Franchise Your Business

November 2025 Franchise Sales and Marketing Trends

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This is a recording of a live webinar recorded on November 21, 2025, starting at around 1 PM Eastern Time USA.   

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Links from the episode are here:   

  1. https://www.ismworld.org/globalassets/pub/research-and-surveys/rob/pmi/boo202510pmi.pdf
  2. https://www.ismworld.org/globalassets/pub/research-and-surveys/rob/nmi/vot3rob202510svcs.pdf
  3. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
  4. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
  5. https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/charts.html
  6. https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf
  7. https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/current/index.html
  8. https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/current/index.html
  9. https://www.franchiseinsights.com/franchise-prospects/a-surprising-number-of-franchise-prospects-already-own-businesses/
  10. https://www.franchiseinsights.com/franchise-prospects/how-do-the-options-for-ownership-stack-up-in-the-eyes-of-business-buyers/
  11. https://www.franchiseinsights.com/small-business-startup-sentiment-index/startup-sentiment-dips-but-remains-solid-on-business-conditions-for-early-2026/
  12. https://www.franchiseinsights.com/top-ten-business-opportunity-categories/

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us again for another edition of our franchise your business and webinar series. And uh today's session is our weekly or excuse me, monthly franchise sales and marketing trends, where we take a look at some broad economic data and happenings and just discuss it, talk about it, and see how this might be impacting what your what your your franchise sales and marketing efforts might look like. So um if if you're new to us here, by the way, my name is Tom Dufour. I'm the founder uh and CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And uh we work with uh organizations, entrepreneurs and franchise owners and help them turn their business into a franchise and to expand their franchise system. That's our specialty. And we've been running this uh session. It's it's gone under a bunch of different names over the last uh five and a half years, but uh roughly five and a half years, we've been running this to try to give you insights and updates on franchising and how that might potentially impact what you're doing, what you're not doing, decisions you might make, or just to help bring you into the know. Uh, one thing to say uh before we jump in, I always like to ask for you to subscribe to our podcast. It's called Franchise Your Business. This podcast is a franchise your business. And you can subscribe to that on your favorite podcast service uh through Apple or Spotify or whichever source you you like. We're on a whole bunch of them. Uh or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel where you'll get access to this. Um, our other uh great resource is our second podcast called Multiply Your Success, uh, which it interviews leading franchisors, executives, and uh cont and and experts, knowledge experts, to help add insight and information on a once a week basis. So with that being said, uh uh love for you to subscribe. And if if you like what you hear, uh check us out uh at bigskyfranchise team.com where you can uh where where you can uh learn a little bit more about us and book some time with us if you'd like to talk more. Okay, so let's jump into this session here. So I am gonna share my screen and we'll get this show underway. Uh and by the way, for our guests, as I'm my screen is loading, uh, who are here live with us, as this is a live session, uh please feel free to uh raise your hand or just type a question in the comments. Um, and uh if you have questions or thoughts you you'd like to add, and I'll look to do my best to address them live. I am running the show myself today, so I will do my best. Okay, so the first report and data information we like to take a look at is from the Institute for Supply Management, and they prepare what they call their uh ISM Manufacturing PMI report. This is an analysis that was done by Susan Spence, and they publish this data. What I like about this data is that this tends to be, manufacturing tends to be a leading indicator of what's going on with the broader economy. That's why personally I really like this uh report. And the and the paragraph reads: the U.S. manufacturing sector contracted in October for the eighth consecutive month after two months of expansion, preceded by 26 months of contraction. The manufacturing PMI registered 48.7 percent in October, a 0.4 percentage point decrease compared to the 49.1 percentage percent recorded in September of the five sub-indexes that directly factor into the manufacturing PMI, one supplier deliveries, is an expansion territory, one fewer than in September. So for those of you that are able to see my screen as you're watching this, you can see that back in two 2023, you can see there's been kind of a little drop into 23, a slight in and a slight uh incline uh from about uh end of 2023 to 2025. You can kind of see there's a little trend line that's pretty pretty nice to see there, but it's been a very slow, very, very slow. This is the tortoise, not the hare, uh, kind of a growth uh to look at. And as such, for in your business, you very well may be feeling a very similar sentiment. Uh so I think that this is a great report to see because manufacturing, although it is a small percentage of the overall US economy, uh, it the impact it has an outsized