The web site FranchiseOpportunities.com is a free-to-use resource that offers initial and detailed information on franchises that are available for sale. Entrepreneurship seekers can search FranchiseOpportunities.com for franchises and business opportunities by area, investment, and industry, then provide their contact information in order to receive more information from concepts they find appealing.

“Franchise organizations grow their concepts by attracting individuals interested in business ownership, selecting applicants that are best suited to succeed, then training and supporting those entrepreneurs known as franchisees for a specified contractual period.

“We connect prospective entrepreneurs with franchise organizations. This helps franchise organizations fuel their growth” says Matt Biskup, Chief Marketing Officer at Franchise Opportunities Network.

During this 12 year period the Franchise Opportunities Network has delivered franchise leads to such venerable and well-known companies as Postnet and NAPA.  It has also delivered leads to such newly emerging franchise powerhouses as Chem-Dry and Anytime Fitness.   Moreover, the last few years has seen a rise in the number of brokers being used in franchise sales.  The Franchise Opportunities Network has supplied many of the brokers with the leads needed to make sales.

W.C. Garth Snider, President of the Franchise Opportunities Network, attributed the success of Franchise Opportunity Network to his teams’ uncompromising commitment to quality and innovation.  Mr. Snider stated, “We are constantly looking for ways to generate more leads for our clients.  And, our dedicated sales team is always looking for new clients to bring into the fold.  Notwithstanding the weak economy over the last three years, we have increased our lead generation output the last three years on a per client basis.  We are confident that we have delivered more leads since 2008 than any other franchise recruitment site.”

Mr. Snider added “But looking at the raw lead number gives one only half the story.  The leads that we are generating are turning into sales for our clients.   That, in turn, creates positive economic activity in our economy.  So while other organizations may talk about creating jobs and working for franchises the Franchise Opportunities Network is actually on the front-lines finding ways to get America working again.”

Almost two years after the Great Recession officially ended the franchise market writ large is still struggling to cope with the boom that ended badly.  The International Franchise Association reported that 2012 will be the year that franchising rebounds.   Last month the IFA released its Franchise Business Economic Outlook for 2012.   In short it stated, “after three years of restrained growth, due to the recession and its lingering effects, franchise businesses show signs of recovery in the year ahead.”  The  IFA went on to state that “franchise business growth has been restrained over the past three years due to underlying factors, such as the weak rebound in consumer spending, that have been a drag on the economy as a whole.  In addition, tighter credit standards have limited the formation of new franchise small businesses and the expansion of existing businesses.”   (I think it important to keep in mind that the IFA has been forecasting for the last 2-3 years that this year will be the recovery year.  In fact, the IFA has restated its numbers for the previous year’s franchise unit growth in each of the last three years.  For example, the 2012 report said that the number of franchise establishments in 2008 was 774,000; the report in 2011 stated that the number of franchise establishments in 2008  was 791,000; and the 2009 report claimed that the number in 2008  was 864,000. )

But in light of This Time is Different what struck me as particularly interesting about this latest pronouncement from the IFA was the statement by Stephen Caldeira, President of the IFA, in which he said in referring to 2012  “the rate of growth is far below the growth trends we experienced before the recession.”   Most individuals understand that the growth that franchising experienced in the 4-5 years prior to the recession was fueled by the exact same economic and financial factors that gave rise to the larger American macro-economic bubble—and it subsequent collapse.  Thus I think the most important question that we in the franchising industry must ask is what growth rate do we want and what growth rate should we expect?    If we expect a growth trajectory similar to the 4-5 years prior to the recession how do we plan to achieve that without a similar type economic environment?   Or, do we care how we get there just so long as we do?

Toward that end, recently I had an executive remark to me that he hopes that we experience another liquidity bubble because it would return the franchise market to its pre-recession days.  But is that what we really need and/or want as a country or as an industry?   Turning again to This Time is Different, the book reminds us that the boom we experienced in America was powered by a liquidity bubble—a bubble that was destined to burst—and was fueled in large part by the sub-prime mortgage market.  “In the end run-up to the sub-prime crisis, standard indicators for the United States, such as asset price inflation, rising leverage, large sustained current account deficits, and a slowing trajectory of economic growth, exhibited virtually all the signs of a county on the very of a financial crisis—indeed a severe one.”

