Franchisor Call Prep: A Four-Prompt Claude Chain That Turns Your Weekly Numbers into Questions and an Agenda

What This Builds

The call with your franchise business consultant comes up, and you have a week of numbers and a head full of jobs. You could read the sheet aloud and hope the useful question occurs to you. This chain turns two weeks of figures into a short list of what moved, three questions tied to those figures and a one-page agenda.

It runs as four prompts in one Claude chat, with a checkpoint after each. The sheet does all the arithmetic. Claude reads the figures you paste, points at the ones worth a question and drafts the agenda. You check every number it repeats, and you decide what goes on the call.

Prerequisites

• A Claude account. The free tier can run a chain this short, but a paid plan (Pro, $20/month) gives longer chats if you use it often. Check Claude's pricing page for current limits.
• Total ongoing cost of the finished build: nothing beyond the Claude plan you choose. There is no automation platform in this chain.
• A weekly numbers sheet that already computes close rate, average ticket and labor hours per job for each week. Copy those ratios from the sheet. Do not ask Claude to calculate them.
• Your brand's policy on sharing unit results with an AI tool read. Weekly business totals can still be confidential. If you are unsure, ask your franchise business consultant.

The Concept

Think of a sharp assistant who sits beside you for ten minutes before the call. You hand over two printed pages of figures. The assistant does not calculate anything or look anything up. They point at what changed, ask "why?" about the interesting parts and write you a one-page agenda. Everything they say comes from the pages you handed over.

A chain does this in steps, because each step is easier to check than one large request. Prompt 1 checks the figures went in right. Prompt 2 finds what changed. Prompt 3 turns the changes into questions. Prompt 4 orders them into an agenda. After each prompt you stop and check before you go on, so a mistake in step 1 cannot travel to step 4.

Your Data and Your Franchisor's Material

This chain takes business totals only: leads, booked jobs, revenue, labor hours and ratios. Do not paste customer names, staff names, pay, job addresses, review text or anything from the franchise agreement or the Franchise Disclosure Document. The chain never asks Claude what any agreement or franchisor document means. That question goes to your attorney.

Before you start, check Claude's data settings: whether your chats may be used to train models and how long they are kept. If your franchisor treats unit results as confidential, ask your franchise business consultant whether this tool is acceptable. If it is not, keep the same four steps on paper.

Build It Step by Step

Part 1: Gather Two Weeks of Figures from Your Sheet

Open your weekly numbers sheet and copy the figures for last week and this week, including the ratios the sheet calculated. Add a third row for the change, taken from your sheet too. If your sheet has no change row, type a subtraction formula in a spare row and copy the result. Do not work it out in your head and do not let Claude work it out.

Here is the layout, with invented figures:

Part 2: Run the Four Prompts

Open a new Claude chat. Paste each prompt in turn, replace the square-bracket parts with your own figures, and stop at each checkpoint before you continue. Keep the whole chain in the same chat so Claude can see the earlier answers.

Prompt 1: Restate the figures

Here are my figures for the last two weeks of a service franchise unit. Restate them exactly as a table with the same columns and the same numbers. Do not calculate anything and do not add any figure. After the table, list any column where a figure is missing, and write "not stated" for it.

Last week: [leads], [booked jobs], [revenue], [labor hours], [close rate], [average ticket], [labor hours per job]
This week: [leads], [booked jobs], [revenue], [labor hours], [close rate], [average ticket], [labor hours per job]
Change, calculated in my spreadsheet: [leads], [booked jobs], [revenue], [labor hours], [close rate], [average ticket], [labor hours per job]

Checkpoint 1. Compare every number in Claude's table with your sheet. One wrong digit here would flow into everything after it. If anything differs, tell Claude which cell is wrong and ask for the table again. Continue only when the table matches.

Prompt 2: What changed

Using only the figures in the table above, list each change between last week and this week in plain words, in the order of the columns. For each one, say whether it moved up, moved down or stayed flat, and quote the change figure I gave you. Then pick the two or three changes that most deserve a question on a call with my franchise business consultant, and give one sentence on why each one stands out, using only the figures in the table. Do not compare to any benchmark or typical figure. Do not say what my franchisor requires. If a figure you would need is missing, write "not stated".

Checkpoint 2. Check each direction and each quoted change against the Change row of your sheet. Look for any number that is not in your table, and for any phrase such as "typical" or "industry average". Those do not belong here. If you see one, tell Claude to remove it and answer again.

Prompt 3: Three questions

Write three questions to ask my franchise business consultant. Each question must name the figure it comes from, quoted from my table. Each must be a real question about the cause or the next step, not a statement. Do not suggest what my franchisor allows or requires, do not state any benchmark and do not interpret any agreement. Keep each question to two sentences.