impact compared to other industries, largely because as a manufacturer, they have to buy raw goods, they buy semi-completed goods, they assemble, they ship, uh, and they're it they employ. Uh it impacts so many other industries, it impacts retailers, et cetera, et cetera, on and on and on. So uh that's why I really like to look at it. Now, uh, this is for the manufacturing breakeven line. On this report, it shows that at 42.3% is the overall economy break-even line. So it's about 6.5 points above the economy breakeven line, according to this report. So uh what I to me, when I see this, it's been relatively flat. It's just maybe slightly ticking up over the last almost two years or so, uh, with a little bit of a trend line. But for the most part, it's just under that break-even. Uh, and to me, that helps fill in some blanks to say why for for many clients and businesses I've been speaking to, you know, might be saying, it seems like it's a little bit harder uh the last couple of years to generate uh revenue and serve customers and clients. And to me, these kinds of reports help validate that. And so you might be seeing that in your franchise sales efforts. So let's take a look at report number two. This is by the Institute for Supply Management. This is their second report. They used, they they had two, then they added a third two or three years ago. It was a hospital report, and they actually just discontinued that over the last few months. Uh, but this report is called the Institute for Supply Management ISM Services PMI report. This analysis is done by Steve Miller, and it says the services PMI at 52.4%. It reads in October, the services PMI registered 52.4%, a 2.4 percentage point increase compared to the September reading of 50%. A reading above 50% indicates a services economy is generally expanding. Below 50% indicates it is generally contracting. A services PMI above 48.6% over time generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy. Therefore, the October services PMI indicates the overall economy is expanding for the 65th straight month. So I find this one interesting, and uh you can see overall from 2023 what's visible on this through today, you can kind you can see a bit of a trend line, and it's just above that 50% number. You you can visually just kind of see it. You know, I didn't run the numbers, but uh you can see that it's right around that 50-50th percentile, right around that uh um uh services PMI break-even line. Again, uh you saw manufacturing was just below, services seems to be just above, and the US economy is uh mostly services in today's world. But just again, I I feel like a bit of a broken record because it's been this type of conversation each session for the last many, many months. But to me, it it just helps give some reassurance to say if you are finding in your business that it has been a little more challenging, or the last two or three years have been a little harder, a little bit more of a struggle to generate uh the same revenue or or customers, or maybe it's even been a little less. Um, that this helps give some clarity to to explain it that that you're not the your business is probably not the only one. Uh, with that being said, um it is it is great to note, and and by the way, this is great information to share with your franchisees, especially if you find that they're struggling. Um, I I see in many franchise oars, especially franchise oars that have started growing and really taking off, as the franchise system starts to mature with mature franchisees, you start to see that their revenue starts to uh level off, maybe dip and have some up and down and traction and follow some economic cycles. So uh just be mindful of that with your franchisees to help support them, even encouraging them to either watch this or share some of this information. Uh, I think could be helpful for them to understand what's going on in their own business. Uh now we're gonna take a look at the United States unemployment rate. This is from TradingEconomics.com, the United States unemployment rate. Uh, and I've got this zoomed in on a 10-year window. I will zoom in, I'll zoom in on this a bit. I'm gonna go to the one year, and you can see for uh September, uh, oh, this hasn't been updated. That's uh I I keep forgetting. Um September's uh unemployment was 4.4%. Um I uh the uh uh much of this data from the Bureau of Labor Labor Statistics, we've got another chart that we'd like to look at uh due to the government shutdown. Looks like things are back in session now and things are rolling, but uh you know these uh reports have not been updated due to the uh due to the shutdown. So we're looking at data that uh is back here a couple months ago uh to look at. But what I do like to look at is if we go back 10 years, so for September it shows 4.4%. And you can see back from sometime around uh mid-2022 into early 23 kind of reached that lowest point. And now the unemployment rate's slowly been ticking up uh since you know, end of 22 into early 23. So we're talking about three years here that this has just been tick ticking up just a smidge, just a smidge uh to where it is. And then you can see, you know, what happened during the COVID shutdowns, and then uh leading up to COVID from 2016 all the way through the end of 2020, you can see the unemployment rate just slowly uh fell from you know what was back in October or November of 2015, it was 5.1% for unemployment, and it just slowly ticked down a bit, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, all the way down to 3.5% in February of 2020. And then things started uh skyrocketing there uh due to the the COVID. Uh, but just to help put things in