A severe one indeed.   We have millions out of work still, and those that are employed have seen their wages stagnate and their home value drop precipitously and not recover.    But that is exactly what history has shown always occurred after a financial crisis.  Reinhart and Rogoff state: “an examination of the aftermath of severe postwar financial crises shows that these crises have had a deep and lasting effect on asset prices, output, and employment.  Unemployment increase and house price declines have extended for five and six years, respectively.  Real government debt has increased by an average of 86 percent after three year….Historical experience is that V-shaped recoveries in equity prices are far more common than V-shaped recoveries in real housing prices or employment.  Overall the analysis of the post crisis outcomes for unemployment, output, and government debt provides sobering benchmark numbers for how deep financial crises can unfold.”

Notwithstanding the remark of the executive I reference above, I do not think most in the franchise industry—nor the country—consciously want another liquidity bubble.  The out-sized short term profits fueled by a large amount of liquidity in the system appear to be Faustian bargain that few in the franchise industry want to engage in again.  What the executive likely meant was that he wanted another great macro-liquidity event in our Nation’s economy, he just did not want to have it become a “bubble”.   In that case, he, as well as most in American business today, is eagerly awaiting the next economic boom.  And if that boom is to be fueled by complicated financial instruments and unrestrained access to the debt markets then “this time will be different” is the refrain that is soon to be repeated.

But as Reinhart and Rogoff detail with much precision it is unlikely from a historical perspective that the next time will be different.  “The fading memories of borrowers and lenders, policy makers and academics, and the public at large do not seem to improve over time, so the policy lessons on how to avoid the next blow up are at best limited.  Technology has changed, the height of humans has changed, and fashions have changed.  Yet the ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant.”    Franchising touches all segments of our economic society—technology, labor, finance, consumer, etc.   Franchising will wax and wane depending on the over-all economic health of our country.

The question that must be answered is this: will franchising plot a course that is complimentary too, but not dependent on, the next banking and finance led American boom?    Or, will franchising as a industry continue to aim for, and the IFA continue to lobby for, the good ‘ole days of “outsized profits” and rapid franchise unit growth fueled as it was by what we now know to be an excess of debt accumulation both on the micro- and macro level of our economy?    My guess is that few are even thinking about the future of franchising in these terms.   Most simply want growth, and they care not how that growth comes about.   (Of course this is how most in our country feel and is the emotional genesis for the boom and bust cycles examined in This Time is Different.)

Every six months the  IFA puts out a statement about how the tight lending standards are retarding the growth of franchising.  While that is undoubtedly true, it would be helpful to learn exactly what the IFA deems as the optimal level of liquidity in the system.   If by loosening the IFA is silently longing for the loose credit standards that reigned supreme in the middle of the last decade then that perhaps is the wrong path down which to proceed.  If it is not, then it is incumbent upon the leadership to set forth with more particularity the goals because liquidity in the system is inextricably linked to the franchise growth projections.

 In order to assure that we in franchising do not repeat the mistakes of the past, the franchising industry needs perhaps a different approach.   The industry needs leadership that does not repeat nor countenance the thread-bare and statistically suspect mantra of “franchises do better in recessions.”  We need leadership that understands that while prospective franchisees are more difficult to come by now then they were in 2007 that may not necessarily be a bad thing.  In the same way that it is now settled wisdom that there were many who were allowed to take out a mortgage five years ago that should not have been permitted to do so, so too must the leadership in franchising state unequivocally that there were franchisees that should not have been awarded franchises and business that should not have been franchises as well.  And if that be the case, then the growth rate that was experienced in the years leading up to the Great Recession cannot be the benchmark for growth in the next decade.

   The economic outlook published for 2012 projects an increase of 1.9% in franchise establishments.   But as stated above, the one constant with the economic outlooks produced by the IFA over the last four years is that each year the reports change many of the figures stated in the previous years report.   The reports do have a convenient escape mechanism in that all of the reports state that the numbers are “estimates”.  In other words, neither the IFA nor the high powered accounting and consulting firms commisioned to compile the reports know conclusively how many franchise establishments exist today—and if you read the reports carefully you will see that the PWC reports state that 2007 was the first time that there was enough data to even put forth a sound estimate.  So while 1.9% may well be the appropriate and realistic growth rate for 2012, given the track record of the reports put forth by the IFA we must be more than a little skeptical about the numbers set forth.

