Mapping – Color-coding by franchise territory to delineate sold and unsold territories.
NYC Franchise Map Development Targeting 800,00 to 1 million Population Segments
Franchise Territory Mapping
In franchising, a territory usually defines the geographic scope or area of interest in which a franchisee will invest. The franchisor documents the sale of the franchise by referencing the sales territory scope as part of the written agreement. Often, that scope can include assets along with a territory map:
- Active customer address and contact lists.
- Prospective customer addresses and contact lists.
- Resources related to the services or products to be sold.
- Competing businesses that exist within and outside of the franchise territory.
- Estimates of the area’s demographic character – population, income, or ethnicity.
A franchise territory map is attached to the franchise sales documentation. This way, sales territory maps help define and sell franchises.
Once the investment has been made, franchise territory maps define the coverage area for franchisee sales and marketing activity. Some companies like to define coverage areas by ZIP code and that area’s corresponding demographic categories.
It is important to remember that ZIP codes and demographic data are fluid – they can change. Boundaries can shift, and demographic estimates rise and sometimes fall. In franchising contracts, give yourself some wiggle room – +/- 5% float should do it. Remember to let your franchisee customers know that all demographic data is an estimate, not a dead-on-accurate count. That being said, if you see a large swing in a territory’s demographic count – double check any recent territory updates. ‘Chance are,’ it’s geography not demography causing the issue.
Color-coding for Franchise Mapping
MapBusinessOnline’s easy-to-use color-coding options help delineate franchise areas. Most often, but not always, territories are based on groupings of ZIP codes. These ZIP code territories can initially be color code by demographic data. Census household income and population levels by gender, ethnicity, or age are popular categories for thematic mapping to enable franchise modeling analysis.
Franchise businesses can often match customer demographic models with the characteristics of proposed territory areas. Such knowledge is accumulated by analyzing sales patterns and talking with or surveying consumers. Once a few demographic categories have been identified as relevant to sales growth, territory areas become easier to identify and balance.
Territory balancing matters to franchise sellers and franchisee investors because sales potential eventually translates into revenue. Matched demographic categories to ZIP codes and city limits are grouped into relatively equal segments for sale as franchise territories.
Color-coding areas by demographic categories enable fast and relatively equal franchise territory creation. Separate territory maps can display franchise territories as sold or available as the program rolls out. Coverage area maps are also easily generated for public display of franchise service areas. Such coverage areas benefit mobile clinician planning, field tech services orgs, or product delivery logistics.
Conclusion
In general, one can see how business mapping software lends itself so well to franchising. Almost any type of business can be stood up under a franchise business mapping model in short order. Today’s online mapping services connect franchise business models with geographic reality, demographic buying trends, and service requirements.
MapBusinessOnline Standard provides all the tools your need to establish your first fifty franchise territories. Consider MapBusinessOnline Pro only if you require more than fifty territories right away. Pro also provides driving time and distance analysis tools, which come in handy for retailers and mobile field staff agencies.
Feel free to request a web demo through our contact system. It would be our pleasure to walk you through how MapBusinessOnline can bring you to your own sales nirvana.
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Discover why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution. The best replacement for Microsoft MapPoint happens to be the most affordable.
To access MapBusinessOnline, please register and download the Map App from the website – https://www.mapbusinessonline.com/App-Download.aspx.
After installing the Map App, the MapBusinessOnline launch button will be in the Windows Start Menu or Mac Application folder. Find the MapBusinessOnline folder in the Start Menu scrollbar. Click the folder’s dropdown arrow and choose the MapBusinessOnline option.
The Map App includes the Map Viewer app for free non-subscriber map sharing.
Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra or g2crowd.
Contact: Geoffrey Ives at geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson at jhenderson@spatialteq.com.
