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• MPA Online

Smartline, voted as the number one franchise in the country for a second time by topfranchise.com.au, is hoping its success will help boost recruitment over the next couple years.

In addition to ranking first overall, the franchise was also ranked number one in three categories: support, rewards, and refer. It was ranked fourth in passion and third in lifestyle categories by franchisees. 

"Smartline outperformed the industry average in the area of mentoring by 24%. Exploring a bit deeper with Smartline's management we found that a key contributor to their success in mentoring was that their field support staff undertook dedicated training programs to specifically enhance their coaching skills," said Ian Krawitz, head of intelligence at topfranchise.com.au.

Smartline managing director Chris Acret says his model gives franchisees the best of all worlds.

"We have invested huge sums of money over the years in putting infrastructure in place - in consultation with our franchisees - which has allowed us to highly systemise the business. This provides considerable time savings for the franchisees and makes the business much more efficient, which allows them to focus on building relationships and servicing their clients."

Smartline has more than 200 franchise owners throughout Australia, has assisted over 100,000 clients and has a loan portfolio exceeding $10 bn.

Acret said the group was looking to grow its franchise numbers in 2010, with the goal of having a total of 300 high-quality franchisees within the next few years.

More than 170 franchise systems were given the opportunity for their franchisees to take part in the survey across Australia by research company 10 THOUSAND FEET.

Each franchisee was asked to rank their business with a comparison of more than 35 questions about their franchise system.

Franchise systems in a range of industries were included in the survey.

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