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All right, everyone.
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Welcome to another edition of our Franchise Your Business webinar and podcast series.
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My name is Tom DuFour.
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I'm the founder of Big Sky Franchise Team.
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Just want to thank you for tuning in.
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If you're new to us here, this is a regular session we've been running for six and a half years on all kinds of franchise-specific content, relevant material.
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And today is no different in terms of the material and information we're about to jump into.
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But before we do, just want to give a quick shout out to make sure that if you have not subscribed to our podcast, we'd love for you to do that.
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It's your favorite podcast service, whether that be Spotify or Apple or whichever service you use.
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And if you're listening on YouTube, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at Big Sky Franchise Team.
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So with that being said, I am super excited for our guest, Steven Englefield, who's here with us today.
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And he is the president and founder of the Consultant Exchange, TCX.
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Now, Steven, uh now the Consultant Exchange is a platform that modernizes how franchisors and franchise consultants connect.
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Steven spent more than 20 years building and scaling businesses across franchising, healthcare, and business services with a focus on removing barriers and improving the systems around the people doing the work.
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And I would say removing some of the barriers and making things more efficient and better is exactly what he's done here with TCX and what he's working on.
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And Steven and I had a chance to meet or get introduced and connected and had a chance to hear about what he's doing.
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I said, wow, this is amazing.
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And he just released this great franchise consultant and franchise broker report.
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So if for those that are tuning in, your ears perked up, if you want more data on franchise brokers, franchise consultants, what that's all looking like, Steven's our guy here.
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So Steven, with that intro, I'd love to turn things over to you.
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Yeah, thank thanks a lot for the intro, Tom.
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That's great.
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And uh really appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience.
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I think, you know, fundamentally, we launched TCX because we saw an opportunity in the industry to be able to, as you mentioned, modernize the infrastructure.
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Um, we wanted to be able to provide uh franchisors with cost-effective and efficient access to top-performing brokers in the industry so that they can go and build those relationships that we know are so important in the scaling of uh that as a lead generation strategy.
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And so we launched that a little over 18 months ago, and it's been a fantastic journey.
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And during that time, I kept hearing from all sorts of different people a bunch of data, a bunch of quotes thrown at me.
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And it would be things like you know, 20% of the consultants do 80% of the work, or 10% of the consultants do 90% of the deals, and and you know, the consultants only care about the commission, and all of these things people are telling me, and I'm like, wow, you know, this is this is pretty strong stuff.
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I'm hearing this from different sources, would love to see the data on this, and then it was crickets, you know, and I realized that there was actually no data to support a lot of these claims, and I found that was really fascinating that a whole industry is quoting the same numbers that there's been no study or any sort of foundational data to support.
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And so it was all very much hearsay.
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And so that was where we came up with the idea of the franchise consulting index.
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And the franchise consulting index is the very first cross-network study of the brokerage industry ever attempted.
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No one has ever really just said, you know what, these consultants who are so integral to the franchise development process, they're they can sit make a uh a brand sink or swim, depending on if they want to support them.
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No one's ever thought to ask them about what they're doing.
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No one, no, no one's really thought about, you know, let's ask them about what's important to them, what earns their trust, how they're doing deals.
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And so for me, it was a no-brainer that, you know, we had this access to all of these independent consultants across the industry.
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Uh, and so we wanted to go and get a data set.
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And so a couple of weeks ago, we were able to successfully publish the first uh the first inaugural report of the uh the franchise consulting index.
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And that's really what I'm happy to share with your audience today.
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Fantastic.
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Well, I found uh some of the preliminary data that you shared with me was right before you launched the report that we were able to connect.
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And uh you're you had some of the results and information, and it's really, really interesting.
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So uh yeah, I'd
Load full transcript
love for you to feel free to jump in.
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And and and one thing I did want to make note of with the consultant exchange, and I I know we're we're focused on talking about the data, but let's talk just for a minute about the consultant exchange and and how you're the same or different from maybe some of these other franchise broker networks and groups out there.
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Yeah, no, uh that that's a great start.
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And you know, fundamentally, what I'll say is, you know, TCX is not a broker group, right?
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Like that's just just so we can clear that up.
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We're not a broker group, we're a connection platform, and you know, what really is is key here is that the vast majority of the brokers and the consultants in the industry, there are exceptions, they're independent contractors, right?
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And so they can market themselves however they see fit.
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And so what we wanted to do was basically make sure that brands had an opportunity to get on the radar of these consultants in a cost-effective and proactive way.
