How a Lego franchise automated candidate qualification with Tallyfy

What does Bricks and MiniFigs do?

Bricks and MiniFigs is a franchise concept that’s been around for just over a decade. We do aftermarket Lego businesses - retail stores where customers can buy, sell, and trade old Lego sets and bulk Lego they don’t need anymore.

Customers come to us for things they can’t find anywhere else in person. You can get bulk Lego from us, used sets at lower prices, or retired sets that aren’t manufactured anymore. We also do birthday parties and events. The stores create big communities in their areas for Lego lovers to meet, build together, and create.

As a franchise, we help independent business owners open stores around the US and eventually internationally.

Franchise onboarding shares a lot of DNA with client onboarding - you qualify candidates, manage documentation, and guide them through a multi-step journey. Here’s how Tallyfy approaches this:

What’s your role in the franchise development process?

I work on the franchise development team, which is the sales side of franchising. My job is coordination - managing documents and questions between candidates going through our qualification process to see if they can open a store.

I’ve got a background in IT and cybersecurity. When I was hired, we looked at the existing process and started automating it. We put more power into candidates’ hands so they could get questions answered and access documents on demand.

We needed some kind of system that would give candidates a really good overview of where they are at in our process - what steps come next and exactly what they need to do.

This challenge is common across industries. Every time we onboard a new team, the same issue surfaces - they’ve been tracking a multi-step qualification or onboarding process manually, and it’s falling apart. A mid-sized consulting firm faced the same problem with their employee onboarding - their 35-step process spanning offer letters, background checks, tax forms, and client-specific setup was tracked manually across DocuSign, Box.net, and Paychex. The lack of automated reminders and unclear triggers between steps meant things fell through the cracks.

What problem were you trying to solve?

Before Tallyfy, all of this was done by hand. That’s what franchise coordinators traditionally do. A recruiter holds a meeting, then the coordinator types up a custom email saying “hope you enjoyed your meeting, here’s what you need to do next, here are some available times, here’s a document to fill out and email back.”

The only way to scale that would be to hire more people. I’ve got a mind to avoid monotony and tedium when it can be automated. We took all that manual work and automated it.

How do candidates experience the process now?

When someone fills out a form on our website saying they want to learn about opening a store, they get a custom introductory email that explains what our process looks like. We tell them there’s something called Tallyfy - we call it their process dashboard - and explain how it works.

They get assigned one item to begin: a welcome step. They click the link, Tallyfy opens, and it auto-opens that first task saying “welcome, here’s how this works, click complete to move to the next step.” It’s a practice run before real tasks come in - meetings to schedule, questionnaires to fill out.

People really like how structured and straightforward it is. They kind of know what to expect.

Has anyone been overwhelmed by the system?

Honestly, it’s almost like a good filter. The system requires some technical expertise. In the age we live in, there’s a minimum technology savviness level required to run a business. If someone gets overwhelmed by what’s going on in Tallyfy, they’re probably not comfortable with Slack or the Google suite either. Those aren’t the people we’re looking for as franchisees.

If there’s any overwhelm, I haven’t really heard it. After watching hundreds of teams try this, the ones who struggle with a structured dashboard tend to struggle with every other business tool too - so the filtering effect is real.

How do you handle different requirements for different states?

We modularized the process. Instead of one process with 30 steps, we’ve got step one as three or four tasks, and at the end of that section, it kicks off a second process.

That allows us to swap in different modules depending on which state people are looking at, because states have some unique franchise laws.

This modular architecture actually works really well. Even if the system created tasks on the fly rather than upfront, we would probably still use the modular approach because of the flexibility it gives us.

Why would you maintain dozens of nearly-identical workflows when you can just swap modules in and out? Teams managing complex qualification processes have found similar success with modularity. One software company with rollout processes - up to 50 steps for different product combinations - discovered that modular design let them reuse process segments across scenarios instead of dozens of nearly-identical workflows with minor variations.

Templates for partner and candidate onboarding

Example Procedure

Partner Onboarding

1Determine channel of inquiry

2Send partner application form

3Review application

4Schedule meeting to determine fit for partnership

5Approve application

+9 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

BANT Lead Qualification Workflow

1Collect prospect contact information

2Apply initial qualification criteria checklist

3Route unqualified lead to partner network

4Prospect qualifies - Call prospect

5Capture lead source and initial interest

+4 more steps

View template

What’s next for Tallyfy at Bricks and MiniFigs?

We’re looking at other processes beyond franchise sales. Store onboarding once someone signs their agreement, franchise renewals, and store audits would all work well in an automated system like this.

Right now we’re focused on increasing volume - how many people we meet with and how many stores we open per year. As we grow, we’ll need to move more internal processes into something structured like Tallyfy.

Would you recommend this approach to other franchise companies?

Absolutely. The client dashboard gives candidates a much better experience than endless email threads. They can see their progress, know what’s coming next, and handle things on their own time.

For franchise development specifically, that structured qualification process means less time on coordination and more time to assess whether someone would be a good franchisee.