Most recently, ActionCOACH was named to Franchise Direct’s List of “Top 100 Global Franchises”, the fourth straight year ActionCOACH has earned a coveted spot on this list. ActionCOACH moved up more than 20 spots from last year, reaching number 50.

Franchise Direct has been issuing this list since 2009 and ActionCOACH has been named to the list each year, but this is ActionCOACH’s highest ranking. Franchise Direct ranks their list based on a number of criteria, including number of units the franchise system has; how many countries the franchise has expanded into; their international unit numbers and growth; as well as franchise stability and financial strength.

“Whenever we earn a place on a list such as this one it’s an honor,” ActionCOACH USA and Canada CEO Jodie Shaw said. “This year we’ve learned that businesses that work with an ActionCOACH enjoy a return of almost $11 for every dollar they spend on coaching and our coaches are among the best compensated in the industry. These factors certainly played a role in achieving our place on this list.”

Soon after learning about its place on the list, ActionCOACH and Shaw were honored by the American Business Awards (Stevies) as Finalists for “Company of the Year” in the Business Services and “Executive of the Year” in the Business Services category. Last year, ActionCOACH earned “Company of the Year” and “People’s Choice Company of the Year” in the Business Services category.

In addition, ActionCOACH also garnered a Hermes Creative Gold for the invitation to its 2011 Global Conference in the category of Marketing Collateral/Branding/Invitation.

While ActionCOACH continues to earn accolades, it will turn the spotlight on small business owners from around the world when it sponsors the Business Excellence Forum and Awards.

The Business Excellence Forum and Awards offers opportunities for business owners to learn vital principles from experts such as Brad Sugars and Darren Hardy, culminating with a gala awards ceremony celebrating the “best of the best” businesses in nearly 20 categories ranging from Company of the Year to Best Startup.

So how can you improve your sales to ensure your business is profitable? Many people have challenges going into sales mode, in part because they think that successful people are born with that skill and talent. But that’s simply not true.

There are three things that anyone can do to improve their ability to sell their products and services, and most importantly, generate more profits.  But to properly utilize these things, you have to want to improve, because without that desire, there’s little hope for success.

So, without any further delay, here are the three things that you can work on to improve your sales performance:

Knowledge—What are you doing to “study” sales?  To get  better at anything, you have to put in time. That means a little less reality TV and a little more investment in building your sales knowledge.

Mindset—When you ask people what comes to mind when they think of the term “sales person” (and when they are honest), the term is usually seen as negative.  We need to change the mindset around sales.  What do you do to get in a positive frame of mind before a sales call?  Do you run through a list of “I AM” statements, listen to a certain song, read a testimonial.  Whatever it is, make sure that it pumps you up and gets you in sales mode.

Process—Benefits of a process include actually knowing your numbers.  In your sales process, there is a step where many of your candidates fall out.  Is that early or late in the process?

You’ll actually be more flexible by having a process, because you can focus on the perspective client and not try to figure out what to say next. And the process will put the prospect at ease.  For the most part, they’ve not bought your service before.  A process will help them understand where the conversation is going.

Just by following these three keys, you can improve your sales and most importantly, grow your business’ profits.

While there are advantages and disadvantages to all three scenarios, some interesting statistics back up the franchise option:

•    Total gross sales from all franchised businesses total over $1 trillion. That’s about half of all U.S. retail sales and services.

•    Franchises employ nearly 8 million workers in over 100 franchised industries.

•    2/3 of franchisees said they would not be as successful if they had started their business on their own.

These facts beg the question, why has franchising been such an important part of business growth over the past fifty years?

There are a number of reasons – the most important being the successful systems franchise operations have in place to get customers, deliver products and services and train employees.

In fact, franchising has been called “one of the greatest systematic transfers of know-how in the business world.”

The Value of Systems

A good franchise program is designed to take people without experience in a specific business and teach them how to run a successful operation simply by following a formula, which means that typically, new franchisees can be very successful just by learning to follow the system.