Checkpoint 3. For each question, find the figure it names and confirm it matches your table. Then ask yourself whether you genuinely want the answer. Cross out any question you would not ask. Add one of your own if the sheet cannot show what is bothering you this week.

Prompt 4: One-page agenda

Turn my questions into a one-page call agenda in order of importance, most important first. Give each item a short heading, the question and the figure it relates to. Add a final line titled "Not stated in my figures" that lists anything a good answer would need but my figures do not give, such as causes, dates or notes about the week. Use only the figures in the table above. Do not add any figure, benchmark or claim about what my franchisor requires.

Checkpoint 4. Read the agenda the way your consultant will. Confirm every number against your sheet once more. Reorder the items if your own priorities differ. The "Not stated in my figures" line is yours to fill in, because those are the things only you know about the week.

Part 3: Save the Chain

Copy the four prompts into a document so you can paste them again next week. Keep the square-bracket parts as blanks. Paste only figures, never names, into any saved copy.

Real Example: A Week of Figures at BrightNest Cleaning (invented)

Invented setup: the brand and every figure are invented. They come from the table in Part 1, and the sheet worked out each ratio and change.

Prompt 1 result. Claude returns the same three rows, with the change row showing +4 leads, +3 booked jobs, +900 revenue, +12 labor hours, +3.4 points of close rate, +12 average ticket and -0.2 labor hours per job. The checkpoint passes because every cell matches the sheet. Had it shown 39.0 for last week's close rate, you would stop there and ask for a corrected table.

Prompt 2 result. The kind of answer to expect: leads moved up by 4, booked jobs up by 3, revenue up by 900, labor hours up by 12, close rate up by 3.4 points, average ticket up by 12 and labor hours per job down by 0.2. Claude picks two changes for a question: booked jobs rose faster than leads, and labor hours per job went down while labor hours went up. Each reason uses only the table. At the checkpoint you confirm each figure and see no benchmark.

Prompt 3 result. Three questions of this shape:

1. "Booked jobs rose by 3 on 4 more leads. Do you see anything in the lead source that explains the higher close rate?"
2. "Labor hours per job fell by 0.2 while total labor hours rose by 12. Is there a scheduling change you would try before I add crew time?"
3. "Average ticket rose by 12. Which parts of the mix should I watch so it holds?"

You keep the first and the second, rewrite the third in your own words and drop nothing else.

Prompt 4 result. An agenda with headings such as "Lead quality and close rate", "Crew hours per job" and "Average ticket", each with its question and its figure, in your chosen order. The last line reads "Not stated in my figures" followed by items such as the reason for the week's higher lead count and anything about crew changes. You fill those in by hand before the call.

Setup: one Claude chat, four prompts, a spreadsheet with the ratios calculated. Input: two weeks of totals and ratios from your sheet. Output: a short list of changes, three questions you edited and a one-page agenda. Time saved: a few minutes of prep each week compared with working out what to ask, though the checkpoints take most of that back. They are the point.

What to Do When It Breaks

• Claude repeats a number that is not in your table. Stop and say so. Ask it to use only the table and to write "not stated" for anything else. Check the rest of that answer more carefully, because one invented figure often has company.
• A benchmark or "typical" figure appears. Delete it and ask again. Your sheet has no benchmark, so none can be correct here. If you want one, ask your franchise business consultant.
• The answer says what your franchisor requires. Ignore the statement. The operations manual and your consultant are the authority on brand standards, and an agreement question goes to your attorney.
• Claude does arithmetic of its own. Compare the result with your sheet. The sheet is the record, and the model may be wrong.
• The chat loses track of earlier steps. In a very long chat, paste the table again at the start of the next prompt.
• Nothing in the output is surprising. That is a finding. Your sheet may need a column that shows what you care about, or the week may simply have been steady. Keep the agenda short.

Variations

• Simpler version: run only Prompts 3 and 4 on figures you have already checked.
• Extended version: keep the chat in a Claude Project with your four prompts saved as instructions, so each week starts with one paste of figures. Project steps follow Claude's own help pages, so look there for the current names.
• Different call: use the same chain before a call with your accountant or lender. Change the audience in the prompts and keep the rest.

What to Do Next

• This week: run the chain on last week's real figures and compare the agenda with the one you would have written.
• This month: note which questions led to something useful and which did not, and adjust Prompt 3 to match.
• Advanced: feed a quote follow-up or maintenance digest into your prep as a count only, never as customer detail.

Advanced guide for franchise owner-operators. Claude drafts questions and an agenda from figures you paste. It does not interpret your franchise agreement, state what your franchisor requires or decide anything for your business. You review everything it writes and you stay responsible for it. Claude may change its screens and limits, so follow the labels you see.