Welcome to our FIFTH post in the series on Business Coaching Franchise myths. You can read the first four HERE HERE HERE and HERE.
Last time, I suggested that you look critically at the level of brand recognition the business coaching franchisor can legitimately claim by calling 5 of the most influential accounting firms in your region and ask them if they’ve ever heard of the business coaching franchise system you’re considering buying. If they have, ask them about the reputation of the system. If they’ve never heard of them before, then most likely their clients (your prospects!) haven’t heard of the franchise either – guaranteed! If they HAVE heard of the franchise you’re exploring, what’s their reputation like? Will it help you or harm you?
For a complete review of all the nuances of selecting a business coaching franchise, be sure to download, if you haven’t already, the Business Coaching Franchise Buyer’s Guide HERE.
Today, I want to share with you one of THE BIGGEST franchise myths from Robert Purvin’s The Franchise Fraud — one that I think especially relevant for business coaches.
Business Coaching Franchise Myth #5
Franchises Offer a ‘Proven’ Business System.
Often, business coaching franchises represent themselves as having worked out all the operational and marketing bugs that present risks to opening your own firm successfully. All you need to do, they say, is follow our rules and voila! The business will build itself.
Unfortunately, in far too many cases, these same business coaching franchisors have never actually developed a proven success formula. In fact, many of them use their franchisees as “guinea pigs,” testing and developing their business coaching franchise formula on the fly (and at their franchisees’ expense)!
The truth is, more often than most franchisors would care to admit, franchising is used as a growth strategy in and of itself…IN LIEU of planned, strategic, business growth. The use their franchisees to work out their business model rather than selling a business model that already works. In our view, this is fraud!
While this may not be true in the case of every business coaching franchise, it still behooves you to be careful and to check and double check everything your franchise sales rep is saying against the cold, hard facts.
Before you invest, we recommend the following critical steps in your due diligence process…
Business Coaching Franchise Due Diligence
1. If you haven’t yet, ask your franchise sales rep the 7 questions in your Business Coaching Buyer’s Due Diligence Checklist (check box #12). This will help you determine whether or not they really have a system in place that is proven to work.
To your success,
Eric Dombach
P.S. As an alternative to buying a business coaching franchise, consider enrolling in a FREE 30 Day Trial of the Coaches’ Coach members only site! It’s our complete business coaching system, including customizable marketing campaigns, sales scripts, client training materials, business optimization modules, and more. Now, you can get a FREE 30-day trial. One of our clients recently closed $1,500 in recurring monthly revenue after just 3 days with our system…think what that could mean for YOUR business!