All of us with a stake in franchising want to see franchising grow again.  We all believe in the fundamentals that under-gird its special place in our economy.   In order to achieve a prudent and sound franchise growth rate we need “tough love” leadership and sober, intelligent responses to the challenging times in which we live.  Doing so, however, requires an honest appraisal of how we got here and whether the good ‘ole days were really that good.   Simply running the same plays out of the same playbook, and using statistically suspect boom year expectations of growth is not a game plan for long-term success.  We have read this book before.  We know how it ends.  And no, this time will not be different.

We in the franchise lead generation business have heard the cacophony of complaints about the deterioration of lead quality. (Although if the truth be known there are relatively speaking just as few complaints now as there were doing the good ‘ole days of the mid-2000’s.) As the aggregators and collators of American’s interest in entrepreneurship the lead quality of our leads is nothing more than a reflection of the individual credit worthiness and the consumer confidence levels found in the larger American economy. Regardless of one’s opinion about the effectiveness of franchise recruitment sites the vast majority of the recruitment sites do nothing more than collect, aggregate, and collate information from both the franchisor and the prospective franchisee. While we are active promoters of franchising, we are also the passive aggregators of individual interest. So if the Unites States government has been downgraded then so has— in theory– the average American looking to start his own business.

Few American’s blame themselves for the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating. It is somebody else fault. Maybe that guy down the street who has been out of work for two years; or maybe the gal who works for the defense contractor is partly to blame; or maybe it’s just every other citizen of another state (its only “pork” when somebody else is eating it). And so it really comes as no surprise that many a franchisor is casting about looking for somebody to blame for low lead quality. Many times the spinning wheel of blame lands on the franchise recruitments sites. Fair enough. As the supplier of leads—although not the producer of leads—the recruitment sites must share some of the blame for the decreased lead quality.

But here is a little secret that few want to admit to being true—(just like no one wants to admit that federal money brought back to their state is “pork”)—were the economy in the same shape today as it was in 2005 or 1997 or 1987 there would be a whole lot less talk about low lead quality. Everything changes when people have money to spend and the credit lines are open. The one thing that would not change would be the manner in which most franchise recruitment sites generate leads. We would still be supplying the leads, it’s just that the producer of the leads i.e. the over-all economy, would be producing better leads on average.

But that is not where we are today. The United States has lost its preeminent position in the credit rating world. We must find a way as citizens to get back on track. It will take sacrifice and hard work. But we are up to the task, I believe. We are not fundamentally different people. We are the same people simply with different economic circumstances than we once had. Similarly, the “unqualified” leads that we in the industry hear so much about are not nameless, faceless denizens of some third-world country. They are American citizens. They are real people. Many of them were the well qualified leads of three years ago. Here is another insider tip: many of them will be the well qualified of leads of tomorrow.

And so while some of these individuals may not currently have the financial wherewithal to buy a franchise or start a small business, the fact that they submitted a lead to a franchise recruitment site is proof that they have a desire to be part of the entrepreneurial community. Thus I find it disconcerting when people use language that disconnects the “lead” from that of the person. The same way I find it problematic when people claim that it was somebody else’s fault—everyone else’s but their own– that got us into the economic malaise the country is mired in. The great English man of letters G.K. Chesterton when responding to the question of “what is wrong with the world” stated simply “I am.”

As 2011 comes to close I think we would be well-served to ask ourselves “what is wrong with our economy?”
I submit that we should all answer “I am.” Why? Because we are all knitted to one another in the great fabric of American social and economic life. Notwithstanding the atomizing effects of the social media craze, we all are our brother’s keeper. And the only way we are going to get out of this economic funk is to take some personal responsibility for the problem—even if it may not be warranted. History proves that this county rises and falls together, and while there may be more wealth disparity today than there has been in the past we are in far better shape than most countries in the world. So the sooner we can look at each other and honestly say that we are doing our best work and at our highest level of output the sooner the United State’s will regain its AAA status. And the sooner we do that, the sooner franchise sales will be at the levels that WE ALL want them to be.

That is my New Year’s wish for us all.

One such article appeared recently on industry consultant Joe Mathews’ web site.

I’m sharing my rebuttal below for its general educational value. I believe that you’ll find at least a few benefits to franchise portal advertising that you were not aware of, regardless of how experienced you may be at franchise marketing.

