Wednesday, September 22
5 POWER SESSIONS AVAILABLE

Come to the conference a day early for these intense power sessions. (Additional registration fees apply.)

9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Power Session I: Franchise CEO Summit -- The Race to Stay Relevant

Boost your Franchise Leadership & Development Conference experience with this intensive and exclusive pre-conference workshop for franchise CEOs and presidents.

Come to the conference a day early for a very important workshop taking place the day before this year's Franchise Leadership & Development Conference in Atlanta. The 3rd annual Franchise CEO Summit provides a very private, high-level, and interactive environment for franchise CEOs to have strategic business conversations that typically wouldn't, or simply couldn't, take place anywhere else.

The Franchise CEO Summit is designed to help you achieve your goal of building a truly great company. This program provides the environment to solve tough issues, exchange ideas, develop best practices, and discover how to respond to make-or-break decisions. Attending Franchise CEOs and Presidents gain a competitive edge by discussing critical issues with peers who are on the same firing line.

The Race to Stay Relevant is the theme of this year's summit. A new breed of CEOs that are also franchisees (or were franchisees) will share how their franchisee experiences significantly impact their leadership styles, company culture and growth strategies.....and how that experience is helping them keep their franchise organizations relevant.

Gain insight from these high-performing and experienced CEOs and Presidents:

  • Gordon Logan, Founder / CEO, Sport Clips Haircuts
  • Ken Hutcheson, President, U.S. Lawns
  • John Metz, Chair / CEO, Hurricane AMT

Through facilitated roundtables of attendee chosen topics, attendees will engage in high-powered discussions focusing on the strategic big picture and aspects of the leadership role often lost in today's fire-fighting atmosphere of most growth companies. Our focus on a customized agenda enables CEOs and Presidents to address real-time, bottom-line issues so the payback is measurable.

This is the perfect forum for sharing intellectual capital and ideas in the face of today's economic challenges. (Attendees will be engaged with non-competing brands.)

Program Leaders:
Therese Thilgen, President, Franchise Update Media Group
Keith Gerson, President & COO, Sopra Brands

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Power Session II: Mastering Franchise Sales

For emerging and experienced development and sales professionals, and a must for new franchise organizations. Are you seeking an accelerated course for closing qualified candidates? How do franchisors sell their first franchises? How can more established franchisors looking to revitalize their recruitment make it happen? How do you deal with hesitant buyers in today's market? Do you want to avoid costly selling mistakes that scare buyers away?

This interactive session addresses the basic "how to's" of constructing a franchise development program. The workshop embraces the fundamentals of franchise recruitment necessary for any growing franchise system -- from new sales to resales.

Our session leaders will share the keys to building successful franchise growth. Franchise recruitment is a counter-intuitive selling process, and adapting to this reality is essential. Discover the success keys for the initial prospect contact and pre-qualification, program review, franchisee validation, FDD presentation, Discovery Day event, and granting of your franchise. Learn powerful relationship-building techniques and utilize closing methods that begin with your first conversation.

Program Leader: Joe Mathews, Founding Partner, Franchise Performance Group
Panel:
Art Coley, Vice President Global Development, AlphaGraphics Inc.

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Power Session III: Create a Compelling Response-Driven Website

Your recruitment website is the most important marketing tool ever developed in franchising. All roads lead to your site, and it must be number one or two in your competitive category or you will lose prospects to other concepts. How well you design, build and script your recruitment website will determine the performance of your online lead generation. You may excel in driving visitors to your website, but if you can't convince them to respond, you'll lose the prospecting game to your competitors.

This workshop explores how communication, design and direct response techniques help franchisors generate more visitors into qualified candidates. You'll learn how content, navigation and monitoring site performance can impact your recruiting success. Ground-breaking research of over 400 recruitment web sites will be shared that reveals how you can design a step-by-step roadmap that can increase prospect leads and reduce site abandonment.

Discover what rates the average and top-producing sites are experiencing with their conversions of site visitors to leads; and the conversions of visitors who view your request forms that actually submit them. This is a “must attend” for development executives seeking real answers to improve their web site recruitment!

Program Leader: Brian Spindel, President / COO, PostNet International Corporation
Panel:
Rob Goggins, Vice President of Franchise Development, Great Clips
Boris Bugarski, CEO / President, mUrgent

1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Power Session IV: Achieving High-Performance Sales Management

Senior Executives and Sales Managers Only. In an uncertain economy, sales organizations may be tempted to tighten up spending, reduce training costs and implement a hiring freeze. How do you maintain sales success regardless of economic conditions? How do franchise organizations and individuals develop comprehensive deal strategies to conquer today's complex sales environment? This dynamic workshop tackles these key challenges that must be overcome to achieve successful development. Discussions will focus on the nuts and bolts of engineering a winning recruitment process that ensures a higher level of professionalism, facilitates effective sales management, and dramatically increases the odds of capturing the right franchisees. Learn how top performing sales teams are applying new concepts and tools to close performance gaps in their companies. Workshop leaders will address how to identify and manage, in real-time, the variables that directly impact the development process. This includes employing technology intelligence to help identify, monitor and correct performance challenges in your sales and marketing efforts, and establishing milestones and metrics to guide you and your team in achieving your development goals.

Program Leader: Marc Kiekenapp, Principal, Kiekenapp & Associates
Panel:
Mike Hawkins, Vice President of Franchise Development, The Dwyer Group
John Wuycheck, Vice President of Franchise Development, Seattle's Best Coffee
Steve Dunn, Vice President of Franchise Development, Denny's

1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Power Session V: Interactive Legal Program -- the Law, Business Strategies and Franchise Sales

Some of the most respected legal and business professionals in franchising will challenge you to look at your franchise system in ways you may not have considered! This is your opportunity to get legal answers and insights to top issues that impact your franchise development efforts:

  • Franchise Marketing and other Promotional Claims - Where are the edges of the envelope?
  • Brokers – What to look for in a broker agreement? Ensuring your interests are in alignment with those of your brokers?
  • Territorial rights - What are the trends and what are your options?
  • Encroachment and Impact Polices – Should you consider them and do they work?
  • Franchisees are not all the same – Should you consider having differing rights, obligations and fees for different classes of franchisees?
  • Financial Performance Representation – Why they may be essential and why you may still want to avoid them?
  • Costs and other non-FDD information – What you can say that is not in the FDD?
  • Discovery Day – Are their risks and opportunities you may not have considered?
  • E-Disclosure – It’s legal and it’s cheap. But, is it a good idea?
  • Controlling quality, brand performance and price – Are their limits to the rights you should retain?
  • Validation – How can or should you deal with franchisees that bad-mouth your system and your performance?
  • Helping your franchisees to retire – What can you do to help franchisees exit your franchise system.

Program Leader: Michael Seid, Managing Partner, Michael H. Seid & Associates
Panel:
Kerry Olson, Vice President - Legal, International Dairy Queen
Brian Schnell, Partner, Faegre & Benson