Just last week ActionCOACH was named to Franchise Direct’s List of “Top 100 Global Franchises”, marking the fourth straight year ActionCOACH has earned a spot on this list and moving up more than 20 spots from last year, to reach number 50.

Franchise Direct has issued this list every year since 2009. ActionCOACH has been a presence on the list every year, but the company has never been ranked this highly. The list is based on a number of criteria, including number of units within the franchise system; number of countries the franchise is in; the franchise’s international unit numbers and growth; and, finally, franchise stability and strength.

“Earning a place on this list such is an honor,” ActionCOACH USA and Canada CEO Jodie Shaw said. “This has been a good year for ActionCOACH.  We have done studies and learned that businesses that work with an ActionCOACH enjoy a return of almost $11 for every dollar they spend on coaching. We also know our franchisees are satisfied and our coaches are among the best compensated in the industry.”

Soon after learning about its place on the Franchise Direct 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.

Additionally, ActionCOACH recently won a Hermes Creative Gold in the category of Marketing Collateral/Branding/Invitation for its invitation to last year’s Global Conference held in Miami.

Now, with honors in hand, ActionCOACH 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 is an opportunity for business owners to learn important strategies from some of the top business minds in the world, including such experts as Brad Sugars and Darren Hardy. The Business Excellence Forum and Awards culminates with a gala awards ceremony celebrating the “best of the best” businesses in more than 15 categories ranging from Entrepreneur of the Year to Most Community Impact.

While it’s true that small business owner are usually talented, driven people who are good at what they do, but not necessarily adept at running a business profitably.  A business coach can fill in what’s missing.

All too often business owners find themselves in a pattern of behavior which curbs the productivity and success in both their private and work lives. Business coaching helps cure them of those traits.

Many small business owners don’t understand that their position is as a leader for their company, not just an owner, and a business coach can clarify the difference between the two roles by helping business owners realize how important their role as leader is, while showing the owner how to grow into that leadership role. So what are some of the pitfalls a business owner can fall into in terms of leadership?

1. Ego- One of the reasons a person owns their own business is that they’ve already found a measure of success in their career, but with that success can come a growing ego and a business owner with an inflated sense of worth can be very dangerous for business. There is nothing wrong with being confidant, but a big ego will turn off both customers and employees. It can also lead to problems in our next area, because owners with big egos never feel like their employees can do the job as well as them.

2. Delegation- A big ego can lead to delegation issues, but there are many other areas that can lead to issues with delegation. Anyone who has a problem delegating authority has a business that’s in trouble. Doing everything means you don’t have time to be a real leader because your role as an owner is to be a leader, not another worker. Your staff has been hired for a reason and needs the opportunity to be productive. Your job is to make sure your business is running properly with an eye toward future growth, not making the coffee in the morning.

3. Lack of long term vision- If delegating responsibilities is something you don’t do well you are probably way too involved in the day to day activities of your business. A business owner’s responsibility is the long term growth and success of the business. Getting in the trenches with your staff may keep you connected, but it also keeps you from building the vision and strategies you will need to reach your goals.

Now that you know three important factors in leadership, how do you assess yourself as a leader? Do you have your ego in check, delegate responsibilities easily and have a long term vision for your company? If you don’t, it may be time to look into a Business Coach to get you on the right path.

Yes, conventional informational tools are still popular. New books and workshops continue to offer business advice and strategies for anxious business owners, but more owners than ever are turning to business coaching as a way to help grow their companies.

Many major economies have been in an economic ‘winter’ for some time. Yes, there has been some growth, but right now many businesses are still struggling to keep their collective heads above water. It is businesses that are working with a Business Coach who will be prepared for the next economic ‘spring’ because they will be in a position to take advantage of the economic upswing.

Business owners are looking for answers that will immediately impact their company. Business coaching is attractive to them because coaching is a generalized approach that looks at the company as a whole, and focuses on profit, which, of course, is the most important part of any business.

For many businesses, the benefits of getting coached can be exponential in nature.

For a consultant, an incremental increase on a big company’s bottom-line can mean millions of dollars, but for a Business Coach that focuses on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and that coach’s clients, an exponential profit increase can mean tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to that owner’s bottom-line – which can mean a huge difference in the life of the owner and the company.

As new businesses start and existing companies prepare for the next “economic spring,” there are literally millions of small and mid-sized businesses that need business coaching services.

There is no better time for owners to get the business knowledge they need to succeed by working with a Business Coach.

Now, people who used to recommend a product or service to their friends can click away to send the same referral to literally hundreds of people in an instant, and they’re doing it.

Take a look at sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s the fastest, greatest, and in many cases, cheapest way to get your company noticed that exists today. Viral emails and videos are flooding the in boxes of literally millions of your prospective customers every day.

