A Bury St Edmunds based business has been nominated for a prestigious 2013 Best Overall Franchise Award, for a second time.

Last year ended on a high for ActionCOACH when they were announced as joint runner up with McDonald’s for the UK’s Best Large Franchisor Award. Additionally, they were recently recognised for being the Best UK Business Opportunity (2013) awarded to them by CompareTheFinancialMarkets.com. This year ActionCOACH hopes to go one better and win the overall title, which is based on results from an independent survey completed by ActionCOACH Franchise Partners and the Judging Panel’s scores.

The award is sponsored by Lloyds Bank Commercial and recognises the success of the UK’s best in developing healthy and profitable franchise partnerships. Winners will be announced on Thursday 5th December at The Best Franchise Conference, in Oxfordshire.

The shortlisted franchisors were selected based on feedback from over 2,000 existing franchise owners, gathered through an industry-wide study of franchisee satisfaction. Franchisees were invited to anonymously complete the Franchise Satisfaction Benchmark survey and rate them on several elements including; the training and support, the franchise system and their overall experience as a franchise owner. The top Franchisors were then shortlisted and nominated for the awards. Categories of the event include Best Growing Franchisor, Best Training & Support and Best Overall Franchise.

Richard Holden, Head of Franchising at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said “We are delighted to be supporting the Best Franchise Awards once again, which recognise outstanding franchisors and help drive up industry standards. Sharing best practice and recognising excellence are valuable contributors to promoting ethical franchising in the UK, and Lloyds Bank is committed to assisting franchise brands that demonstrate the highest levels of support to their network of franchisees.”

Steven Frost, Smith & Henderson, which coordinates the programme, said, “The Best Franchise Awards are based on what really counts – the experience of thousands of actual franchisees. These shortlisted franchisors therefore represent an elite group that provide first class support to their franchisees. We should congratulate them for their achievements.”

Ian Christelow, Managing Director at ActionCOACH, said: “We are delighted that we have been shortlisted for the Best Overall Franchise Award again, last year was a great achievement for us to be announced joint runner up with McDonald’s. This year we are once more up against great competition such as TaxAssist and McDonald’s, which is a marvellous accomplishment in itself.

The feedback last year identified the need to make the ActionCOACH business more easily scalable and to introduce a lower entry model; both have been acted on with:
• the introduction of a £20k lower initial cost single operator licence; and
• the ability now to have up to three fee earners under one franchise.

It’s wonderful to see that those steps have been appreciated by our franchise partners with their overall rating of ActionCOACH leaping 7 percentage points to a staggeringly high 85%. I would like to thank all of our support team for their skilled input, which has won this deserved recognition and all of our franchise partners who took the time to participate in the franchisee satisfaction survey.”