Estimated reading time: 3-5minutes
“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”
– Chinese proverb
1) Your location is preventing growth
Scenario:
Let’s put yourself in your potential Client’s shoes. They receive your email campaign for an excellent course that you are providing. Said course is going to be offered for 2 days in New York.
Potential Downfalls:
- Your Client lives in California, and would have to fly across the country to attend your course.
- Your Client would then need to book a hotel or Airbnb for 2 – 3 days.
- Your Client may have an uncomfortable experience trying to attend your course by sitting in traffic or worse, missing a public transport connection because they’re not familiar with the city routes.
If travelling and hotel rooms aren’t expensive enough, they will still need to ask their boss if they can get these costs covered (on top of your course price). To top things off, they still need approval for a few days off work.
Solution?
1) Have multi-location offices
- This is an expensive investment initially with high rental overheads, but may be feasible depending on the type of training you provide.
2) Travel to your Client
- This may be time consuming and reverses the issues mentioned above, but if you enjoy jet-setting, this may be feasible for you.
3) Take your courses online through a quality Learning Management System
- This is certainly the least expensive solution which offers sustainable growth for your business
- Learning Management Systems are online and break down the barriers of travel for your Clients
- Your Clients can attend your courses from anywhere in the world offering you wider audiences for business
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2) Clients have to put their work on hold to attend your courses
Time is money and when your Client’s boss knows they aren’t in the office, revenue is being lost.
Sounds harsh right? But it’s true.
Decision makers (or at least good ones) always consider ROI (Return On Investment). There are a number of consideration questions which will go through the boss’s mind when your potential Client asks to attend one of your courses.
The boss’s considerations:
- How much time off work does your Client need?
- How much revenue will the company lose as a result?
- How much will the course cost?
- What other lateral costs are there? Flights? Hotels? Pocket money?
- Is this course relevant and truly beneficial?
- Will your Client come back with more energy and knowledge?
The list goes on, but these ultimately form barriers to the boss saying “YES” for your Client to your course.
Solutions?
1) Go to your Client’s offices
- This may be time consuming and reverses the issues mentioned above, but it does provide a more convenient solution for your Clients if you go to them
2) Offer weekend courses
- This may become stressful in the long run with employment expenses and generally a lack of rest if you’re operating 7 days a week, but at least it allows your busy Clients to learn with you outside of their work schedule
3) Take your training online through a Learning Management System
- Online learning provides extreme flexibility to your Clients as they can turn on their computer at anytime in order to access your course material
- Good Learning Management Systems are also mobile friendly making it even easier for your Clients to access your course material on the go
- Learning Management Systems also help your Clients bosses say “YES” as it eliminates travel and accommodation costs
- …and if it’s in your Client’s own time, they won’t need approval to get off work
3) Your course times are not flexible enough
Dates
If you provide in-person training, you would need to do some extensive research into which dates would suit the greatest population of your local area or city.
Are there public holidays? Is your course relevant throughout the year? When is your target industry most busy? Does your course accreditation work on timed cycles?
Time
Depending on your course structure, in a given day, you would presumably have a set structure in place.
Perhaps you offer a brilliant course which requires the following:
- 4 hours of lectures from 8:00-12:00
- 1 hour tea and lunch from 12:00-13:00
- 2 hours of Q&A from 13:00-15:00
- 1 hour test from 15:00-16:00
Regardless of all your research, questionnaires, investments and feasibility studies, the bottom line is that your potential Clients need to conform to your dates and times.
How many people aren’t able to attend your courses because they’re too busy?
Solutions?
1) Create more event dates and repeat sessions
- This may provide your Clients with more dates to choose from, but you’ll need more dedicated staff to keep up with the added demand
2) Offer weekend courses
- As mentioned in Challenge 2 above, this may become stressful with employment expenses and a lack of rest, but at least it allows your busy Clients to learn with you on weekends
3) Take your training online through a Learning Management System
- Online learning provides extreme flexibility to your Clients’ calendars as they can access your course from anywhere, at anytime
- Learning Management Systems also relieves you from more working hours as you don’t need to hire staff for every time you host a course on a given day
- A good online learning platform will also run on autopilot, automating all your tasks, giving you the freedom to focus on your business
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4) Clients forget what they learned in your classes
That awkward moment when your Client returns back to their day job and colleagues ask them what they learned, and the answer is:
“So much! It was a great course, but there was just too much information to absorb in 2 days.”
This is really a lose-lose…
Clients want to leave your course or program feeling like their money was well invested, and that they’re taking a heap of knowledge away with them. When they share their experience with others, you want them to make positive recommendations so that more people would seek interest in your courses.
Unfortunately 1 or 2 day short courses don’t allow for sustainable learning environments. While your Clients may walk away with some knowledge gain, CPD points or accreditation with a certificate, chances are they’ll forget most of your valuable content.
Solutions?
1) Offer printed course handouts when they leave your course (#not#tree#friendly)
- This will provide your Clients with something they can go back to if they want to recap on your material
- It will also allow for them to remember you as a training provider for the duration that they retain your notes
2) Create a space which offers your Clients the ability to get back in touch with you if they have questions
- A simple thing would be giving them your contact details (phone number and email)
- Or refer them to your website’s online Q&A forum if you have one to handle large amounts of queries
3) Upload your course material onto a secure Learning Management System
- Your course attendees can have their own profile and can access your course material securely and remotely whenever they need it
- This system will also help you keep record of your course attendees so that you can offer them special offers in the future to attend more of your courses
- It also creates better online presents and increases your ranking on Google
5) Clients want convenient and user friendly blended learning
What is blended Learning?
Blended learning is a style of education which offers online as well as face-to-face teaching.
In today’s society, we’re constantly on the move and technology is making it easier for us to connect with people remotely. Blended learning certainly doesn’t mean you need to stop personal face-to-face interactions with people, but rather it presents you with more opportunities to connect with people all over the world. Remember the days before Facebook and Instagram? Remember how difficult it was to contact someone in another country? Not anymore right? In the same light, technology also allows us to teach anyone in the world allowing them access to your skill set and expertise.
What does blended learning offer your Clients?
It allows your business to reach more people remotely through online technology while still maintaining face-to-face relationships with your current training model.
Blended learning eliminates Challenges 1 – 4 above:
- Location and travel – Your Clients won’t need to incur additional expenses to attend your course
- Work constraints – Your Clients don’t need to miss work to attend your courses anymore
- Time and flexibility – Your Clients are offered on-demand courses through your Learning Management System
- Information retention – Your Clients can now retain the benefits from attending your courses by having access to your material online
Some things you can do:
- Continue to teach your existing Clients through your existing model
- Sell online courses to potential Clients who would otherwise not attend your in-person courses
- Let your Learning Management System automate marking and recording of user data and grades
- Offer your users a platform which allows them to access your course material when the leave
- Record your existing sessions so that you can upload video content online and create courses on the go
In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones.
(Source: Statista)
So with the world of technology growing, what will this mean for traditional education? Times are changing, and we want you to be ready for the next generation of learning.