Of the number of successful business people who have chosen the franchise model for their businesses, 86% say “general business skills” are important or very important, followed by “access to capital” and an “entrepreneurial mindset” and having a system in place means those general business skills are laid out and simply need to be followed.

Increased Pace of Growth

One of the biggest benefits of choosing a franchise is instant access to a recognized brand – one with years of proven systems that would take years of trial and error for an individual owner to replicate.

In addition, franchisees benefit from regular training, operations manuals, and benchmarking through performance comparisons over time, compared to other firms within the system.

This leveraged use of collective knowledge and information means that franchisees almost always outpace independent business owners in terms of rate of growth and revenues.

Studies consistently show that franchisees grow quicker, reach market break out sooner and succeed more regularly than independent businesses in the same industry and category.

Tested and Proven Business Models

The biggest advantage franchises have over independent start ups are tested business models that have proven successful over time in the market place.

That is why the system is so important. No business can become a franchise without a tested and proven model. If it weren’t tested and proven, no one would buy in to the franchise, so if it proven to work, why change things?

The Owner is NOT Alone

The most important thing in a franchise model is that the owner is not alone. The franchise wants and needs its franchisees to succeed. That’s why there are so many levels of support in a franchise on the operational, marketing, sales and training levels. The business models and the systems are only as good as the people who are part of them and working them.

That’s why a commitment to continually learn more about business, a good work ethic, and an ability to be ‘coached’ within a system are so important to a franchisees’ ultimate success.

Coaching is often called mentoring. A mentor is defined as a trusted counselor or guide, but while mentoring is said to be more relational – coaching is meant to be more structured and transactional.

Coaching can come in the form of many disciplines. You can hire a business coach, an executive coach, a life coach or even a dating coach! Of course, the most well-known form of coaching is sports coaching.

For instance you might have a mentor who you call from time to time for advice. A coaching relationship often has a dedicated time each week where progress is monitored and reviewed. The coaching relationship also has specific outcomes like winning (Sports), profit (Business), personal goals achieved (Life), a promotion (Executive) or even marriage (Dating).

But, when most people think of a coach, their mind usually conjures up an image of a sports coach.

The value of a coach in a business can also be likened to the value a sports coach provides to the team. It also helps to answer why leaders should have a coach. Every athlete or team, even if they are at the top of their game, has a coach. Would the same team or athlete still be successful if they did not have a coach?

History tells us no. The reason why a coach is instrumental to performance is because they bring an outsider’s viewpoint and can show you things that perhaps you cannot see.

Think about a golf coach. Coaches notice your stance and grip from a different viewpoint, perhaps one you cannot see yourself. They will help you correct your stance and grip until it becomes natural to you and your game improves. If you miss a putt, they encourage you to try again. Even if you miss again, you might be an inch closer to the hole. Coaches will recognize the progress you are making. They will also recognize if you repeat bad form. They will help you adjust golf equipment so you perform better. They will expect only the best out of you, knowing when to encourage, knowing when to chastise. If you have a coach for golf you should see your handicap go down.

Now think about the same principle in coaching. In professional coaching, like business coaching for instance, the same principles apply.

A business coach has an outsider’s perspective of your business that even you as the owner cannot see. They will help you to implement changes inside your business until you start to see a result. They will encourage good behavior and discourage bad. If you have a coach in your business you should see your profit go up.

But this is essentially where the similarity ends. The ultimate aim of life coaching is to ensure that the clients’ personal dreams and goals are successfully met. On the other hand, the Business Coach works towards the fulfillment of his clients’ professional goals.

Understanding life coaching

The question is: what is life coaching? Increasingly, people want to live multidimensional lives. They wish to have successful careers, personal happiness and hobbies to  live a very complete life.

At the same time, there is less time in modern day life for any of these goals to be fulfilled. Yet the human mind is such that it will not be satisfied without having it all. Here enters the life coach. This individual will help you to achieve those goals – ranging from a positive outlook on life to losing weight to learning time management or self improvement of any sort.

