Your Guide to Professional Development for Field Coaches

Offering professional development for field coaches is one of the most effective ways to impact your franchise company success.

Why is that?

Well — The number one driver of franchise company growth is happy, profitable franchisees and the role that works most closely with your franchisees has the biggest impact on their bottom line and happiness.

Whether you call your franchisee support role a Field Coach, Success Coach, Franchise Business Coach, or something entirely different… This is the role that has the most impact on your business success.

But seeing the value of investing in professional development for your Field Coaches is one thing, creating effective professional development opportunities is another issue. 

In the following blog we’ll walk you through all of it — why this kind of development is valuable, what kind of development will make the biggest difference in your Field Coaches role, and how to offer these opportunities for maximum success.

Or… If you prefer listening, check out the podcast episode!

The Unique Challenges of the Field Coach Role

Field Coaches hold a unique and important role in a franchise company because: 

1. They work so directly with franchisees
2. They deal with a lot of ever-changing challenges

Working so directly with your franchisees means that Field Coaches are one of the most impactful roles within your system. They have the ability to help with noncompliance, improve your revenue, increase franchise development, see better validation, and so much more.

As well as having such a high-impact role, Field Coaches also deal with a lot (a lot) of challenging situations including but not limited to:

• Unhappy franchisees
• Noncompliance
• Rudeness 
• Franchisees crying on their shoulders
• Being blamed for results
• Longtime franchisees not trusting their support
• Franchisees going through big life changes

Maybe you’re wondering — don’t Field Coaches learn all of this in their initial training? Yes, they often do. AC Inc offers training for Field Coaches that helps them gain the skills and confidence to start coaching franchisees. 

Why Investing in Professional Development for Field Coaches Makes Sense 

Continuing the conversation above, just because the Field Coach has such a big impact on the success of the franchise company and has evolving challenges and coaching techniques, providing ongoing professional development will help your coaches:

• Stay on top of new techniques and strategies
• Constantly improve their approach to coaching
• Grow their confidence 
• Provide them new resources 
• Overall — help them provide the very best support to your franchisees

Initial training is key to creating a solid foundation for your Field Coaches, but without ongoing professional development for field coaches, you’re missing out on seeing even better results from your franchisees.

What Training & Development is Needed for Field Coaches

Okay now we’re clear on the WHY behind professional development for Field Coaches, but now we need to know what exactly to offer. What topics and techniques will help Field Coaches continue to improve in their role?

First up is the mindset and leadership training. Specifically, increasing your Field Coach’s confidence and developing their modern leadership skills.

Confidence is key when it comes to a Field Coaches ongoing success interacting and building relationships with franchisees. Part of a trusting relationship and getting franchisees to take action in their business is for your franchisees to have confidence in the skills, intentions, and knowledge of their coach. 

Helping your Field Coaches build confidence directly impacts the confidence your franchisees will feel for their coach!

For modern leadership, this topic includes important skills and techniques such as:

• Conflict resolution
• Active listening
• Creating franchisee buy in
• Connecting franchisees to their WHY 
• Building trust
• Tough conversations
• Holding franchisees accountable

The second half of professional development for Field Coaches is the tactical skills training and techniques. 

Having ongoing training and development in areas like these will ensure your franchisees are getting the best support possible for best performance and results.

• Goal setting
• Action plans
• Coaching techniques
• Notes & follow up strategies
• Courses and education

How to Offer Effective Professional Development Opportunities

Last step in this process is to implement the professional development for Field Coaches — there are two options for best results: Regular peer to peer sessions or performance group coaching.

Performance Group Coaching for Field Coaches

Option one is great for Field Coaches who need more skills training and foundational methods for coaching and supporting franchisees for success. 

Performance group coaching is led by a (preferably experienced and knowledgeable) leader who:

• Teaches skills and methods for coaching franchisees
• Tasks the coaches homework and action steps
• Answers questions & offers perspective
• Holds Field Coaches accountable for implementing action steps

We recommend running these sessions in small groups and get your Field Coaches to apply to join so they have buy-in to the program.

Want AC Inc to run Performance Group Coaching for YOUR Field Coaches? Reach out to us to learn more about our programs.

Peer to Peer Field Coach Roundtables

Having a space without the home office for field coaches to connect with fellow coaches and get support away from direct leadership can be hugely beneficial. 

Peer to peer education works incredibly well for franchisees, and the same is true for Field Coaches! This is a great opportunity for coaches to coach each other and share best practices for optimized franchisee results.

This is a great option for brands with lots of coaches to run internally, and a great option for any sized brand to collaborate with fellow companies to have their coaches learn from one another.

AC Inc runs weekly peer to peer Field Coach Professional Development Roundtables where franchisee support teams focus on a different topic each week to learn from fellow coaches, participate in mindset work, best practices, problem solving, and skill development.

Get Your Field Coaches in the AC Roundtables