Apple Pie Capital : Case Study

The Challenge

An innovative, franchise-focused financial solutions provider dedicated to high-quality franchise brands, their entrepreneurs and investors, Apple Pie Capital wanted to reach franchisees of specific brands that had a high percentage of multi-unit franchisees and were in growth modes to offer them capital for expansion or remodeling. Tired of direct mail, brochures or trade shows to locate new borrowers, Apple Pie Capital sought a more focused, customer-centric approach.

 

The Solution

In their desire to find mid-stream franchisees who might be in the market for additional growth, Apple Pie Capital gave Prospect Direct a list of 50 established franchise brands in the US that they were interested in approaching. PD tapped into their exclusive database to provide contact information for franchise owners of the targeted brands – information that would have taken Apple Pie Capital a long time to find, if they were able to locate it at all. Apple Pie Capital took the ball and ran with it from there.

 

The Results

Apple Pie Capital’s heads of sales and marketing had been concerned that their sales team didn’t have an adequate pipeline when utilizing trade shows, direct mail pieces, and trade magazine ads to locate potential clients. Thanks to Prospect Direct, their sales force is reaching existing franchisors, growing brands, and hitting their numbers. Not only did this result in a much higher hit rate in securing loans, it was done at a fraction of the cost of a trade show booth. Apple Pie has since purchased 2 additional data sets and rely on PD data as a main source of qualified leads for revenue growth.

Grabbers : Case Study

The Challenge

Providing comfortable, long-lasting and slip-resistant work shoes with durable outsoles, easy-care uppers and removable cushioned insoles, Grabbers wanted to provide safety footwear to restaurants throughout the US using a very unique approach. Their goal was to become the footwear of choice for restaurant employees – particularly back-of-house staffers who experience most slippage-related accidents – through a highly targeted and specialized brand ambassador program.

 

The Solution

Recognizing that most decisions were made by kitchen or back-of-house managers at the unit – not centralized – level, Grabbers decided to directly approach the people working at the stores. Prospect Direct culled their proprietary database to pull managers from the general manager on down for approximately 2,000 food and retail establishments, and invited those individuals to become brand ambassadors in exchange for an incentive (free shoes, referral percentage, etc.) if they got people to sign up for work shoes.

 

The Results

Grabbers’ objective for this highly innovative brand ambassador program was to get people on the ground level interested in their safety footwear and to share it with their friends, so that it would go viral at the restaurant or store level. PD’s personalized, targeted email campaign exceeded company expectations: instead of the typical 5-10 percent response that Grabbers was anticipating, more than 37 percent of people clicked on the call to action button that gave them access to the referral program. This validated Grabbers’ approach of capturing a niche of customers who care – and actively promote – their products.

Panda Express : Case Study

The Challenge

Defining American Chinese cuisine with bold flavors and fresh ingredients in their popular restaurants around the world, Panda Express was seeking a master franchisee for target markets of New Zealand and Australia. After exhausting networking and franchise brokers to no avail, they were considering the International Trade Administration’s Gold Key Service program. Before doing so, they wanted to make one last attempt to find qualified candidates.

 

The Solution

Panda Express asked Prospect Direct to identify existing franchisees of global brands through PD’s proprietary international master franchisee database, specifically seeking established performers that had both food service and chain operations experience. After creating a dataset of 70 companies that fit the criteria, PD delivered a focused list of 200 executives to Panda Express. They then opted to PD’s Sales Assistant™ to make email introductions and schedule meetings with candidates the following month during a visit to the region.

 

The Results

Leveraging PD’s unique way of approaching each introduction with a highly personalized and carefully sequenced email campaign that yields extremely high open and response rates from time-strapped and email-inundated executives, Panda Express was able to set up eight meetings with very qualified individuals within the organizations they’d hand-picked. These high-level meetings directly resulted in a signed master franchise agreement for the brand in New Zealand.

Pepsico : Case Study

The Challenge

A leading global food and beverage company with brands that are immediately recognizable and respected household names, PepsiCo wanted to improve communication with, and operations of, their extensive bottler network around the world. The corporate office sought central intelligence for potential customer bases in 15 strategically selected countries so that they could arm their bottlers with critical B2B data on their Total Addressable Market (TAM.)

 

The Solution

PepsiCo partnered with Prospect Direct to obtain a comprehensive picture of their customer base using PD’s restaurant, foodservice, and hospitality dataset combining independent, chain, and franchise operators. PD first prioritized the initial 15 countries, identifying companies positioned for growth and determining which potential PepsiCo customers were part of larger global networks. Further finetuning by unit count and restaurant type gave bottlers a relevant, current data set they could use to allocate actionable leads to their sales staff.

 

The Results

Bottlers can now maximize their sales efforts by tapping into fast-growing independent concepts, hot smaller players and established larger accounts with upcoming contracts that were previously off the radar. They can also obtain information on key decision makers in enterprise-level organizations to ensure PepsiCo is in the mix when it comes time for an RFP or contract bid. At the corporate level, PepsiCo can now hold bottlers more accountable, confident that they have a consistent source of qualified leads and solid prospect network, granting them a level of oversight that didn’t exist without this laser-focused data.