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SOLUTIONS for franchisees that aren’t making the grade can be simple, but Profitune principal Peter Rowe, finds it’s ironic that some people don’t find the answers for that very reason.

Rowe points out that because franchisees and franchisors come from such a diverse range of backgrounds and expertise, it helps to bring them together with professional coaching to find the answers needed to up-skill and improve business.

“The franchisor can’t be expected to put in all the missing bits for the franchisee – there is a point at which the franchisor cannot go beyond,” says Rowe.

“But if you get franchisees together, even if they come from different areas, if one franchisee has a challenge there’s usually three or four others who have been in a similar position and have overcome it.

“In what we do there’s a lot of opportunities for franchisors where you can assist them in management and system development skills and we can up-skill large numbers of franchisees very quickly.”

Rowe divides the types of franchisees into two categories of those who are in it to make a modest wage and those who are entrepreneurial with goals to replicate the model and expand. He points out that while up-skilling is necessary for those who need help, it is also important for high performing franchisees as well.

“You’ll find that if you put in more resources for that top layer you find that funnily enough you can get a disproportionate return on those who don’t need help,” he says.

“And if you work on those franchisees who aren’t in the top 10 per cent but maybe the 10 or 20 per cent below that then you can get some really great returns on them as well. It’s easy to take answers developed with the top layer and drop them through to the bottom layers.”

Queensland’s Department of Education and Training (DET) recently accredited the nation’s first diploma of business coaching, due to the efforts of Profitune and the Executive Institute of Management.

“I’ve seen too many people representing themselves as business coaches when they’ve never managed staff, can’t interpret a profit and loss statement and often run a very poor business in their own right. In cases where the coach knows less about real business than their client, it’s a case of the blind leading the sighted,” says Rowe.

“It’s vitally important that all business coaches be experienced, knowledgeable, effective and seek accreditation as competent in those key business disciplines in which they seek to coach their clients.”