perspective. So uh even though it's slowly been ticking up here over the last uh few years, uh you can see it's not all that different from where we were back in 2017. So eight years ago, we were around that number. Um, so let's see where that continues uh once the uh government uh uh bureau, labor of bureau statistics updates that and shares that information. Okay, next up is the US inflation rate. And we can see uh on this chart here, uh this stopped in September uh for the same same reason uh with the government shutdown. And I zoomed out here again to to uh take a look at what that inflation rate looked like over the last 10 years. So if we go back to uh way, way back here, October of 2015, it was 0.2 percent, which was very, very low. Uh but you can see into 2018 it was 2.9 percent, right? We see this was hovering uh uh at or uh you know, somewhere around that 2% window. Um, and then it dropped in 2020, and then we really saw it start escalating here in 21, big escalation all the way through most of 2023 into 24. It started coming down a bit. And the numbers, if you kind of look at them, it did drop a little bit between August of 24 and through about May of 25. But for the most part, it was hovering around this three to 3.7-ish percent. And and that seems to be about where uh we're at right now for that uh excuse me, for that inflation rate. Um, so uh, you know, obviously with inflation, the key the key driver there is if if for how this works is essentially uh you the dollar that you have today buys less uh that today than it did a year ago, right? Um by three percent is what it's saying. So instead of if if that one dollar is now worth 97 cents, uh so uh just a a reminder to uh keep that perspective, keep that in mind, uh maybe help your franchisees look at adjusting prices if need be, um, just to make sure that their own cost of goods sold, cost of sales, that that those haven't risen as well. Uh so that's a nice value add you can add as a franchise or to your franchisees to uh just help review that with them, give them some metrics and some some things to start thinking about. Uh ask them, well, when was the last time you raised prices? Uh when was the last time you just reviewed your total cost of goods sold to make sure you're you are charging the right prices or uh or as you're reviewing their finances, as their cogs or cost of goods increased uh a little bit steadily over the last two or three years? And is it time to uh eventually elevate the prices or make some other kind of adjustment? Um, and I know it's it's not great, but maybe it's worth looking at uh is is uh can you find other ways to save or other ways to reduce costs to keep those cost of goods down? Okay, next up is the survey of consumers by the University of Michigan. And I like to look at the index of consumer sentiment, uh, which just gives us a window or a snapshot to see what are consumers, how are they generally feeling? Are what's our sentiment? Is it positive, is it negative, is it up, is it down? And uh, this is the index of consumer sentiment. And you can see this for the last 10 years, and you can see for the previous month here in October, uh, you can see it dropped. Uh, it bounced up last month, it dropped down this month uh to what looks to be about the lowest level over the last 10 years, maybe the second lowest. It looks like middle 2023 was the lowest, and it's steadily climbed uh up to it looks like the middle of 2025, and um it, you know, it's it's fallen down here. So again, this is what I was saying before. If if your business, uh either in franchise sales or with your franchisees, if you found it's a little bit harder to get to a yes, it's a little bit harder to get to having that candidate complete onboarding forms or to complete um uh franchise uh uh uh applications or to send back their signed franchise disclosure receipt, whatever that might be, this might be uh this might be a helpful indication just to say the sentiment is down. And when sentiment's down, it's just a takes a little bit, it takes more effort. Uh an old adage I was taught early on in my career was uh, you know, times sometimes in in uh uh uh uh uh uh difficult times or uh or um or when the economy is just kind of uh uh in the middle, which is kind of where it's at right now. It's just kind of hovering. It's not really, it just kind of seems like it's slogging through. Sometimes you got to work. Uh the adage was sometimes you you have to work twice as hard for half the results. And I know that's a bit of an extreme, uh, but it it does sometimes feel like that for especially for your franchisees, or maybe for you all and franchise sales and franchise marketing and lead generation, where you're saying, boy, we're spending feels like we're spending the the same or more, and we're getting uh, you know, a fraction of the results. We're getting 80% of the results or 60% of the results. So uh just just keep that in mind as you're going through it. Um, this was from the Bureau, U.S. uh Census Bureau, and there's a big orange bar. So I just thought I'd bring it up because I mentioned this, but it says uh the U.S. Census Bureau is updating its economic indicator release calendar in coordination with other agencies and the Office of Management and Budget to address the impacts of the recent lapse in federal funding. We'll provide an updated release schedule as soon as possible. So I clicked on the release schedule to see well, when when is the business formation statistics going to be updated? Uh and it said NA. It said not available. So hopeful that that we can get that uh updated here for December so that we can take a look at the last couple of months to see