joolzb's picture Submitted by joolzb on
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Career Management

Can anybody share their knowledge of Business Coach - franchises either from a franchisee or client perspective.

I am considering buying into what seems a fairly credible Business Coaching Franchise in the UK, which is a change in career direction but they provide several weeks of concentrated training including certification from the Adler School of Coaching in Canada leading to professional coach certification which is recognised by the ICF. In addition training for DISC pratitioner is also included.

Any feedback is appreciated.

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Submitted by Mark on Monday September 24th, 2007 5:27 am

Don't.

Franchises are notoriously difficult to run and manage. All the training in the world won't help you with operations enough to overcome the challenge of selling new business. What they offer won't overcome what most people want a franchise to overcome - fear of marketing and sales.

Everyone I know that does well with franchises is a natural salesperson, and never thought to rely on the advertising the corporate parent promises. Advertising won't pay your bills.

I can't imagine applying a franchise model to something as relationship driven as coaching someone about their business.

Sorry.

Mark

joolzb's picture
Submitted by joolzb on Monday September 24th, 2007 7:18 am

Thanks for the feedback Mark, as always appreciated.

From what they presented their model is different from the 'subway' type franchise, where huge percentages are fed back into the national pool to fund marketing/sales initiatives and the product is intellectual. Even after their presentation it leaves me wondering how they can make this pay (for them).

((Mark I will PM you a download from what they presented , if you have 5 mins please take a look as it gives a little more detail and am sorry that I can't post to the public domain due to confidentiality etc.))

Their process seems to run so that you gain the coaching accreditation and walk through their process workbook during the first two weeks of training (which I now think may be Six Sigma'esque tools for the process and a full understanding of DISC, team building and your very own Manager-Tools).

They do talk of their brand being a large part, but to be honest I have never heard of them before stumbling onto franchising while Googling.
You raise a really valid point in that the people who do well are natural sales people and the 1% contribution to the national marketing pool would probably be a lost cause.

So looking at this in detail, I'm now wondering why I don't put together a training course for myself. I have been looking at NLP also which I find interesting (not as a singular business but in addition to) The costs of the franchise including some working capital runs close to £60k inc. training and that could prove expensive for 2 weeks training and a set of processes best practice and a scenario playbook.

Hmmmmm...