Reduce your Marketing Expenses - Use Training!
© Copyright Frank D. Kanu 2000-2008
From my dear friend, buddy and co-author (watch this space when we announce our book in a few weeks!) Coleen Davis:
Training and marketing activities need to be integrated if you want to use training as a marketing resource. Marketing’s central objective is to provide value to customers. Most companies do not coordinate their marketing initiatives and training efforts. Would you like to minimize your return on investment? That can happen unless you coordinate your marketing and training efforts. When you coordinate these efforts, you can transform training from an afterthought into your most strategic marketing resource.
The four questions to consider surrounding this transition are:
You should never change your business processes without a compelling business reason for making the change. Experience shows that training should be treated as a marketing resource for any strategic initiative. Failure to treat training as a marketing resource jeopardizes the success of strategic initiatives.
There are many benefits to treating training as a marketing resource. At the strategic level, it increases the likelihood that the project will achieve the goals of the strategic initiative. At a more tactical level, treating training as a strategic marketing resource allows organizations to:
The starting point should be deciding what training would be included in our marketing program. You have many choices. At the two extremes, you could decide that only direct customer training will be part of your marketing strategy or that all training will be part of your marketing strategy. Most likely, neither of these approaches is appropriate. Instead, the most appropriate response is probably somewhere between the two. At a minimum, training associated with new products should be included in your marketing strategy and treated as a marketing resource. Product training is closely linked with the products you sell. The products you sell deliver value to your customer. Doesn’t marketing exist to develop, deliver, and manage your company’s value to your customers?
Once you decide what training is part of your marketing strategy, you must then decide how to use training in your marketing strategy. The training component should be fully integrated with the other components of your marketing strategy. In some cases, you may decide to provide product overviews to actual and potential customers. In other cases, it could be appropriate to offer customers and/or potential customers with comprehensive web-based training. A third option is to create a blog site where customers can exchange information with each other and your employees. The only limits you must contend with are those imposed by your creativity and resources.
The use of training in your marketing strategy may be product specific or comprehensive. In either case, experience shows that you have to give your employees guidance. Otherwise, they struggle to define the criteria for themselves and you risk inconsistent results and inappropriate allocation of resources. Inconsistency confuses your employees, your suppliers, your customers, and your resale partners. Inappropriate allocation of resources impacts your shareholders.
Now that you have defined the role of training and decided how training will be used as part of our marketing approach, you need to implement the decision. Implementation must occur on a case-by-case basis. Have you heard the phrase that “we didn’t have time to do it right so we are taking the time to do it over”? As it relates to training design and development, this situation arises on a frequent basis. You can minimize this risk by incorporating training issues into your overall project plan from the ideation stage of the project. How do we do this?
The starting point is to focus on what matters to your customer. How many times have you seen training that focuses on the features of the new product? How many times have you been told to sell based on benefits, rather than features? Why not make this easy for your employees by emphasizing the benefits in developing the training? Your customers don’t care about response time or error rates in a vacuum. Your customers care about reducing cost, increasing efficiency, and meeting their customer’s needs. If you align your training with your customers’ bottom line, it increases your efficiency, improves your employees’ effectiveness, and increases your value to your customers exponentially.
To develop training that relates to benefits, you have to ask and answer a variety of questions. You have to start by understanding the benefits and identifying approaches that maximize those benefits. It seems to me that the training associated with launches of a new product should address questions like:
Experience shows that marketing plans do not address these questions. These questions are merely the starting point. After answering these and other initial questions, you progress to the next phase of your training development. In this phase, you need to start thinking about the training program from a tactical perspective. You should answer questions such as:
After answering these questions, you are now ready for the first time to start defining the components of the training program and the actual classes themselves. Here to, there is a series of questions that you will need to answer. Your question include the following items:
Through an iterative process, you break down the vision of treating training as a marketing resource into progressively smaller pieces of information. Questions are your tool for achieving this result.
At this point, you understand the benefits of using training as a marketing resource, how to begin using training as a marketing program, and how to plan training programs. You will probably need to rely on suppliers to create some of your training. There are many issues that can arise when suppliers are engaged to create training. In concluding, I would like to share with you as the four most important steps from a contracting perspective. The steps are:
From my dear friend, buddy and co-author (watch this space when we announce our book in a few weeks!) Coleen Davis:
Training and marketing activities need to be integrated if you want to use training as a marketing resource. Marketing’s central objective is to provide value to customers. Most companies do not coordinate their marketing initiatives and training efforts. Would you like to minimize your return on investment? That can happen unless you coordinate your marketing and training efforts. When you coordinate these efforts, you can transform training from an afterthought into your most strategic marketing resource.
The four questions to consider surrounding this transition are:
- What are the benefits of treating training as a marketing resource?
- How do we begin treating training as a marketing resource?
- How should we plan projects in order for training to be a marketing resource?
- What contract issues should we take into consideration?
What are the benefits of treating training as a marketing resource?
You should never change your business processes without a compelling business reason for making the change. Experience shows that training should be treated as a marketing resource for any strategic initiative. Failure to treat training as a marketing resource jeopardizes the success of strategic initiatives.
