Payroll Vault had 59 franchise locations. Each one had its own sales process, its own way of tracking leads, and its own way of deciding what counted as a deal. Their previous CRM allowed for that. Each franchise had a separate portal. No shared pipeline. No shared definitions. No oversight.
That setup made sense when the goal was just to have a CRM at all. But it stopped working as soon as the business needed to grow, coach, and measure performance across the network.
The problem wasn’t customization. It was inconsistency.
Separate pipelines caused more work, not more flexibility
When each franchise tracked deals their own way, the corporate team couldn’t compare performance across locations. They couldn’t see which stages were holding up deals. They couldn’t answer simple questions like:
- How long does it take to convert a lead?
- What’s our average deal size?
- Where are deals falling through?
Everything required a spreadsheet. Everything had to be translated. Data meant something different in every pipeline.
Franchisees didn’t benefit either. They had no example to follow. No sense of how others were succeeding. No shared assets. And no feedback loops.
The new CRM used one shared pipeline
When Payroll Vault migrated to HubSpot, the sales pipeline was redesigned from the ground up. One shared pipeline was created. Every location used the same stages, the same properties, and the same definitions.
That single pipeline allowed the business to:
- Measure conversion rates by stage and by location
- Identify stalled deals based on timestamps
- Route leads automatically by postal code
- Build dashboards with location-level filtering
- Coach franchisees using real data, not anecdotes
All of this was possible because every deal meant the same thing in every location.
Standardization didn’t mean uniformity
Each franchise still had flexibility. They could use their own views, automate their own tasks, and create their own saved reports. But the core structure was consistent.
That consistency was what allowed the system to scale. Without it, every new franchise would require its own version of the CRM. That model doesn’t work.
What changed after go-live
After the shared pipeline went live:
- Conversion rate increased from 3.3% to 14.4%
- Time to close dropped from 23.2 days to 12.96 days
- Franchisees created 137 tasks in 30 days
- The corporate team could view all pipeline activity without manual follow-up
This wasn’t just about visibility. It was about accountability. Franchisees could see how they were doing. Corporate could offer coaching based on data. Everyone worked from the same system.
CRM should clarify, not complicate
Franchise networks don’t benefit from multiple disconnected pipelines. They benefit from shared definitions, shared tools, and shared benchmarks.
If your CRM is full of one-offs, one-offs become the standard.
Schedule a call if your pipeline is different at every location. There’s a better way to scale franchise sales.