what that looks like. My guess is that uh it it'll look fairly similar to this. This this report is for the August numbers. Uh, just to take a look at these, this was published September 11th of 25. So we're talking, you know, over two months ago. Uh, but you can see the trend since uh middle of 2020 into 2021. It's basically been over 400,000 new business applicants and new business applications uh the last four almost four years, uh, which is remarkable when you look at prior to 2020, where it was just starting to peak or crest at 300,000. And now we're seeing it was at 473,000 in August of 25. So, what does that mean? Well, to me, the significance of this is for those of you in franchise sales and franchise marketing, any lead that comes in, you need to assume that they are starting a business. They might not buy your franchise and start that as a business, but they are planning to start a business. So having the assumption that this person is likely starting a business uh it is an important mindset to have when you go into it. I think just in general, if you're in franchise marketing or franchise sales, that's important to know. But uh to me, this is showing the sentiment uh for that that uh new business startup, entrepreneurship, the American dream is on the hearts and minds of Americans around the country. So don't get lost, and sometimes it's easy to get lost in the the uh uh day-to-day grind. Um, but just keep uh I think that's an important thing. Keep the big picture, even though it might be hard. It like some of the other data points we were looking at showed that in the the index uh consumer sentiment showed that, yeah, sentiment's down. Uh the economic indicators are flat at best, or on you know, they're a little under 50% or a little over. You know, they're basically right around that um those break-even points. So it might be a little harder, but uh don't let that lose sight of what's just below the surface, which is, in my opinion, based off of this information, uh, an enthused, um an enthused person that is looking to start their own business. So just something I like to uh call and point out here. Okay, uh next up is some data released by the uh franchiseinsights.com. This is by Michael in Alston for Franchise Insights. And uh the heading says a surprising number of franchise prospects already own businesses. So I find that interesting. And the the heading for this graph says almost 22% of prospects already own a business. So they asked prospects, uh, do you own a business? How does this work? Well, 21.5% of people who responded to the survey that were thinking about starting a business or buying a franchise said they are already a business owner. 23.6% said that they are freelance or consulting. Part-time uh business uh or running uh or working part-time was 12.8 percent, active military duty was 0.3 percent, and full-time employment was at 41.8 percent. So if we add up active military, full-time employees, and part-time employees, that number still exceeds 50%. Okay. But if we also look at business owners and freelance consulting, that if we add all of that together, that's 44, 45.1%. So roughly 45% of people are independent contractors or uh self-employed or business owners. And roughly 55% are currently employed, uh, full or part-time. So what does that mean? Well, to me, that means be aware that there's a good chance you're bumping into owners. So you might have the plan or structure in place for your franchise sales efforts or in your marketing communication to that employee that's looking to lose, they're looking to leave their job to buy a franchise. Now, you might also want to try a second set of marketing efforts or messaging that's geared directly for the freelancer or business owner that says if your franchise fits with that mono say uh start our business in addition to your others. You know, my uh I'm I'm sure your marketing team will do a much better job than that. But to uh get get that kind of an idea behind it, I think that's a really interesting data. And by the way, this report was published uh November 19th. So this was literally published two days ago on Wednesday. So I think that is interesting data point, excuse me. Um and they asked what types of businesses are already owned by the franchise seekers. So 83.3 percent of those people who own businesses own a non-franchise. Um 5.6 percent currently own a franchise, and 11.1% say just business. So uh just food for thought, you might be needing to explain franchising and how it's different from running an independent business or a non-franchise model, uh, because it is different. Um, not one is not necessarily better than the other, but they are different, and it's important to uh review that with your prospective franchise buyers. Okay, next up is again from Franchise Insights uh by franchise ventures. And this is a report by Michael Alston for Franchise Insights. This was published November 12th, 2025. And it says, uh, the question says, How do the options for ownership stack up in the eyes of business buyers? And the heading on the chart says, Aspiring business owners prefer franchising. So it says, What options are you considering for owning? Well, 41.8% of the respondents said they are thinking about buying an existing business. 