What it takes to Ramp Up and Discovering Your Niche
Cristiana trained with the FBA in April of 2014, but she was still working full-time in her cosmetics career. She spent the next six months learning the franchises, attending the weekly trainings, and taking CFB (Certified Franchise Broker) courses.
"I wanted to know the inventory and feel confident in the business. Once I had that confidence, I felt comfortable transitioning from my job to working full-time as a franchise consultant. When it came to setting up my franchise consulting business I knew I wanted to focus on immigration. It was something I knew well and understood personally. I just didn't have any idea how big the market was."
Cristiana knew she wanted her business to keep her costs low and leverage her charisma to cultivate a vibrant network of professionals. She wanted to focus on her niche, clients from Italy, France, and other countries looking to immigrate to the US using the E-2 visa.
Building a solid and sustainable business relies on having a steady flow of quality leads and a full pipeline. For those starting out, this is almost always their biggest concern. In the case of Cristiana, again, she focused on what she is good at.
Local Networking
To start, she started building her local network around her. She reached out to people within the business community like immigration attorneys, personal contacts, real estate agents, property managers, credit repair agents, etc. Basically, she reached out to anyone who works with or is in contact with her target market.
As the network grew she began cultivating it by getting to know the members on a deeper level and matching them with her clients or other members of the network. This type of reciprocal relationship is what keeps Cristiana top of mind when they have people that match her services.
She established herself to her community as an expert in franchising. She even discovered businesses who were interested in franchise development and expanded her core business. Today, she has several lucrative arrangements with multiple companies that even extend to Italy where they source her target clients for her.
Online Networking
Cristiana also began finding clients using the internet as well. For her strategy she's decided to take the long-term organic approach as apposed to a pay-per-click advertising model. "I started with local advertising, but felt that I wasn't drawing in the clientele that was right for me. I also spend a good deal of time with social networking and blogging, and everyone gets my newsletter - clients and the entire network. It helps me stay in contact and keep them up-to-date with what's going on."
In fact, from the very beginning she has been an avid blogger - a practice highly promoted by the FBA for its members. "My blog has been working great! I regularly am getting people contacting me from all around the world."
Facebook has also been a big lead generator for her. "I tried LinkedIn, but Facebook groups is best for me. Many Italians love Facebook and when I help one it's easy to pass me on to their friends. In the end, it's all about referrals for me."
"I've recently partnered with a company that does digital media in Italy, and they do business development here in the US. Our arrangement allows them to source the leads and handle the entire immigration process. I help them with the franchises and getting their life started here. It's a relationship that has worked out great. I've only been working with them since August and I already have five very engaged clients."
As we come to the close of 2015, we look back at Cristiana's accomplishments and applaud her hard work and successes. She's done remarkably well in this business and has stuck to her plan and seen several accomplishments. As of the time of this story she's closed 9 units for 6 clients from various sources. Her pipeline is now full with 24 qualified and motivated people, four of which are in the last steps of validating and will be closing within December or January.
Her successes are due to her commitment to executing her plan and sticking to it. It's worked well for her, and she now has what she wanted when entering the franchise consulting business - to have the freedom to maximize her strengths, work normal business hours, earn a comfortable living, and be able to put it down when her family comes home from work and school.
As 2016 approaches she is now turning to refining her process. Her goals now are to develop systems to educate her clients earlier and maximize her time - systems like maximizing and utilizing landing pages and building educational webinars for her clients. She's reached a level now where she's confident in her process and proficient at qualifying her candidates quickly.
If you'd like to speak with Cristiana you can reach her online at www.myfranchiseusa.com https://twitter.com/MyFranchiseUSA https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristiana-jones-a211673 https://www.facebook.com/My-Franchise-USA-294964570683084/
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