The purpose of life coaching is to make you a better individual in the ways that you want to be. While some of these teachings may be applicable to the work place – such as people skills and time management skills – the bulk of them go towards the individual’s personal development and the achievement of happiness on an overall basis.

Business Coaching, on the contrary, is meant to help the client and his organization achieve better results and bigger profits. These objectives include leadership, people and management skills; higher standards of performance; more effective strategies for tackling internal decisions and external competition, as well as better performance at the bottom line.

Differences

Other than the most obvious differences, the following differences also contrast business and life coaching.

•    In the case of Business Coaching, results are not vague, they are more easily measurable. The results for life coaching are far more subjective – the coaching may continue until the client is completely satisfied at his or her own level of progress.

•    Goals are more clearly defined in a Business Coaching program. The coach will understand and specify the objectives of the coaching and assess the skills and characteristics possessed by the client to start with. In the case of life coaching, the goals are essentially more vague as they are personal and open to translation. The life coach needs to be more skilled at extracting a more exact picture of them from the client’s mind.

•    A larger circle of benefits that accrue from Business Coaching – it is not only to the individual that gains success, but also the whole organization. The main benefit from life coaching is to the individual client due to the personal nature of the program.

So what are YOU waiting for? Call your nearest ActionCOACH and get yourself the best business support to put your company on fast track to success today.

The bad news is that are growing pains no matter what business you are in.

The good news, at least for franchisees, is that they can rely on a system and a network of other franchise owners who can guide and mentor you to overcome any issue or challenge you may have.

This is certainly a positive, in contrast to the single, non-franchise business owner, who is pretty much on his or her own.

So what are some of the biggest growing pains when it comes to owning a franchise?

Number one is actually mastering the franchise system and applying it in the real world on a day-to-day basis.

Why?

A lot of franchisees think they have a better way to run things or they try to make shortcuts in the system, but those shortcuts actually hamper their efforts and success.

Remember, there is a reason buying into a franchise system costs something, and that’s because it is a proven system that has been duplicated and…it works.

A new franchisee has to trust that idea and simply follow the system to become successful. While following the system is a simple concept, my experience is that simple is not always easy.

Second, getting and keeping customers is vital to your success, so marketing can be a real challenge for new franchisees, especially if they are used to working on the operational side of a business.

Marketing can certainly be a challenge for former accountants and the like, but once you see marketing as an investment – and you start to run it as an investment that buys you leads and gets you repeat business – then you should see the true benefits of marketing as the key to your long-term survival and success.

A third “growing pain” for a franchisee is on-going training and support from the franchisor. Too frequent or too infrequent trainings can be challenging, and a staggered follow-up training program can be ineffective, especially if the initial training was not as educational, informational and supportive as it could have been.

If you are looking to buy into a franchise, pay a lot of specific attention to the structure and the details about training and support. Educate and prepare yourself and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

If you aren’t prepared and don’t ask question, you might regret it later.

As an owner, you have to learn to do a lot of things all at the same time. That means and includes managing, marketing, selling, recruiting and pricing. For specialists, those functions can be hard to manage all at once.

Cashflow is an issue for new franchisees, especially in the retail category because it can take some time to create store traffic and build consistent sales.

However, in a professional services franchise, the issue is the same. It simply takes a period of weeks and months to build up and keep a consistent and predictable client base.

Finally, another growing pain for a franchisee is managing a team.

Management can be especially challenging for those who were sales superstars, but who had limited experience doing other things such as managing or leading teams. As those people soon discover, sales and sales management are two totally different aspects of business.

So what’s the best way to overcome these challenges?

Hire a good Business Coach.

But if you’re not ready or willing to be coached, get as much knowledge as you can in the areas you are weakest, and be prepared to be uncomfortable as you apply your new knowledge in those areas.

