Capital
Liquid funds, borrowing appetite and what is left for working capital after the licence fee. The single fastest disqualifier, and the one candidates are least willing to volunteer on a call.
Franchisors and multi-site operators
The wrong franchisee costs more than an empty territory
Exhibitions, portals and paid search send you volume, and your development managers spend their week on discovery calls with people who have no capital, no operating experience and a town you awarded 18 months ago. The number you need to move is not applicants. It is the share of them worth an hour.
Not open yet. Ours scores your own recruitment funnel, from the side a candidate sees it.
The cost
A discovery call is the most expensive way to find out somebody cannot pay
Multi-stage discovery consumes the most expensive time in the business, and most of it is spent establishing facts a form could have collected in four minutes.
The portal sends a name and an email. The pack goes out. Somebody chases it twice, books a call, and 40 minutes in establishes that the candidate has half the liquid capital and wants a territory that is already trading.
Nothing about that is anybody’s fault. It is what happens when the only thing standing between a portal listing and a development manager’s diary is a request for a PDF.
It also runs the other way. 67% of B2B buyers now prefer to work things out without a rep at all, up from 61% (Gartner, March 2026, n=646). Serious candidates, the ones with capital and something to leave, are often the least willing to book a call with a salesperson before they have worked out whether this suits them.
Before
Name, email, and a prospectus in the post.
Volume, ranked by nothing, chased by someone expensive.
After
Capital band, territory, experience and a fit score.
Fewer calls, each one with the first 20 minutes already done.
What we would build
The Franchise Fit Score
Five factors, weighted by whoever signs off a new franchisee. The output is a band and a route, not a rank, because the decision this supports is binary and expensive.
Operating experience
Whether they have run a team, a rota and a set of accounts before, or whether this would be the first time anyone reported to them.
Risk appetite
What they expect to earn in year one and what they would do in a quiet quarter. The gap between that expectation and the model is where most early exits start.
Territory suitability
Where they want to operate, and whether that ground is open, saturated or already under offer. It routes the enquiry as much as it scores it.
Values alignment
How they answer when the brand standard and their own judgement disagree. Soft to ask and hard to recover from, which is why it sits in the model rather than in a later chat.
The weighting is the argument, and it is yours to have. A network recruiting owner-operators weights operating experience heavily. One recruiting multi-unit investors barely weights it at all and doubles capital. Two networks, same five factors, completely different instruments.
Where they go
Three tracks, and only one of them reaches a diary
A score that does not change who gets called is a report. The routing is the part that gives your development team their week back.
Top band
Straight to discovery
Capital confirmed, territory open, experience in the right shape. Your development manager opens the call already knowing the answer to the first 20 minutes of it.
Middle band
Nurture against the gap
Right person, wrong month. Usually capital timing or a property that has not sold. A sequence written against the one thing missing, not a monthly newsletter.
Lower band
The alternative model
Not a franchisee, and told so kindly and immediately. Some are an employed area manager, some are a multi-unit partner for later, and most of them talk about you either way.
The lower band matters more here than in any other sector on this site. A declined franchise candidate is a member of the public with an opinion about your brand and a forum to post it on. Told early and told why, most of them stay warm. Left on a list and declined eight months later, they do not.
How it runs
The model is written before a single question is
Four steps, in order. The first is the only one with a hard stop, because every step after it inherits whatever it gets wrong.
The model
The five factors, weighted. Whoever signs off a new franchisee agrees the weighting before anything is designed, because that argument is the model and nobody else can have it for you.
The questions
Roughly 14, in the order a candidate will tolerate. Capital does not go first: a question that reads as a credit check in slot one costs you the people who would have passed it.
The result
A fit score, a band, and an honest read on it. A candidate who scores low is told why, which is the difference between a quiet exit and a complaint on a forum.
The routing
The top band gets a discovery slot. Everyone else gets the track that suits them. This is the part that gives your development team their week back.
It runs on software you licence yourself, which is the cheapest line in the project and we tell you what it costs before you commit. The work is the weighting, the question order, the bands and the three routes out.
Your channels
Both of the places you buy candidates end on the same page
Google Ads
You are bidding against portals on your own brand terms and on every “franchise opportunities” variant there is. The most expensive click in this sector currently lands on a prospectus request.
Meta ads
Cold social brings people who were daydreaming about leaving their job. They will not fill in a capital disclosure. They will answer 14 questions about whether this would suit them.
Exhibitions are the third, and they are the one place this earns its keep in a single day. A stand that ranks the badge scans by fit before the hall closes is a different stand from one that collects them.
All six channelsPackages
Three packages, fixed scope, nothing open ended
Package 1
The fit score, built
The weighted model, the 14 questions, the bands, the candidate result pages, the report and the live build.
Package 2
The recruitment funnel
Everything above, plus the paid search and paid social entry pages, the three routed sequences, and the handover into your CRM with the scores attached.
Package 3
The network programme
Everything above, plus re-weighting as the network grows, a territory viability instrument, and somebody reading the responses each month.
Prices are not published yet because they are not final. When they are, they go on the pricing page as numbers, not as a form.
Questions
What franchisors ask before they commission one
Yes, and that is the point of it. Your board has been reading a number that counts prospectus requests, and prospectus requests are not scarce. The number worth reporting is discovery calls that reach a second stage, and sorting before the call is the only thing that moves it.
Your turn
Fewer applicants, and a diary full of the ones who can sign
Ours scores your own funnel on the four things that decide whether the traffic you pay for turns into candidates worth an hour, and names the one costing you most.
Not open yet. When it opens, the score and the report are yours whether or not we ever speak.