Go ahead; take my friendly challenge, read the article below:

Good Morning, Joe

I’d like to challenge one of your key assumptions about organic search in this article and others you’ve penned.

I recognize you as a franchise industry expert, I’ve read your book and I appreciate your contribution to our shared space.

However, I think you’ve made an incomplete and thus incorrect assumption about the value of franchise portals to the current state of online marketing for franchise organizations. Specifically my input here relates to organic traffic from search engines.

For the folks that read this that don’t know me, I’m the Chief Marketing Officer for FranchiseOpportunities.com. That indicates that I’m biased toward portals of course, but I wanted to take the opportunity to make an earnest, fact-based rebuttal to your assertion Joe that “Portals are ‘out’ and SEO is in.”

My responsibilities at FranchiseOpportunities.com include all things marketing and we’re nearly 100% on the web. That means that I don’t know much at all about print, radio or television, but this digital space I do know.

I believe that my insights as a C-level digital marketer in the franchise lead generation space can be valuable to you and to the people who follow your advice.

First let me state that you and I agree on many key changes taking place in the world of franchising. I believe also that both of us share a common enthusiasm and a bias toward building others’ success.

I’m electing on this forum to keep my thoughts succinct but I am very willing to discuss anything digital marketing with you at length perhaps on a phone call.

Over one year ago we implemented an optional tool for our advertisers we call the Free Prospect Counting Tool (FPCT).

We wanted to be able to communicate to our advertisers with concrete evidence that franchise prospects visit franchise portals such as ours then go directly to the franchisor’s site by guessing their domain name or by going first to a search engine such as Google.

We implemented publicly available, off-the-shelf technology commonly used to track visitors from one participating site to another.

What we found was frankly astounding.

We found that thousands, yes, thousands of individuals every month first visit our site, then a search engine, then a participating franchisor’s web site.

This technology is cutting edge and it is possible that many people including your team were not aware of its use. That’s why I thought I’d take the time to share it with you.

We consider this irrefutable proof that some of the organic traffic that you are rightly encouraging franchisors to get more of does in fact begin with the franchise concept first being discovered on franchise portal type sites.

We have proven, along with many other franchise portals that also conduct the same program under different names, that advertising on a franchise portal significantly increases visitors who arrive on a franchisor’s web site that are attributed to “organic” in their web site analytics programs.

The data set includes over 100 franchise companies, over one year of implementation, thousands of visitors each month from portals directly to or via Google and Yahoo to web sites owned by franchisors. The data includes date and time stamps, URLs of web pages on both our site and individual participating franchise sites as well as I.P. addresses.

Another very interesting fact is that there is almost no overlap between people that completed our lead collecting web forms and the visitors that went directly to the franchisors’ web sites, so it is incremental to the leads that we get paid to generate and deliver.

As you described in your article, there are many people that are “web form phobic.” So in the end, we’re providing leads via our forms and via organic search as well as direct traffic hitting the franchisor’s web site.

Frankly, we can’t stop this behavior and we can’t charge any extra for it. It is what it is. People that use the Internet today are sophisticated searchers and some of our visitors simply view our directory and head over to Google to locate the web site of the franchise.

This web visitor behavior validates your advice that franchise companies should maintain web content. It is this content that Google displays to visitors that have just left our site.

It’s not a stretch to understand that since most franchisors are local or regional players, that somehow they must get their brand and their general concept in front of ready, willing and able franchise prospects. It is only on portals that proactive entrepreneurship seekers can find a large list of franchises that they can filter by investment level, industry and by location and conduct their research.

By way of example, at the most recent Franchise Update conference a very large and successful franchisor told our company president, Garth Snider, that when it dropped its portal advertising the number of leads that it received via its own web site dropped by 50%.

In your writings you laud the quality of visitors from Google, and portals are the ones sending people into Google for both brand specific as well as industry terms. So by extension, shouldn’t your view of the quality of visitors to portals be at a minimum held with the same high level of regard as you hold for those visitors from Google?

Your writings don’t mention directly the amount of time and effort and the related costs of having a franchise organization’s staff generate content, place that content, optimize that content for specific and material keywords – even if eventually the visitor that sees and acts on that content comes from what is perceived as a “free” traffic source. An axiom in digital marketing is “SEO (search engine optimization) ain’t free”.