And, where word-of-mouth used to take weeks, months and years to really penetrate a market place, word of mouse can do it in hours. And the best part, small business can actually do it better than most big companies because they can adapt more quickly to the technology and ideas.

So, let’s get to the basics first. Content is king now on the net. And content is taking the form of everything from blogs. Libraries of articles, Press Rooms, videos, audios and as much information as you can about your products and services as well as how to buy them, how to choose them and how to differentiate the good suppliers from the bad.

We’ll take a look at each one separately, but suffice to say the more you can upload, the more places customers, researchers, buyers and journalists can find you.

Blogs – These started in about 2004 in any form or reasonable volume and today you can very cheaply and easily build your own blog into your site. Essentially it’s a way that every day, week or two weeks or you can upload a new article, point of view, story or even journal of your day-to-day business.

Many companies are using blogs to communicate with their customers, gain feedback, or even build a volume of searchable content on their site. Remember, the web is building every day and the more you have on your site that is both targeted at your potential customers and Search Engine Optimised the better your results will be.

Press Room – This is where every day, every week or every fortnight you can submit a press release about your company, one where you control the message as you are the journalist. Think about this: an article in a newspaper is what we pay PR people big money for and may reach tens of thousands of people. Well, if an article is placed on the web, how long will it be there and how many people may find it over the next ten years?

Put in the time and energy to build a solid Press Room filled with everything from an online press kit to copies of articles that have been published, but also every single release you have ever written. Remember, the Press Room is as much for your customers as it is for journalists.

Article Libraries – If you provide a service this should be a large part of your online marketing. Scientists, for example, can upload and everyone can write articles about their products, their industry, and advice for their customers.

Imagine a real estate agency with literally hundreds of articles on how to buy, how to sell and how to invest in real estate.

Video and audio – Let’s first look at the Social Network sites of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Each site is massively big, as well as cheap and powerful to use. Again, content is king. The more video, the more pictures and the more you write about yourself and with others, the better. You can even have every employee in your company build their own @work page showing what they do every day, who they work for, and the products etc.

This is obviously where the power of ‘word of mouse’ really starts to show up easily. I’m sure you’ve been sent a video or two, a funny picture and so on. Today when you make a video, it doesn’t need the world’s best production techniques or massive camera expense, just a regular digital home video camera and a whole bunch of imagination…

Just think of how many people started to buy Mentos, after the diet coke and Mentos fountains were posted and then emailed globally. Put simply, there is a massive benefit for a few hours learning and a few days site designing here.

Article reprinted courtesy of My Business Magazine

So how do you stand out from the pack?

You develop a USP, or Unique Selling Proposition.

What this means is to look at your business, product or service and choose something apart from what the competition offers, and tell everyone possible about it.

So what is it that you do better than your competition that will position you uniquely within your consumers mind?
For example, say your business is a “No Pain” Dentist surgery. Your USP could be that patients are guaranteed to feel no pain, and if they do the service is free.

There are a couple of conditions to remember when using a USP.

It is best to make your USP feasible. By that I mean, you should only offer something that you can and definitely will deliver. Put simply, never over-promise and under-deliver.

Next, make sure your USP relates to your target market and is something beneficial to them.
If you were a pet groomer you wouldn’t offer a sky-diving package if the owner wasn’t happy with the service their pet received.

Also, the USP your business decides to use needs to be strong enough to stand out and apart you’re your competition. For example, a bakery that is open Monday to Friday is the norm, but a 24 hour bakery is something completely different.

As you can see, a USP is a great way to connect with your customers and market your business, because it helps you tell customers about the extra value of doing business with your company.

So if you don’t already use a USP to market your business, consider what your USP can be and start telling people about it today.

In the world of investing, if we were to read that we have an 80% chance of losing our investment, we wouldn’t give that investment a second thought. The risk of losing it all doesn’t justify the investment.

For every business that starts today, 80% will close their doors not far in to the future. Yet the allure of being an entrepreneur, and having ultimate freedom, drives many to ignore the odds. The ultimate goal for a business coaching organization is to reverse those figures so that 80% succeed.

That can happen when owners have better information and are equipped with better knowledge and tools to develop their teams and sales and operational systems. When business owners open their doors with the knowledge needed to succeed, those figures of failure dramatically decrease.

Some of the best business minds in the world believe that emotion has no place in business decisions. Whether or not you believe emotion has no place in business, one truth is hard to argue: business owners sometimes allow their dream of being an entrepreneur to get in the way of being a well informed business professional. They open their doors without the essentials of business success.

The top reasons businesses fail are lack of knowledge, lack of a plan, the lack of accountability to a plan and lack of cash or capital. While some expenses can be budgeted, those that the inexperienced business owner didn’t foresee are what can be the downfall of a startup.