Remember, wisdom only comes from applied knowledge. And if you can learn from your mistakes, you’ll be far more successful in the long run – and be at or near the top of your chosen franchise system.

The Business Coach: A Parable of Small Business Breakthrough! By Brad Sugars

The Business Coach – written by Australian entrepreneur Brad Sugars – is the next step up from Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth. Thus, for the experienced business owner, The Business Coach will likely cover some familiar terrain – but not too much. For the new or less experienced business owner, The Business Coach is a whole new world of insight, and a great starting point before delving into more specific areas of business development. For all levels of business owners, The Business Coach expands on the concept of a business working without the owner with actionable steps.

The crux of The Business Coach is the business chassis, which shows how all types of businesses depend on the same five areas to impact their bottom line. It encourages the business owner to understand the numbers of their business from break even analysis, profit margin analysis and a commitment to testing and measuring.

More than explaining the basics of business, The Business Coach also showcases the dynamic between a business coach and a client. Business coaches get clients to gain more knowledge as opposed to doing the work for the clients, thus keeping clients dependent.

If you’re expecting one book to give you all the answers about business, Brad Sugars’ The Business Coach is a step in the right direction. This is definitely one of the best books on the practice of coaching ever written.

The Real Estate Coach By Brad Sugars

You’ll wish you read The Real Estate Coach sooner. There are a lot of resources that will tell readers how to flip houses for quick and easy profits, but The Real Estate Coach by Brad Sugars is not one of them. Grounded in more profitable strategies for long-term investing, The Real Estate Coach covers how to find and negotiate bargain properties for asset leverage and cash flow.

The Real Estate Coach is told in a parable format using conversation between characters that help a reader look at different sides of the real estate puzzle.

Most importantly, The Real Estate Coach also introduces “The Property Wheel” which is a tool of combining positive and negative-geared properties for maximum tax benefit. Without going too into the tax rules that are most likely to vary from place to place, Sugars shows how to analyze properties for purchase, holding or selling from a strictly by-the-numbers perspective.

These competencies form the basis of job descriptions, hiring and promotion decisions, performance reviews, and professional development plans.

At the same time, it is important for you as an executive to have your own point of view about what makes a successful leader.

Many executives cringe when consultants and coaches talk about fuzzy “feel good” concepts like mission, purpose, values, talent, and passion.

Like you, many have been through so many fad programs, wasted retreats crafting mission statements, drives to achieve quarterly results no matter what and short-sighted restructuring, that they get cynical when it comes to these concepts.

Despite this reluctance, you need to be willing to understand your own deeper aspirations and reasons for coming to work. Therefore, as you engage in conversations about vision, purpose, values, talent, and passion, acknowledge to yourself that you feel uncomfortable and skeptical. However, also be willing to explore the reasons that drive you to do the work you currently do.

All of the above work begins to form a foundation for you and your coach. To fill the gap and achieve their vision, the leader will need to have competency in the following areas:

Strategy - Strategy means defining what type of organization the company will be, setting direction for the organization, and creating a plan to achieve that direction.

Relationships – Nothing gets done in organizations without a committed, energized, and aligned group of people. The leader needs to be outstanding at engaging people and forming alliances to achieve extraordinary results. In today’s world, it is no longer acceptable to get people on board simply through formal influence (e.g., having a title).

The leader needs to command respect and influence people based on an ability to connect with people on a personal level.

Results – At the end of the day, leaders make things happen in significant, measurable ways. They know how to get things done, move things forward, get resources, anticipate and mitigate risks, and execute their plan.

The foundation of this triangle is attitude, behaviors, and talents/skills.

Attitudes are the mindsets that drive successful results, including passion, professionalism, a sense of possibility, and a desire to win.

Behaviors are the actions that motivate people and get results, and include powerful communication, influence skills, and taking time to build relationships.

Talents are the things the executive does well, while skills express those talents in relevant ways.

Involve the Entire Team:

In order to have an effective and efficient implementation system, it is essential to have everybody on the team involved.