There are many benefits to treating training as a marketing resource. At the strategic level, it increases the likelihood that the project will achieve the goals of the strategic initiative. At a more tactical level, treating training as a strategic marketing resource allows organizations to:
- Develop training that is more effective and more appropriate by engaging training professionals.
- Create more accurate budgets for new products or initiatives so that you can make better “go/no go” decisions.
- Reduce the risk that training development will jeopardize the project timeline.
- Work together so that duplication of effort between training and marketing personnel is eliminated.
How do we begin treating training as a marketing resource?
The starting point should be deciding what training would be included in our marketing program. You have many choices. At the two extremes, you could decide that only direct customer training will be part of your marketing strategy or that all training will be part of your marketing strategy. Most likely, neither of these approaches is appropriate. Instead, the most appropriate response is probably somewhere between the two. At a minimum, training associated with new products should be included in your marketing strategy and treated as a marketing resource. Product training is closely linked with the products you sell. The products you sell deliver value to your customer. Doesn’t marketing exist to develop, deliver, and manage your company’s value to your customers?
Once you decide what training is part of your marketing strategy, you must then decide how to use training in your marketing strategy. The training component should be fully integrated with the other components of your marketing strategy. In some cases, you may decide to provide product overviews to actual and potential customers. In other cases, it could be appropriate to offer customers and/or potential customers with comprehensive web-based training. A third option is to create a blog site where customers can exchange information with each other and your employees. The only limits you must contend with are those imposed by your creativity and resources.
The use of training in your marketing strategy may be product specific or comprehensive. In either case, experience shows that you have to give your employees guidance. Otherwise, they struggle to define the criteria for themselves and you risk inconsistent results and inappropriate allocation of resources. Inconsistency confuses your employees, your suppliers, your customers, and your resale partners. Inappropriate allocation of resources impacts your shareholders.
How should you plan your acquistion?
Now that you have defined the role of training and decided how training will be used as part of our marketing approach, you need to implement the decision. Implementation must occur on a case-by-case basis. Have you heard the phrase that “we didn’t have time to do it right so we are taking the time to do it over”? As it relates to training design and development, this situation arises on a frequent basis. You can minimize this risk by incorporating training issues into your overall project plan from the ideation stage of the project. How do we do this?
The starting point is to focus on what matters to your customer. How many times have you seen training that focuses on the features of the new product? How many times have you been told to sell based on benefits, rather than features? Why not make this easy for your employees by emphasizing the benefits in developing the training? Your customers don’t care about response time or error rates in a vacuum. Your customers care about reducing cost, increasing efficiency, and meeting their customer’s needs. If you align your training with your customers’ bottom line, it increases your efficiency, improves your employees’ effectiveness, and increases your value to your customers exponentially.
To develop training that relates to benefits, you have to ask and answer a variety of questions. You have to start by understanding the benefits and identifying approaches that maximize those benefits. It seems to me that the training associated with launches of a new product should address questions like:
- What are the benefits associated with the new product?
- Which customers will value the benefits of the new product?
- What implementation issues should you anticipate with each customer?
- How can you set everyone (your company, your customers, your resellers, and even your suppliers) up for success throughout each project?
- How can you meet your customers’ support needs in a timely and cost effective manner?
- What does each employee group need to know about the new product?
- What do your customers and resellers need to know about the new product?
Experience shows that marketing plans do not address these questions. These questions are merely the starting point. After answering these and other initial questions, you progress to the next phase of your training development. In this phase, you need to start thinking about the training program from a tactical perspective. You should answer questions such as:
- What is your vision for the training program?
- What are your business objectives and critical success factors for the training program?
- What are the parameters and constraints surrounding the training program?
- What constitutes a successful training program?
- How will you evaluate the success of the training program?
- What are your priorities regarding the training program?
- What are your organization’s best practices regarding similar training programs?
After answering these questions, you are now ready for the first time to start defining the components of the training program and the actual classes themselves. Here to, there is a series of questions that you will need to answer. Your question include the following items:
- Who are the target audiences for your training program?
- What are the learning objectives for each target audience?
- How will you decide if the learning objectives have been satisfied for each target audience?
- What does a successful training outcome look like for each target audience?
- What are the elements of your training program?
- How will you evaluate the adequacy of the training program?
- What constraints will apply to your training program and each element of the program?
Through an iterative process, you break down the vision of treating training as a marketing resource into progressively smaller pieces of information. Questions are your tool for achieving this result.
Contract issues impacting the use of training as a marketing resource
At this point, you understand the benefits of using training as a marketing resource, how to begin using training as a marketing program, and how to plan training programs. You will probably need to rely on suppliers to create some of your training. There are many issues that can arise when suppliers are engaged to create training. In concluding, I would like to share with you as the four most important steps from a contracting perspective. The steps are:
- Have the contract reviewed by your attorneys - before you sign it. A bad deal can be much worse than no deal.
- Delay the development of training to commence until a contract has been executed.
- If you engage someone to create training materials for you for a fee, insist on owning the materials outright. This minimizes the risk of that your competitors will have virtually identical training in short order.
- Make certain that you have the right to make derivative works from the material. As your product and your business evolve, the training needs to change. If you do not have the right to make derivative works, you must rely on the supplier to modify the materials.
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