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You know, everybody's got a book a call button in their LinkedIn uh profile.
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You can talk to people anywhere in the world at the click of the button.
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And so we really just wanted to modernize that ecosystem.
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And so what brands can now do is they can come onto the consultant exchange, they can use a bunch of filters, they can read profiles on these top-performing consultants.
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That means consultants that we have vetted.
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We've done validation calls with franchise or references to validate that these consultants have done recent placements, that they're professional, that they've got good character reference checks, strong net promoter score ratings.
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And really, we've been able to uh, I mean, at this point, we've interviewed over 800 consultants.
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We've only allowed 260 onto TCX.
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And so now you're really able to work with these top 20, top 30% of the consultants in the industry, go direct to them, book a call, be able to now get 15 minutes to talk about your brand, to be able to build and nurture the relationship, build that trust that consultants really need, not only in your brand, but in the developer as well.
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They need to know that, you know, in this situation, let's say you're the developer, I need to know that Tom's solid.
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Tom's not going to fumble the candidate that I send through.
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He's going to follow up and he's got a good recruitment process.
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And that's that's a connection that I
can only make by having multiple touch points with you over a series of time.
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And TCX has really modernized how brands are able to go and do that by by removing some of the barriers that the the current status quo uh has in place.
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Well, you mentioned that you've screened and found some of the top franchise consultants that are that are part of this that you've organized.
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So uh let's start defining with uh data, right?
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You said this was what that some of those questions that kind of so this is a perfect lead-in question to the data and and report here.
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So let's talk about how you started defining what is a top franchise broker or franchise consultant.
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Yeah, no, I think that that's a perfect segue.
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So I mean, one of the things uh I I kind of teased out earlier the 20% do 80, 10 do 90.
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The very first thing that we wanted to do was go and just get some baseline data.
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And I should just pre-cursor that this is directional data, right?
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You know, um, over the years and the different reports that we're gonna put out, you know, we're going to work towards making this be 100% conclusive data.
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But right now, this is directional, right?
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So that means that, you know, you're gonna hear this and it's showing where the trends are, and based on our sample size and the entire methodology limitations of the study are in the report.
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Um and what we found was that 20% of the consultants are actually responsible for 63% of all placements.
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So pretty close to that 28 number, 2080 number, but not quite there.
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And that 10% of consultants are actually responsible for 43% of all placements.
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And so that's really important because it still shows that we do have a large amount of concentration of deals to a smaller number of the industry.
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Different people will have different reports, you know.
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You know, we we believe there's around 3,800 consultants that would consider themselves active in the industry today.
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And so if we think about 3,800 and we start taking this 20% number, you know, now we're talking about 800 consultants, like 700, 800 consultants that really are um doing 20, you know, 63% of the deals.
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That means 3,000 consultants are actually responsible for just a third of the deals.
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And I think these are numbers that are really important for franchisors to know when they're going, whether or not you're a part of the broker networks, whether or not you're considering building out a broker lead generation strategy.
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I think that it's important that we understand that yes, there's lots of consultants out there, but in regards to it was just like real estate, right?
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You know, there's so many realtors and only a small number of them do a large amount of the deals, right?
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It's a very similar thing there, where you know, what we've been able to show is that uh a small group is responsible for a large placement.
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And so when we broke that down even further, what we were able to find is that um from the people that took our study, and there's a disclaimer there that I'll come back to, 51% of consultants do four or less placements in a year, right?
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And and I think that the disclaimer to come back to is one of the limitations of our study was that it was opt-in.
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So consultants had to say, yes, I want to do this study.
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Uh, if you're a disengaged consultant, if you're someone who's a hobbyist, a part-timer, maybe it's not really your focus right now, which makes up that 3800, you probably didn't take this study.
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In fact, our data shows that they didn't take this study.
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Um, and so that means in a best case scenario, 51% of all consultants are doing four or less.
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I actually think the number is probably a lot larger than that.
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And so what that means, um, and then when we also look at on the top end, 25% of consultants are doing 10 or more, right?
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Uh and it thins out with 2% doing over 30.
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So what we've got is a field of low performing, oh, sorry, not low performing, low volume operators, right?
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And it's important for any brands listening to this who are thinking about developing a lead gen strategy with brokers, is that if if if these consultants are out there, even at the top level, are doing 10, 15, 20 deals, you know, what are the chances that your brand is going to get all 10, 15 of those deals from that consultant?