45.9% said they they would start a non-franchise business from scratch, and 60.7% said that they would buy a franchise. Okay, so uh when we when we look at it, uh certainly you have a non-franchise, buying an existing business, yeah, those are large categories, but buying a franchise, having that proven model, so you you can think of it as uh starting a business with a proven model when you're buying a franchise. That's what is this data is showing that the people who responded preferred. Now, I I do think that there may be uh a bit of uh the data may, I don't want to be say be be skewed, but may be slanted a little bit because chances are if this if the buyers, if these prospective franchise buyers were coming through to one of the franchise venture's uh properties and websites, um chances are they they did have franchising on their mind. Uh, but nonetheless, it's still an interesting data point worth noting. So uh just just something for the marketing folks uh to be thinking about, uh uh and to update messaging, provide the sales team with certain marketing collateral, and same thing for the sales team to be aware of. Uh, there might be some extra questions poised in there. Are you thinking about starting another type of business? It's not a franchise. Okay, uh, next up is the startup sentiment dips but remains solid uh on business conditions um for early 2026. So uh it says 47.5 percent of prospects agree that now is a good time for startup. Uh so you can see how the number was really high and um it looks like March. Then we go on down to uh uh all the way over to October uh for that uh 47.5 percent. And this report was published November 5th of 25 by Michael Alston for franchise insights. And the final report, uh, I may have shared this in uh last month's or the month before, but I still think that this is such a powerful, important chart. And it says the top drivers, it reads across the heading, top drivers for pursuing business ownership. 85.2 percent of respondents said be my own boss is the number one uh uh driver for pursuing business ownership. 85.2 percent. Income potential is number two at 65.7 percent. So uh, you know, it it just reiterates the call to action for franchising, which has been the call to action for as long as I've been in franchising, which is be franchising's calling card to me that anyone in franchising or most people in franchising likely know have been at it for a while, which is franchising is you it's an opportunity to be in business for yourself, but not by yourself. And that message resonates because someone gets to be their own boss and yet still have a support network and uh system that they can take and execute in their local market. So um, those are the primary charts I always like to uh review and go over. Are there any other questions uh from people that are tuning in that I can help uh answer here before we get going? I'll I'll uh wait a moment here to uh to see what that looks like. Oh, and one other chart while I'm waiting on that. Let me share my screen again. I forgot. I always like to share this. This is my favorite screen. Uh well, not my favorite. Uh I say all of them are my favorite, so they can't all be my favorite. Uh, I just enjoy talking through the data. I think it's a lot of fun. Uh so the franchise insights, uh, so it says the top 10 business opportunity categories, and it says the following business opportunity categories showed the greatest inquiries in the last 90 days. So this is a rolling 90 days from all of the different franchise ventures websites, and these are the top 10 categories. So, what this means is if your franchise offering falls within one of these top 10 categories, chances are it's going to be easier for you to generate leads for for your franchise. If you're not in the top 10, well, chances are it might be a little bit harder. You might need to either uh in order to spend the same amount of money or get the same amount of leads, you might need to be on more sources and more lead generation sources to find the number of buyers. Versus if you're in the top few uh on this list, then you might only have to be in one or two lead gen sources to produce the kind of volume that you'd be looking for. So let's go through each of these. So the number one category is home services, and it it has been since uh right around the start of COVID. It's at 25.2%, business services is at 18.1%, senior and healthcare is at 10.7%, pet services is at 9%, cleaning and maintenance at 8.7%, food and restaurants 6.3%, child related at 3.5%, automotive at 2.9%, retail at 2.7%, and education at 2.4%. So I'll stop sharing. I have not seen any questions come through. So I just want to thank all of you for joining me and being a part of this presentation today. Again, my name is Tom Dufor. I'm with Big Sky Franchise Team. We offer a free, no obligation consultation. So if you're at a stage where you say, hey, I'm thinking about franchising my business, or I've been in franchising for a little while, I'd love another perspective or vantage point just to maybe take a look at some of the things you're doing. Give us a call, schedule some time with me or one of my team members. I'd be happy to go over that with you. No cost, no obligation for a free consultation, just to talk. Through it. Uh, again, you can go to BigSkyFranchise Team.com. Thank you for tuning in. This is our last live session here before Thanksgiving. So I just want to wish you and your families a happy, happy Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. Uh, I'm just so grateful to have you uh a part of this audience, grateful for the opportunities we have to be here, uh, to be in uh the United States, and just grateful um for for all of the opportunities everyone has the ability to pursue in today's world. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great rest of your week. Have a great, great holiday with Thanksgiving, and we'll see you back next month. Take care.

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Tom DuFore

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