If the franchise company hires professional digital marketing staff for the same purposes the costs go even higher as expert level digital marketing expert commands wages that can exceed six figures.

Hiring a consultant to help has a cost that varies by project.

When you do the math, advertising on a portal is a far less expensive way to get traffic to a franchisor’s web site.

Since your article concludes with a recommendation of a marketing consultant, I thought that you wouldn’t mind me pointing out similar services that portals offer to franchise companies, and some are offered at no extra charge. Some of these services even yield the content that you’re encouraging as well.

We offer hosted and recorded telephone interviews with the principals of franchise organizations.

We offer webinars of the same nature where the franchise sales team can educate new prospects about their concept.

Both the above-mentioned interviews yield recorded media (.mp3 files and/or video presentations) that can be placed on the franchise company’s web site and/or linked to in their social media activity such as YouTube, Facebook and even Twitter.

Since I conduct these interviews myself in a kind of “Larry King” style, the content isn’t from a self-indulgent “we’re great” point of view and this adds to the trust factor that you rightly encourage.

We offer email campaigns that reach our lists of entrepreneurship seekers. What you aren’t aware of is that we utilize an enterprise level email tool and the highest level of list cleaning and maintenance that gives our emails a consistent 99% deliverability rate. Recipients of these email blasts can jump directly to the franchisor’s web site and some jump into Google the same way visitors to our web site do.

In addition to the general email deployment, we offer A/B copy testing and subject line testing at no additional charge. Why go to market with ad copy that isn’t the highest yielding? We’ve done this for years for our clients and the results differential between subject lines would astound you.

We actually write copy when requested both for brochures for use on our site as well as the email campaigns.

Once ad or email copy is actually A/B tested by use on our site and in our emails, some of our franchisors will take the resulting optimized copy and use it on their franchise web site. Why use un-optimized copy when you have us to help you determine winning copy?

We also place franchisors’ press releases on our site at no extra cost for additional exposure. Google crawls our site each and every day and has for years. Want to get your press release indexed by Google? Send it to us.

We even have a new advertorial product that creates new content and propels it into the sphere of influence that is well beyond our own web site.

Again, when you do the math, hiring a portal is far less expensive way to get traffic to a franchisor’s web site.

In addition to the many methods that you recommend I respectfully request that you consider further this technology-proven web visitor behavior and how it demonstrates the heretofore unknown additional value of franchise portal advertising.

It is our view that franchise portals and franchisors work together to contribute to the end we’re all seeking, and that of course is more franchises being sold.

After reading that the President was urging Congress to not let the payroll tax cut expire in December I was forced to ask myself “which way is up?”. The payroll tax cut is a reduction in the payroll taxes that employees must pay—it dropped from 6.2% to 4.2% this year. The President stated that if the payroll tax is allowed to increase back to where it was prior to this year that “middle class families are going to hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time.” In thinking through the President’s statement I am stricken with a sense of hermeneutic vertigo.

The 6.2% tax that must be paid by the employee goes to Social Security. Social Security was sold—and still is sold to the American population when convenient—as a savings plan for retirement. If that is the case then how can saving less be seen as a tax reduction and being forced to save more as a tax increase? Linguistic vertigo! The whole debate over whether to increase or decrease the payroll tax puts to the test idea that Social Security contributions reside in some inviolable account. If we can nonchalantly reduce our retirement savings in 2011 by 33% it would appear that the taxes collected by the federal government under the auspices of the 6.2% payroll deduction probably go to fund the federal government. Hmmm, wonder whether that is what FDR had in mind.

Some estimate that reducing the payroll taxes boosted workers take home pay by 120 billion. If that is the case then why not reduce it another 2 percentage points to 2.2% and put another 240 billion in our pockets, Mr. President? I am quite sure that American’s could use another 240 billion right now. Of course, when the time came to increase it back to 6.2%—the rate it has been at since 1990—then we would probably have one of the biggest tax increases in recent history. Once again, our pitiful English language seems incapable of expressing fully how saving more for retirement is a bad thing. Conversely, reducing our federally mandated forced savings rate does not seem the responsible thing to do for our country’s long term fiscal health either. Political vertigo, maybe.

