IAM2511 – Is Progress Really Happening?

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless explores into the challenges of franchise brokerage, particularly the extended sales cycles and the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship.

He emphasizes that while immediate feedback is scarce, signs like presentations, brand communications, and candidate interactions indicate movement.

Gresham also highlights the importance of recognizing small victories and staying persistent, even when outcomes are not immediately clear.

Through his experiences, Gresham has recognized that his strengths lie in lead generation and content creation, rather than managing the full sales cycle.

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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.

Now the question is, is the dam really breaking? And I think one of the interesting things around this is that, especially with high ticket sales that you start to realize is that you don't necessarily get a lot of quick wins.

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The quick wins you have to take from the overall process of like, hey, I did a presentation, okay.

The client or candidate decided to touch base with one of the brands. Or, hey, I got an email from the brand and they said that they're, taking the next step.

So a lot of what's happening throughout this process, you're not really sure exactly where things stand until things get over the finish line.

So that's one of the really challenging things around, this franchise brokerage business is that you don't get a lot of quick wins. You don't get a lot of quick feedback.

Usually it takes over, it takes a long period of time for you to understand exactly like where you are.

And being six months in at the same time, you can look and easily say that, hey, things are not progressing fast or they are progressing fast.

And it's all relative because you could say these processes take four to six months.

But you can also say in the grand scheme of things that You could also say in the grand scheme of things that you're completely nowhere and you don't really know that.

So that's one of the hardest things about, I think, this long sales cycle is that you can easily look and say that, okay, I'm not sure if I'm making any progress.

But then to some degrees, you could say that I actually feel like I am making progress.

So, I had a presentation with a pretty good candidate in this yesterday. I think it went okay, but not really sure if the candidate is actually interested in moving forward.

So what helps me kind of see, and it's husband and wife and doing things separately.

So that also has me a little bit more unsure of like what those steps might be.

But because this candidate does have an inventory of business, a book of business or book of franchises that they already work with that they do and are interested in that franchising route.

On the other standpoint, I haven't touched base with my candidate. My candidate hasn't responded back.

But because the brand has been emailing me, I've been getting some updates that he's progressing.

So over the last two weeks, I haven't heard much from him because we haven't had our calls.

But I'm hearing from the brand. So I'm not really sure exactly where he's at.

And that's the other kind of big thing is that you don't know exactly what's happening or what that looks like.

But you're glad that you're kind of on that loop. It's one of the interesting things, like week to week, you don't know ultimately where you're at.

Sometimes you have a good candidate and that candidate completely disappears. Or you have a candidate that something happens to them in their life and they completely fall off.

So those things have happened on a regular basis. Life continues to life, as I like to say.

But what you do is you continue to kind of just take the steps and continue to kind of get better.

So when I started that out, started everything I was saying, am I really progressing? Am I moving forward?

I'm not sure. But what you try to do, I think, especially with these high ticket sales, this high ticket process, this long sales process, is that you try to take the wins where you can take the wins.

And if you're able to do that, then that puts you in a place where hopefully you'll be able to kind of ultimately get better.

So with that being said, it's just continue to kind of, chop up the tree, continue to kind of do the things, don't get discouraged, and just kind of lean into that and hopefully things will definitely work out.

But I'm very curious to see like how and what, you know, it looks like maybe six months from here.

I think 46 months, you'll get a lot of idea of like, you kind of see the, hear the quote of like, we'll find out who was really working.

And that's something that we'll ultimately kind of find out, very quickly.

So looking forward to that, looking forward to what everything looks like and then once we got a ticket from there.

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

Outro 05:32

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.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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