Franchise Account Executive

Overview

You sell 7shifts' scheduling and payroll platform to restaurant franchise groups—think Subway franchisees with 20 locations, regional Dunkin' operators, or pizza chain owners. You manage the full sales cycle from prospecting to close, selling into multi-unit operators who need to standardize operations across locations. You're measured on new logo acquisition in the franchise segment.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (302 employees, established product)

Size: 302 employees

Growth: Actively hiring across sales org, expanding franchise-specific team

Market Position: Category leader in restaurant workforce management—competing against legacy systems and fragmented point solutions

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20% Inbound - franchisees who found them through search or word-of-mouth from other restaurant operators
• 60% Outbound - you're building lists of franchise groups, cold calling owners/ops directors, LinkedIn outreach
• 20% Partners/Referrals - some leads from franchise consultants, existing franchisee referrals

SDR/AE Structure: Self-sourcing model—you do your own prospecting and closing. No dedicated SDR support for this segment.

SE Support: Sales Engineer available for complex demos with technical questions, but you run most demos yourself.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Deputy, When I Work, HotSchedules (Fourth), Homebase, Paycor (for payroll), homegrown spreadsheet systems

How They Differentiate: Restaurant-specific features (tip management, shift swapping, labor law compliance), all-in-one scheduling + payroll vs point solutions, modern UI vs legacy systems

Common Objections: "We're using [competitor] already", "Our franchise agreement requires us to use [specific system]", "This is too expensive per location", "We need custom reporting our current system provides"

Win Themes: Total cost of ownership when replacing multiple systems, time savings on schedule creation (vs manual methods), labor compliance features that reduce risk, employee engagement/retention tools

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Admin/Internal (25%)

Key Activities

• Cold outreach to franchise owners/operators: You spend mornings researching franchise groups (finding who owns 10+ locations of a brand), building call lists, and making 30-40 calls per day. You're looking for the owner or Director of Operations. Most calls go to voicemail. You're trying to book 4-6 discovery calls per week.
• Running discovery and demo calls: You qualify the franchise structure (how many locations, current systems, decision process), then demo the platform. Most demos are 45-60 minutes showing scheduling, labor forecasting, payroll integration, and multi-location reporting. You're demoing to ops managers first, then often need a second demo for the owner/CFO.
• Multi-threading deals: Franchise deals involve the owner (budget holder), ops director (day-to-day user), sometimes a franchise business consultant, and occasionally franchisors who have preferred vendor lists. You spend time coordinating across these stakeholders and navigating internal politics.
• Building ROI cases: You create per-location cost analyses showing savings vs current systems, especially around labor cost reduction (better scheduling = less overtime) and time savings (automated payroll vs manual). You're pulling data from their current processes to justify the investment.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Slow franchise decision cycles: Even after a great demo, deals stall because owners are busy running restaurants, need to consult with franchisors, or want to pilot at 2-3 locations first. You'll have 15-20 active deals at various stages, and forecasting is difficult because close dates slip frequently.
• Price sensitivity in restaurants: Restaurant margins are thin. A $500-800/month per location commitment is a real decision. You'll lose deals to "we'll stick with what we have" or competitors who come in cheaper (but offer less functionality). Discounting pressure is constant.
• Navigating franchisor relationships: Some franchise brands have preferred vendor lists or existing relationships with competitors. You might close a deal only to have the franchisor veto it. Other times you need franchisor approval before you can even pitch to franchisees, which adds another layer of complexity.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 1-2 franchise groups per month (8-12 new logos per year)
• Expanding within franchise groups—starting with 5 locations, adding 10 more the next quarter
• Building a pipeline of 3X your quarterly quota

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Franchise Owners/Multi-Unit Operators (ultimate decision maker, budget holder)
• Directors of Operations (day-to-day user, influences decision heavily)
• CFOs or Controllers (involved in larger groups, care about payroll integration and reporting)

What They Care About:

• Labor cost control: They're managing tight margins and need to reduce overtime, prevent time theft, and optimize shift coverage
• Multi-location visibility: They want to see labor metrics across all locations, compare performance, and standardize processes
• Ease of use for managers: High turnover means they need something simple that new managers can learn quickly
• Compliance: Labor law compliance (break rules, minor restrictions, predictive scheduling laws) is a growing concern
• Payroll accuracy: Manual payroll errors cost money and create employee dissatisfaction

Requirements

• 3-5 years full-cycle sales experience, preferably in B2B SaaS
• Track record of hunting new business and consistently hitting quota
• Experience selling to franchises, restaurants, or retail preferred (understanding multi-unit operations)
• Comfortable with outbound prospecting—you need to self-source 60-70% of your pipeline
• Ability to navigate complex buying committees and multi-location decision processes
• Strong discovery skills to uncover current pain points and build ROI cases
• CRM hygiene and pipeline management discipline (forecast accuracy matters)