So I am left to look for some coherent writing on our walls. Like an astronaut recently blasted in to space I am struggling to figure which direction is up. If Social Security is simply a tax then I am all for giving Americans a tax break in perpetuity. But if this tax break is actually impacting my savings account then I would like to know what the impact will be to my account. We have been told for years that we did not save enough. Is our Commander-in-Chief now backing away from that sentiment—at least temporarily?

If I agree with the President that we should keep the employee tax reduction in place for another year am I making that determination based on what is good for our country long term or is this truly just a short term placebo for a much larger problem? To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans alike supported the idea of the payroll tax reduction and its proposed extension. But as the leader of our country—which includes our space program– I am hoping for some clear direction from our President on “which way is up” in this debate. The writing I see now on the walls is illogical and incoherent and thus of little help.

Jim Solomon is The Entrepreneur Professor (www.professorjimsolomon.com) and he has an online mentoring program teaching entrepreneurs exactly what to do, and when to do it.

Fran Tarkenton is the former NFL Quarterback with a love for entrepreneurship. Fran’s One More Customer (www.onemorecustomer.com) is an online community for entrepreneurs to gain knowledge about running a business and to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs.

R.E.M. was a pioneering rock and roll band from Athens, Georgia, and last month after more than 30 years together the three original members of the band called it quits. For many of those of us who grew up in the 1980’s we marked time with the release of each R.E.M. album—sometimes I nostalgically look back and re-gather the markers of my youth with a re-listen of the album “ Life’s Rich Pageant” or “Document” or “Out of Time”. So it is with a certain melancholy that I bid adieu to a group that I honestly believe may have been the best rock and roll band of the 1980’s (Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed them as such in 1987). But it is not a sadness that accompanies a sudden loss of a dear friend; no, it is more of an itchy melancholy that presents itself subtly behind the eyes when you learn of the death of person who has been sick for a long time. You know it was coming, and to a great certain extent you had long ago prepared yourself for it, but the finality of it makes you somberly retrospective.

I had prepared myself for the eventual break-up of the band when their original drummer, Bill Berry, left the band in 1997. For those of you unfamiliar with the band, the quartet slimmed down to a trio after Bill Berry left the band. Bill left the band for reasons that were sort of health related, but more for the reason it seems that he just wanted to move on. In all honesty, the preparation for the wake did not really begin until after I listened to their first post Bill Berry record. As soon as I heard that record I knew that something in the body music of R.E.M. had gone missing. Yes, the band went on to make many more records in the intervening time period between Bill’s departure and the band break-up. But none of the music was ever quite as good. Missing was not only the driving percussion that was always so central to R.E.M.’s music. Missing also was something intangibly subtle.

One would not have thought that the departure of a simple drummer could have that type of impact. There are those who still hold fast to the notion that it was not Bill’s departure that led to any demise in the music; but, rather the band followed the path of slow creative decay as the sinews of passion are broken down by the pounding of the soft hammer of success. But one cannot listen to the R.E.M. of the 1980’s—especially the mid-80’s—and not recognize that Bill was more than just a drummer. Peter Buck, R.E.M.’s guitarist, used the pounding snare of Bill’s drums to paint a tapestry of sound with his arpeggios e.g. “Disturbance at the Heron House”. To hear an example of the R.E.M.’s rhythm section at its unique and melodically best listen to “Belong”. In the years after Bill’s departure we also come to learn that he helped write the music for such seminal R.E.M. tunes as “Perfect Circle”, “Can’t Get There From Here” and “Everybody Hurts“. Listen as you may you do not hear Bill or anything approaching Bill post-1997. Which means for me at least, post-1997 you do not hear R.E.M.

R.E.M. organically rose and R.E.M. organically fell. R.E.M. was a business in every sense of the word. It was in the business of making ground-breaking music and it made music that meant business in both the most creative and capitalistic sense. So when a key member of the “management team” left did it not make perfect sense that business would suffer? Why was it not clear to everyone that the business of making R.E.M. music would one day close its doors?