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It's it's pretty slim that that's gonna happen, right?
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So, what we need to do is we need to take a volume-based approach to working with brokers.
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We need to build relationships.
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If we're in an early emerging stage, you know, we don't need hundreds and hundreds of consultants.
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We need to find the 10 to 20 to 30 that want to really dig deeper with us and support us in our growth because those 20 to 30 might send us a candidate every other month.
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That brings us a lead flow that we can now open those first
few locations.
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If we're a slightly more established brand, maybe we want to get 40 to 100 consultants that are sending us leads every month and that we can build around, but understanding that it's going to take time, it's a long-term strategy to building these relationships.
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It's not just uh meet someone and now all of a sudden they love my brand.
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We need to continue to nurture these relationships because uh we need so many of them to be able to fill our funnel.
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Well, I think that's uh a really good point that you make about some of these uh high performers or top performers, kind of basically looking at the top half from your report, essentially, of folks that are doing more than four uh uh deals in a given year, uh it's unlikely that one brand is going to secure all 10, 15, 20, however many deals that that broker does, even for the brokers that do two or three or four deals, it's still unlikely that one brand is responsible for all of them because it it at the end of the day, the franchisee that ends up, or the franchise candidate that ends up purchasing that franchise, he or she is gonna have to figure out, you know, which which one do I want.
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And the the the franchise consultant and broker will have some influence on kind of supporting or guiding them through it, but ultimately it's it's that candidate that's coming through.
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So I think that's a very, very good point for uh, especially any franchise or that's either new to the the franchise consultant and franchise broker world or that's new to just to being a franchise or I think I think that's a an important point.
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Yeah, no, I think expectation setting is really, really important here.
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If I see any um you know, any consistent sort of failing on this side of the industry, I think it's misaligned expectations, right?
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You know, I think it's uh a brand coming in and saying, you know, I'm going to spend all of this money and do all of these events and all of these things.
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And then at the end of it, they're like, I didn't really get anything from it.
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Uh, and I think that if if we could if we could interject a little earlier in that process and just say, look, you know, you are planting seeds that are gonna grow over a period of time.
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And and and the game that you're in, if you want to call it a game, is that you're trying to build strong relationships with as many people as possible.
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And the goal is or or the the key to success, I guess, is how am I gonna do that?
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Am I gonna do it by blitzing people with emails and putting them on drip campaigns and newsletters?
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Probably not, because a thousand other brands are doing exactly the same thing.
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And if if you're a top-performing consultant, you're just flooded with a wall of noise in your inbox, right?
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You're gonna do it by having one-on-one conversations.
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And now that's down to are we doing that by going and attending conferences, which are a very good way to meet people?
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That's that's a fantastic way, but they do happen sporadically throughout the year, and there is there is a large investment behind that as well.
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Um, and when you know you're not guaranteed who you're gonna meet at that event, um, or are we gonna do it by um you know trying to fuck talk to these people in different channels and and get on the get on calls with them without leaving the office and being able to uh to to build the relationship directly?
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And so that was really the the avenue and the opportunity that TCX wanted to provide.
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So I was just gonna say, Stephen, will you will you talk through a little bit of how that works?
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Because I think that's important because your your point is well taken of okay, great.
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Uh conferences, shows, trying to connect with the the these these uh franchise consultants and franchise brokers directly.
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Um, but it can be challenging to get their attention uh in either uh a conference style where there are other other franchisors that are there that are vying for their attention as well.
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Um not saying it won't happen.
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I think those conferences are great.
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I don't want to downplay those at all.
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I've I've been to those.
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They're they're wonderful networking opportunities to build those relationships.
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Um, but I I think what you've created here is really with with uh TCX is worth talking about how you can get some of these private one-to-one uh conversations.
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So uh will you talk a little bit about how your model works?
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Sure, yeah.
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That you know, really, you know, uh to agree with you, the the conferences are great, you know, but what happens between those events?
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You know, you go to the conference and you're you're everyone's full of energy and we have these great conversations.
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Yeah, man, I'm gonna give you a call and yeah, like and then you know, follow-up is you know historically mixed after a conference, right?
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Sometimes, yeah, you get you you strike goal, but a lot of the time it's you know, it takes
us a long time to get any traction, and we've got to continue to build those relationships.
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And so what the the the theory around TCX is let's say we're going to those events, that's great.
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So let's build a strategy between those events.
