When you enter partnerships with other businesses with the goal of extending the reach of your products, it is in your best interests to look beyond improving your in-house team and towards supporting the improvement of your channel partners.
A recent study from the 2112 Group found that “62% of high performers have some form of ongoing partner enablement in place for multiple partner personas.”
If you help your channel partners meet their goals, you actively increase the chances of meeting your own business goals.
One of the best ways to aid in the success of your channel partners is to supply them with a training program with specific courses focused on their business.
This article will explain how external sales of training courses benefit your company, with a step-by-step guide on how to do it successfully.
Benefits of Selling Your Courses Externally
There are several advantages to selling your courses externally:
Build stronger relationships with your Partners
Investing in your talent pool pays dividends for your business, and it will do the same for your Partners. When they see that you are just as invested in their success, they will put even more stock into your partnership.
An added bonus is that you can also gain feedback on your courses from a different group of workers, which you can then use to improve your training materials.
Streamlines the partnership and make it more cost-efficient
By supplying your Partners with your company’s learning courses, you are providing information that helps them better understand the nature of your business and the products that you are selling. You also reduce their need for technical support from your end that would otherwise eat up your own resources.
To make the partnership even more cost-efficient, deliver your training materials through an eLearning platform. A Learning Management System (LMS) your channel partners can access will be much less expensive than face-to-face classroom-based training sessions.
Generates more revenue
Selling your courses generates more revenue in a number of ways:
- From studying your training materials, your partners improve their performances. Subsequently, they do a better job of selling your products.
- Another consequence of your partners finding positive results from your learning courses is that they are more likely to recommend them to other businesses. That means more potential Partners for you.
- When you sell courses to your partners, you are reaching a vastly larger audience than trying to sell to individuals in a much less resource-intensive way.
Elevates your status as an authority in the field
Effective training courses with your branding become powerful marketing materials. When your professional network talks about the value of your educational resources in their own circles, you gain a reputation in your industry as an authority. Don’t be surprised when thought leaders and other business owners start contacting you for potential partnerships.
Scales your business
Once you have already sold your training courses and received feedback from your partners, your focus shifts to refining your courses. Apply what you have learned to make onboarding new Partners much more efficient. Scaling becomes simpler when your process has been optimised.
Step-by-Step Guide to Successfully Selling your Training Courses
With global revenue for online training courses set to exceed $275 billion in 2022, positioning your business now as a trusted seller would be prudent. Accomplishing this is no easy feat, as there is considerable research, marketing, and post-sales work that needs to be done.
Offer courses that solve your Partners’ problems
A good starting mindset to have is to consider your partners’ problems as your own. Write down those who you believe would find your training courses valuable. From that list, cross-reference it with your current courses to see which ones match the needs of the partners you can help. The number one factor should be how beneficial the courses would be to their success.
While you may work in the same industry and have similar goals, it’s not always the case that your people have the exact same training needs. Do additional research to ensure you don’t end up selling educational material your partners have no use for.
Validate demand
As good as your research might be, you can never be 100% sure that your courses will sell. Pre-sell a course to a select number of businesses that you think are more likely to take what you are offering before you start a full-blown campaign. You can generate income before your official launch and see if there’s enough demand to support this new endeavour.
If pre-selling is successful, you can transition into selling a pilot version that is available to more of your partners you didn’t consider before. Use this opportunity to fine-tune your training courses even further and potentially create new and improved courses.
Work with a reliable eLearning platform
Streamline your training course sales process with the help of an established LMS. A quality LMS that is designed for external or commercial training has an intuitive design that is easy for users to understand and can smoothly integrate with your CRM or marketing automation software. With such features in mind, course delivery to your channel partners can be hassle-free.
ELearning platforms also let you plug in your own KPIs and come with analytics and reporting features. You and your Partners can monitor performance, and that data alone can prove valuable to tweaking courses.
Market your courses
Come up with a marketing plan that speaks to the people in charge of corporate training and shows how your courses will benefit their companies. Approach this like you would a marketing campaign to customers.
You should also deploy your marketing team to create an outreach strategy. Don’t forget to take testimonials from your pre-sold and pilot courses to emphasise their effectiveness.
Beef up your after-sales service
Customer retention is key to profitability, with as little as a 5% increase leading to a 25% to 95% increase in profits. Reduce troubleshooting your training courses with your Partners so you can keep them as customers. Create a clear and comprehensive guide tackling frequently asked questions that they can use.
When you provide good after-sales service, expect glowing testimonials. You can then use positive reviews to further improve marketing to prospects. You can even use your LMS to get valuable feedback through quizzes and surveys.
Reward compliance
Achieving 100% compliance with your training courses should be rewarded. This is to incentivise your Channel Partners to fully engage with and learn from the courses you sell. The higher the completion rate, the greater the chances your partners will perform better at selling your product.
Award them with formal certifications and digital badges that your partners can proudly display. Special prizes such as giveaways and discounts can be even more motivating. Include a module in your training course that explains your incentive program to ensure your partners and their employees are aware.
Anticipate challenges and prepare for them
Part of your plan to sell training courses should include potential roadblocks.
For one, you don’t have direct control over the employees of your Channel Partners, and they may not recognise the importance of your training courses. Integrate your company’s mission, vision, and values into the courses, and make that part mandatory when your Partners participate.
Your Partners might also fall into complacency after a long period of working with you. Update and reorganise your training courses when necessary so they remain informed and continue learning.
There’s also the chance your Channel Partners have other businesses that they provide services for. Juggling multiple methodologies can lead them to put less focus on your business, resulting in poorer performance. Help them maintain the standards you agreed on with your LMS monitoring features.
Monetise Your Training Courses
Your Channel Partners and training courses are two key resources you can leverage to maximise your profits, especially when you synergise both. Spend on the improvement of your learning materials with your business partnerships’ long-term success in mind, and reap even greater returns in the future.
Are you looking to transform your partner training program but struggling to manage the complexities of designing and delivering it? With Wahoo Learning, you can deliver effective training programs to your channel partners, while reducing costs and boosting revenue.
Learn all about it by reading: Everything You Need to Know About Our Managed Learning Services