Probably the same reason that most people cannot pin-point the exact moment when an established business passes through middle-age and tunnels slowly headlong into the red dirt of unprofitability. Something changes in the company. Somebody important leaves. That person is then followed by another person. But the wagons are circled and others are brought into shore up the defenses. It really never is the same, however. The creative light that led the business to success is flickering and in jeopardy of being blown out. The only people who really see it are those who do so while walking out the door. Many times those individuals have myriad reasons why they do not give voice to the truth. The truth is immutable in the long run.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the understanding that no matter how clichéd it may be at some point all good things must come to an end—probably more so if the things of which we speak are truly good. Creative destruction is normally reserved to describe certain facets of capitalism. It could easily be used to describe art as well. Kodak slowly dies while Sony rises. R.E.M. called it quits the same year Coldplay passed the 50 million album sold mark. The life cycle of both business and art roll slowly and inexorably down the streets of time.

Bill Berry said upon his departure that he was “ready for a life change”. So if you want to take a stab at predicting the future of a business simply look for the point in time where the “insiders” proclaim that they are “ready for a change” and so begin getting off the cycle. For it is clear by their actions that they believe that they have better things to do. Things like create again.

Creation is the quintessence of entrepreneurship. So we must not be afraid nor look down upon those who leave to find their new life. Those special people among us are the serial entrepreneurs—both in the worrld of art and world of business. These folks create and continue to create. They create jobs; they create wealth; they create memories; and they create happiness–both for themselves and for those who come within their influence. R.EM. is over. But other bands are waiting impatiently to be the markers of time for another yet unborn generation. The same way Sony will one day be eclipsed by some other company started by a yet unborn entrepreneur.

For a franchise development manager, there’s nothing quite as painful than hearing that a previously excited potential buyer has changed his/her mind and decided not to move forward because of some negative comment they found about your franchise offering online.

Regardless of whether these negative comments are false, one-sided, unqualified, originate from a competitor, or are posted by a disgruntled franchisee with an axe to grind, the financial impact can be devastating and be a real morale killer.

As unfair as it may be, just ONE negative comment can cause a prospect to have second thoughts, silently undermining your sales efforts. What’s more, social media can cause negative comments to quickly spread like wildfire and out of control across the internet.

The longer negative comments remain unchecked, the more difficult they become to suppress and the greater the damage they can cause. In some industries, companies have reported losing millions of dollars due to a single negative comment found next to their online listing.

• Use a tool or a service that continually monitors the sentiment related to your domain, your brand and franchise offering.
• Take immediate action to suppress negative comments before they spread out of control across the internet.
• Identify and engage with key influencers.
• Uncover relevant communities, target discussions, and conversations.
• Foster positive word-of-mouth advertising.
• Suppress negative comments and reviews through active engagement and content creation.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 100 million members and growing. While Facebook is viewed as a more casual and fun environment aimed at consumers, LinkedIn is all business – offering you the opportunity to connect with executives, join discussions about franchising, and reach prospects who might otherwise never have considered your offering.

Your LinkedIn presence can help boost prospective buyers’ confidence and streamline the due diligence process as they explore your LinkedIn connections, read endorsements, and discover what you’re saying and what’s being said about you in LinkedIn Groups.

• Set up a personal LinkedIn profile, complete with a professional profile picture and full biography.
• Carefully choose your connections; assume prospective franchisees will browse your connections and judge you by your associations.
• LinkedIn is a professional network so keep all of your communications professional.
• Join and participate in LinkedIn Groups that relate to your industry to demonstrate knowledge, reputation and thought leadership.
• Seek endorsements from professionals with whom you’ve done business.
• List publications that have featured you or your franchise offering.
• Integrate your blog and link to your business Twitter account.

Make sure all of your contact information is up to date and consistentWhile both Facebook and LinkedIn enable you to create groups, LinkedIn rules supreme in business to business use. Creating a LinkedIn Groups specifically for your franchisees promotes thought leadership, creates a thriving community, can help drive website traffic, generate leads and foster advocacy among your franchisees.

• Set up a LinkedIn group.
• Post questions and lead conversations.
• Send weekly messages to group members.
• Manage members and moderate content.
• Create subgroups for specific geographic markets or franchisee levels.

Social media can transform satisfied franchisees into brand advocates, amplify their voice and automate word-of-mouth marketing. Encouraging feedback from franchisees within a social media medium can simplify comment sharing and delivers positive reviews at the precise moment in the discovery process when it matters most.

• Encourage and incentivize positive feedback from existing franchisees via social channels.
• Develop and distribute case studies via social channels to maximize their visibility and reach.
• Encourage franchisees to share your content on their social media channel of choice.
• Single out and highlight your superstars and transform them into brand ambassadors.