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And something that TCX does very well is you might decide you're going to a conference with one of the networks, and what you can now do is go on a TCX and you can schedule calls in the six weeks running up to that event with the very same consultants you're about to meet in person.
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And now you've got a controlled environment, you're in your office, I'm in my office, I'm gonna bring up some marketing collateral, I'm gonna walk you through my differentiators and my ideal candidate avatar.
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And you can ask questions, and we've built this very first step in our relationship.
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Now, a few weeks later, I'm gonna see you at one of these events, and I don't have that stress of having to get that information across to you at the bar where someone's also trying to get your attention and oh you're getting interrupted, and we had a couple of beers.
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We can now just focus on cementing the relationship.
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We can break bread.
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Hey, so you've got you've got a family.
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Oh, cool, awesome.
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We're just in Mexico.
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That's great.
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We can start to have that part of the relationship.
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That now becomes your second touch point.
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And then the follow-up afterwards, you can now circle back and be like, hey man, it was so great to spend some time with you in Florida or wherever it was, you know.
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Like now, uh, you know, what I just wanted to circle back with you.
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We had a quick conversation and I realized that we hadn't spoken about unit economics.
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Now I'm bringing up my unit economics, and I'm talking about unit economics, right?
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And so now you've had three touch points in maybe three months, and it's happened in a really, really cost-effective way, which is a segue to uh how our model works.
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Our model has a subscription to be on the platform, but it's what the what's key to the model is that we've flipped it where we're actually going to pay the consultants for their time.
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We've said, hey, if these consultants really are the best, if if we're putting in this vetting process and these are top performers, then just like any industry, I'm willing to compensate you for your time.
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You're an expert.
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--> 00:19:16.480
I pay, you know, whether you're working with your lawyer or your CPA or whatever, everyone's getting paid for their time.
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So what I'm gonna do is say, hey, Mr.
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and Mrs.
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Consultant, would love to take 15 minutes of your time to tell you about Company X.
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And I'm more than happy to compensate you for that.
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And so consultants on the platform are setting a fee somewhere around$25 to$50 for a 15-minute call.
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It's a really nominal fee for a franchise or they're able to now budget accordingly.
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You know, if I want to do 20 calls a month, I know what that's gonna cost me, but I know that at the end of the year I'm gonna have had hundreds of conversations with the top-performing consultants.
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And it gives me that control over the process.
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It allows me to have the ability to scale the outreach um based on you know how hard I want to push or if I want to pull back or what my budget is, versus, you know, relying solely on how successful that event is gonna be.
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Well, uh I think it's great.
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I think it's uh uh that's a great description as a uh it's another step in the process, right?
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Of just building the relationship, a connection point, a follow-up, a reconnect, what whatever terminology uh is helpful.
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And I even think maybe uh you could check the roster list and maybe even do pre-show uh connections.
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Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing you spend, you know, 15 minutes, 30 minutes together ahead of time, looking forward to it.
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Let's book some coffee while we're at the show or whatever that might be.
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So I I think it's great.
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Absolutely.
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And you know, the the counter-argument might be well, why can't I just email them and call them to set this up?
00:20:54.720 --> 00:20:58.640
And my response to that would be if you can do that, great.
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:02.000
Like if you could email them and call them, go for it.
00:21:02.079 --> 00:21:03.599
Don't use TCX.
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:21.119
In my experience and why TCX exists, is that there's just so much noise going towards those consultants that if you have not developed a relationship with them yet, the chances are your email, your voicemail, it's not gonna get through, right?
00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:28.559
Because I I spoke to someone the other day that said they got 92 emails in a day from brands from in one day.
00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:38.720
Wow, and so if you're one of those 92 and you've not spoken to that person before, well, there's no chance that they're gonna be like, Oh, I'm gonna dig into this and listen to this.
00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:40.160
Like, it's just not human nature.
00:21:40.319 --> 00:21:48.960
So TCX is that agreed infrastructure that cuts through that noise, it gets you the chance to get onto their radar.
00:21:49.119 --> 00:21:52.079
And yeah, once you've built that relationship, that's great.
00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:56.559
Maybe you can call them and you're lucky enough that they just pick up because they see that Tom's calling.
00:21:56.720 --> 00:22:05.359
But to get to that stage, we do need uh You know, a strategy and a cost-effective strategy to get the relationship to that point.
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:07.839
That is so good.
00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:08.960
That is so good.
00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:14.799
Well, um uh Steven, for someone that that's listening in and says, hey, this is super cool.