Often, though, nothing is more important than the vision. A clear vision can act as a guiding light or a “North Star” for an owner. It helps bring back focus when the desire is to diversify or go off into a business or market that isn’t aligned with the original focus and mission.

That doesn’t mean that a company will never stray from the vision, but it’s far less likely than when you have no vision at all.

It’s like keeping a rocket on course.

There will be fluctuations in trajectory but the overall destination should not change. Knowing where the business is going is pivotal to plotting the course.

Are you working too many hours, making too little money, dealing with too many issues related to your team and employees, or simply feeling that working in your business is little better than having a job? If your answer is yes to any of those questions, you probably need a Business Coach.

In today’s economy, most businesses fail within five years, even when run by smart, bright and highly motivated individuals, but the gap between what people think they know about business and business reality can be filled very effectively by a good Business Coach.

Why?

Because good Business Coaches are generalists, as opposed to business consultants, who tend to be specialists… not that there is anything wrong with that … but for most small businesses owners are looking for exponential changes in their companies very quickly.

While a business consultant is used to delivering incremental results (which, for a large corporation can mean millions to the bottom-line), a Business Coach can deliver real results to a small business owner, which can literally be business – and life – changing.

In the world of business change comes rapidly. Most business owners have more questions about how to run their companies than they have answers. Business coaching is the perfect solution to this … because answers are arrived at and strategies executed in real-time, with the Business Coach serving to guide the process instead of just writing up a report and leaving it for the owner to implement.

In this way, a Business Coach shares many similarities with a sports coach. Both use strategies and tactics to guide others to victory. In business, this takes the form of a business plan; in sports, a game plan.

A good Business Coach will also see each team member as unique, and will work with the owner to find more effective and efficient ways leverage existing resources to get better results. He or she will also motivate, inspire and challenge a business owner to succeed, becoming an “unreasonable friend” to achieve a goal or outcome.

This idea of accountability is important for small businesses for a number of reasons, and it is one of the reasons business coaching is so successful. For many owners, running a company means “freedom,” and it can be liberating to work as an independent owner.

But true freedom is only attained after the business has become a commercial and profitable enterprise that is able to operate without the owner being physically present in the business.

In large companies, this level of accountability is provided by a board of directors. Smaller businesses don’t have a board of directors, but a Business Coach provide a “sounding board” for new and current initiatives. He or she can hold the owner to knowing the numbers of the business, creating and delivering on 90-day plans, and testing and measuring marketing efforts – from increased leads to higher profit margins.

So if you are a small-to-medium sized business owner (and by that I mean any business with revenues up to $50 million), and you are looking at outside help for business, consider business coaching as an alternative to business consulting. And, consider these four things before you hire a Business Coach:

1) As an owner, are you coachable – or at least willing to be coached?

Even though you are the leader of your business, you need to to be willing to be coachable, and need to be willing to change. That means acknowledging you don’t know everything, and be willing to accept the reason your company operates the way is does is because of what you already know and what you’ve already been doing.

2) Does your prospective Business Coach have a proven and systemized way to grow a business?

Generally, you should feel there is a good personality match with your coach. But the coach should also have a systemized tool box of strategies and tactics proven to actually grow a business. He or she should also ask good questions about your company and its issues, because good questions – and the answers to those questions – are at the heart of a valuable coaching relationship.

3) Is your company culture right for coaching?

Business coaching works best in an environment that is not overly political – because those types of organizations penalize achievement and success. What type of company do you own? Realize that culture starts at the top, and your willingness to change means getting out of denial about how the company is actually run. That’s important, because if you oversee a highly political company culture and want it changed – it will – probably sooner than you could imagine.

4) Do you want to measure your ROI in terms of money and time?

From a business coaching perspective, the two best metrics of ROI are profitability and time spent actually working in your business. Why? No business can exist without profit. And time once spent is a commodity you never get back. Getting leverage on both can have lasting impact on every owner’s life – and as importantly – the owner’s life outside of the business.

Business coaching is not for everyone. However, I believe it is the best way for most business owners to discover (or re-discover) the freedom and creativity inherent in successful business ownership.

If you are coachable and willing to adopt new strategies and ideas, you’ll get great results from business coaching. That success will be reflected at every level in your company – but especially on the bottom-line. Which is why more owners than ever have turned to business coaching as the primary way to grow their companies.

Simply put, ActionCOACH franchisees are satisfied and ActionCOACH Business Coaches make more money than their counterparts on average and, most importantly, businesses that work with an ActionCOACH get almost $11 back for every dollar they invest.

