Franchise Development Basics
Why candidates are kept apart from your contacts
Candidates buying a franchise are never mixed with the customers your tribes serve, and what that means when you look for someone.
Last updated September 7, 2026
A customer buys from one of your tribes. A candidate is buying one. They are different relationships with different owners, different consent and different retention rules, so Gorilla Dash keeps them in separate places on purpose.
What the separation means in practice
- A candidate you add in Franchise Development does not appear in People, in the CRM, in any tribe, in a mailing list or in a marketing automation.
- A customer in the CRM does not appear in Franchise Development. If a customer of one of your tribes decides to buy a franchise, add them as a candidate; the two records stay separate and that is expected.
- Exports, searches and reports on each side only ever contain their own records.
- Tribe users never see candidates. Only organisation users with a Franchise Development permission do.
Why this matters
Franchise sales carry information a customer record never does: how much capital someone has, their background and credit checks, the territory they are negotiating for and the legal disclosure they have received. One missed filter in a shared list would put that in front of a franchisee or in a customer newsletter. Separate records make that impossible rather than merely unlikely.
The word "franchisee"
In this module a franchisee record starts life as a candidate. Its status tells you where it is: Candidate while a deal is being worked, Franchisee once a deal is signed, Former franchisee after they leave the network, and Lost if they never proceeded. It is one record for the whole relationship, so the history from the first enquiry is still on file years later.