00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:22.799
I like this, you know, how can they learn more about what you're doing, get connected, um, see some of the data you're talking about?
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:24.319
What where where can they go?
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:25.039
Awesome.
00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:29.119
Well, I've got two uh website URLs for for your listeners.
00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:39.920
Um, if you're interested in the consultant exchange, uh you can go to the consultantexchange.com and uh you can learn a lot more about the platform there.
00:22:40.079 --> 00:22:48.240
You can uh request uh to jump on a call there, and you'll actually meet with myself, and I'd be more than happy to show you around the platform.
00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:59.039
Um, and if you're interested in more of the data, we've got data on you know where these consultants are placing their deals, what they look for in a brand, what earns their trust.
00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:05.440
You know, there's so much information in here that um that has never really been seen before.
00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:09.680
If you want to go and download that, that is a free download for you.
00:23:09.839 --> 00:23:13.920
You just need to go to franchiseconsultingindex.com.
00:23:14.079 --> 00:23:16.160
I don't know why I like long URLs.
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:26.720
I do apologize, and but consult uh franchiseconsultingindex.com and you can just download it for free right there and and dig into what is a 50-page report.
00:23:27.119 --> 00:23:27.680
Very good.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:35.680
Well, we'll do our we'll we'll look to make sure we include those in the show notes so that uh it's easy for someone just to click on and and get connected with.
00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:51.039
And uh, you know, Steven, as as we uh as we bring this to a close, is there anything you know you'd like to make sure that uh that that you are hoping to get across or haven't had a chance to share yet, or maybe leave uh someone with that that listens to this?
00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:01.839
You know, fundamentally, what what TCX is is trying to do, uh you know, we have an
internal mission statement that we're looking at creating a fair future in franchising.
00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:14.000
Uh, and what I mean by that is that I I think that the infrastructure that has been in place in the can in the consultant industry for the last 30 years has operated very, very well.
00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:24.079
Uh, I do think, however, that we are in a position now where with technology and accessibility and you could talk to someone around the world at the click of a button.
00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:42.880
I think that you know, there's uh a future ahead of us where open access and transparency is really going to be the things that brands are looking for and hoping for, you know, as opposed to potentially closed networks and exclusivity.
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:48.640
And so really that's what TCX underpins every decision TCX makes.
00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:53.599
We actually have on our team, it's funny, we structure our team into two teams.
00:24:53.759 --> 00:24:59.599
We've got a team that represents the franchise or and we've got a team that represents the consultant and the broker.
00:24:59.759 --> 00:25:10.240
And every time, every feature, every function, every decision that we make, those two teams have got to agree that this is for the betterment of both.
00:25:10.319 --> 00:25:13.119
And if it's only for the betterment of one, we don't do it.
00:25:13.359 --> 00:25:13.680
Right.
00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:24.799
And it's a really, it's been a really fun uh exercise because it really makes sure that what we're looking at is we're trying to remove all barriers on both sides.
00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:31.279
So because if if only one side of the equation is getting all the benefits, then you're gonna, you know, you're you've got an expiry date.
00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:37.920
And so I just want uh your listeners to know that um, you know, the future is bright for this side of the industry.
00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:55.359
There are lots of organizations that are looking at removing barriers, um, and that you know, we want to make sure that working with uh brokers and consultants is a viable lead generation strategy for anyone, regardless of their stage of growth.
00:25:56.079 --> 00:25:56.880
Excellent.
00:25:57.119 --> 00:25:59.920
Well, uh Steven, this has been a great interview.
00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:14.480
I really appreciate uh you sharing this information, the data, access to this report, which uh I think is wonderful what you're doing here, and just providing a wealth of information to help uh franchising get better.
00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:16.480
So I I really like what you're doing.
00:26:16.559 --> 00:26:17.920
So thank thank you so much.
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:19.279
Thank you so much, Tom.
00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:21.039
It's been uh been a pleasure chatting with you.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:21.839
Great.
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:25.839
Well, uh, to those that tune in again, please subscribe to our podcast.
00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:31.519
Uh share this because I'm certain you have a franchise friend that would love to hear this message.
00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:34.319
And we look forward to having you back on the next episode.
00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:35.519
Thanks again, Steven.
00:26:35.759 --> 00:26:37.039
Really appreciate you being here.
00:26:37.519 --> 00:26:37.839
Thank you.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:38.799
Appreciate it, guys.