The numbers bear it out, if you want the best in business coaching, there’s no need to look any farther than ActionCOACH. Whether you’re a business owner looking for help or feel you have the right stuff to help businesses in your community succeed as a Business Coach, ActionCOACH is the company to choose.

ActionCOACH was ranked 48 in the Franchise Business Review Franchise Satisfaction Awards, in a listing of 300 of the world’s top franchises.

The list was compiled through a survey of franchisees and the satisfaction of ActionCOACH franchisees helped keep the company ranked as one of the top large format franchisors in the world, a place it’s held for the better part of the last decade.

Of course one of the main reasons our franchisees are satisfied is the fact that an ActionCOACH Business Coach simply makes more money than coaches in other systems.

The ICF (International Coaching Federation) recently came out with a comprehensive study on business coaching. In the study it was found that the average North American coach earns just over $50,000. Meanwhile, the average ActionCOACH Business Coach makes nearly 5 times that amount, further proof that the best and brightest coaches, and the coaches who earn the most, are part of the ActionCOACH system.

And when the best and brightest in an industry work for one company, that company gets serious results.

We can see this through an independent study of the affects of ActionCOACH Business Coaching in Florida, which showed that businesses generate a return of $10.80 for every dollar invested with an ActionCOACH.

Those same businesses are hiring workers at a rate that is 7 percent higher than the average as well, making their communities stronger and building the economy.

When taken individually, each of these items are great pieces of news, but when taken together, each of these items is further proof that ActionCOACH is the leader in the business coaching industry. So whether you’re a coach looking for the next career step or a business owner who needs the best coach possible, be sure to contact your local ActionCOACH.

What can you do to change that perception?

There aren’t many businesses that haven’t had to deal with concerns like these, but if you let people know you understand their concerns by speaking the truth, guarantee your customer’s satisfaction and take steps to make necessary changes, your business can actually grow and become stronger.

Just look at Domino’s Pizza.

Domino’s knew it had a major issue with perceptions of quality and service, and faced it head on. Interestingly, this strategy has paid huge dividends for the ubiquitous pizza maker, who has seen its stock price rise 233% since the company began its “brutally honest” campaign in 2009.

In addition to their marketing campaign, Domino’s improved the ease and convenience of their website, even adding a “Pizza Tracker” so people know each step of the process as their pizza is delivered.

Not only has this improved the perception of the company with its customers, but it has also grown their business. Today, more than 25% of Domino’s business is done online.

What is the primary issue facing your business?

For Domino’s the problem was the quality of their product. Years ago, Domino’s delivered one very famous guarantee; getting your pizza within 30 minutes. But speed wasn’t the problem, quality was.

To turn this around, Domino’s faced the reality that people thought it’s pizza wasn’t very good. It was fast, easy and convenient, but tasted bad to most people.

Of course, just a marketing campaign alone couldn’t have changed people’s perceptions, so Domino’s improved the quality of their ingredients before letting people know about the improvement through its latest marketing campaign.

So if your business has a bad reputation, don’t avoid it and hope it will go away. Be proactive like Domino’s and face those challenges head-on. Guarantee that whatever issues plaguing your business will be dealt with and your customers will be happy. But, most importantly, your bottom line will grow.

Is it customer service?

Or is it something else that uniquely defines your business, a unique way you manufacture your product, or an interesting geographic location?

Whatever it is, identify it, define and it and start using it to differentiate yourself in the market place.

Don’t think that a “commodity” product can have a USP? Just go online and look at how the grass seed company Scotts markets its “Turf Builder” line of grass seed.

Don’t know if a “small” company can define itself against a larger competitor? Pick up a copy of the book about the US-based company, In-N-Out Burger, which beats McDonald’s in terms of overall profitability and same-store sales, with fewer stores and less menu items.

Wonder if you can profit in your small niche? Take a look at Porsche, which targets a select few customers at a very high product performance level and price point, and in turn, is one of the most profitable car makers around.

Next, offer a guarantee.

While every business is required to make good on its products or services, add some extra value to your guarantee, and make it part of your overall customer experience.

For years, top-tier retailers have all had generous guarantee and return policies, and those policies have only strengthened customer loyalty to their stores.

Can you make your guarantee stand out? Can it become the industry standard?

If so, start telling your customers and your prospects and start making it a distinction you can sell in the marketplace.

And don’t worry about getting ripped-off with a strong guarantee. Sure, some will take advantage. But in the end, your reputation and additional sales will more than make up for the single digit percentages that look to scam you or take advantage of your policies.

Once you do these two things, not only will your marketing efforts start to generate real results, you’ll be able to compete on everything other than price.

You’ll also find once you and your customers get price out of the way, you’ll be a lot more creative in your added value propositions, your marketing and your customer service. You’ll also have much bigger numbers on your bottom-line.