This will also be a major contributing factor for the business owner, in moving closer to the next goal – letting go of the business and making it work on its own, by handing the reins of the business to those who will be ultimately responsible for running it.

Give Them Responsibility: The business owner can’t expect team members to work hard without giving them true responsibility for their jobs. If the business owner gives accountability, he also has to give responsibility. In addition, there has to be a system in place for rewards based on results.

It may be a share of the profits, for instance. This can bring out the best in all the team members.

Delegate: Delegating work goes far beyond just handing over responsibilities and jobs to other people; it means handing out the functions completely. It has much to do with letting go, instead of wanting to do everything oneself.

This is where one can see the true test of a leader.

Hands Off: It can be very useful to a general manager to run the business so that the business owner can step back more easily.

This is one good way of handling this situation, and in this manner, the business owner can leave the business in the hands of the expert who has been hired.

Easing Out: There are a few tips, as discussed in my Instant Systems book that can help a business owner ease out of the business, including:

- Not interfering with the work being done by the team members. They were hired to do the job, so let them do it.

- Giving up a parking space or office. Not having a place in the business will help keep the business owner from showing up all the time.

- Staying away from regular meetings, and just getting a brief from the general manager on the phone or via e-mail.

- Keeping all lines of communication open and remaining accessible.

- Scheduling periodic meetings or visit at the office from time to time, or showing up for specific meetings as required.

Handling Semi Retirement: While everyone hopes to achieve this state, many are not able to handle it when they really retire or in this case, semi-retire.

This is because they have been busy doing things and have been part of something productive.

However, the proposition of not having to go to work and still be paid can also be irresistible. One can deal with the pitfalls by developing a social life that you do not have to trade for money anymore.

But this doesn’t mean that the business owner will go back and start working in his business all over again.

This will mean investing.

An owner will now be making money with money to create wealth. While becoming a different type of business person in this sense is more challenging, in the end, many former owners find it is much more profitable.

This is because a business owner is often involved in designing, planning and implementing systems to run a business.

It becomes very difficult for the business owner to get free from the business and hand over duties to others.

It takes a courageous business owner to make an enormous change in the way he or she approaches business in order to make the much-desired transition from having a job to becoming semi-retired.

This is because all change is difficult due to fear – mainly fear of the unknown.

There is also fear of change, as a move to semi-retirement means an owners needs to change the way the he or she works with the company and team-members, and also in the way he or she views money.

Instead of taking a wage from the business, an owner will now be making money by maximizing profit. This will completely change the mindset of the business owner.

As a result, the owner’s whole relationship with the business will undergo a change of mammoth proportions.

To ensure the entire process of change is handled carefully, here are some ways to ensure a smooth transition – making sure the business can operate successfully and profitably without the business owner:

Create the Right Environment: If the existing conditions are not conducive change, transition to any change will be difficult. The team members within the organization should be willing and ready to introduce new systems and should genuinely believe in the urgency and importance of any new system.

The environment should be oriented for change in another way as well. There should be a climate of trust within the business, because a change usually involves moving away from status quo and requires the team members to step outside their comfort zones.

Open Communication Channels: One way of creating the right environment for change is having open communication channels so that the business owner is able to communicate with team and vice-versa.

That’s why it is important for team to feel there is an “open door policy” as far as communication is concerned.

There is a need for effective communication within the business, which means that the messages being communicated are actually received, and understood in terms of content and intention. It also means that they are acted upon, if necessary.

This is because any communication must result in some type of action.

Provide Continuous Feedback: It is crucial to have strong leadership through this process of change.

The business owner needs to employ a leadership style that keeps the owner on the right path. The best way of doing this is by providing the team members with constant feedback. This can be done by tracking their progress with the system and keeping them in the loop on the developments taking place.

It helps to offer encouragement and support and encourage them to provide feedback.

Communication is a two-way street and it is the lifeblood of any business; make it a priority.