More often than not, creating, maintaining and delivering successful training programmes comes with budgetary challenges. In our experience, the cost attached to producing valuable content is often overlooked or grossly underestimated.
But, many businesses that offer training don’t contemplate the value that high-quality training content holds to the learner. When training content is created, marketed and sold correctly, it’s possible to offset the cost of the programme.
In this blog, we explain what factors you need to take into account when budgeting for a training programme, and how it’s possible to generate an ongoing revenue stream by selling your courses.
When Allocating a Budget For Your Training Programme, What Should You Include?
The cost of producing training content
The quality of training material must be paid attention to. Learners will only be happy to pay a premium for content that they see value in. Content needs to be continually refreshed, with new updates and changes constantly communicated.
The cost of the LMS
Correct and comparable pricing cannot be provided unless you know your exact requirements. First things first, work with your shortlist of LMS vendors to develop an RFP (request for proposal) document. That should ensure that you’ve covered all bases with your requirements.
The cost of administering and managing the training programme
To gain the highest return on investment, your training programme must be managed and optimised effectively. Training programmes are not set and forget. Tweaks and updates will always be necessary to keep it meeting its objectives and those of your learners.
What Other Costs Do You Need To Look At?
An effective training programme that continually meets its objectives and learner needs isn’t just about the learning platform itself. Before developing the programme, ongoing management and keeping content fresh and up to date must be considered.
In the initial stages, there are some important questions to ask yourself:
- Do we have a team in place to support and manage the training programme in-house?
- How will we create high-quality, value learning content?
- Is there a budget available to employ design, administration and support teams?
- How will you manage additional teams?
- If training is not your speciality, do you have the knowledge to hire the right people?
Will My Channel Pay For Training?
If you understand the benefits of a training programme but need to run it with a minimal budget, you need to recognise that your training has value to your partners and then sell that value to them.
Good partners will recognise that training is a key element of a successful partnership. The more knowledge they have, the more effective they will be at selling your products. This, of course, benefits both parties.
Once your partners fully understand the benefits your training programme brings to them and how it will help them reach their goals, they will most likely be happy to pay for it. Training is a cost that partners are willing to take on as long as the outlay is considered to be fair and they are gaining value.
Related resource: How to sell your training courses to channel partners
To help motivate your partners to purchase courses, you can build incentive programmes. For example, you can offer bulk buy discounts or other discounts relating to partner tiers and statuses.
Of course, one of the most valuable assets of a training programme is certification. A well-structured certification scheme recognises the effort that people put in, builds a level of competition between partners and offers additional opportunities for promotion. For your organisation, certification offers end-users confidence and trust in your brand.
The cost of training that you pass on to your partner doesn’t have to be great. If you utilise economies of scale, training costs can be kept low while still offsetting the cost of the overall programme without requiring internal resources and expertise.
How and Why Monetising Your Training Works
When something is paid for, whether it’s training courses or the latest tech, people tend to see it as holding more value. If a partner has paid for a course, they are also more likely to engage more fully with it and completion rates will be higher.
Partners will also see value in having access to constantly updated training material and the ability to keep their knowledge fresh and up to date.
For your training to give the best value to your partners, you should make sure you offer:
- Knowledge that they can’t find elsewhere
- A competitive advantage
- Relevant material for their particular role in the network
- Relevant material to localised markets
What To Have In Place To Ensure Courses Can Be Sold
To ensure your courses can be marketed and sold effectively, you need high-quality, valuable training content that’s delivered on an LMS (with an integrated shop function, giving partners the confidence to buy online). It’s also important to have support available to optimise your programme, raise invoices and deal with customer queries.
How to manage the process
As part of our Managed Learning Service, we offer our customers a full eCommerce management service that covers the entire course sales process.
By allowing us to work on your behalf, you can be confident that your learners are receiving the highest level of quality and service, without the need to use any internal time or resources.
Without this service, sales opportunities could be missed, the programme won’t be optimised for sales and, without support, learners will lose confidence in your brand.
Our LMS offers:
- Simple booking management
- Secure payment gateway
- Fully integrated shop with no redirects
- Flexible discount or subscription functionality
- A clear, integrated catalogue
As part of our managed learning services, we offer:
- Management of discount and subscription promos
- Course design
- Learner support for course choice and booking
- Processing payments and refunds where necessary
- Invoicing
- Regular revenue reports
Summary
Running and managing a training programme with a limited budget is possible if you:
- Understand the value of your training
- Ensure your training content is high-quality
- Continually communicate the value to your audience
- Ensure your courses offer high-value
- Have the right LMS and support infrastructure in place
By monetising your training programme, you create the opportunity for your programme to become self-funded and even turn a profit.
By outsourcing the leg work to us and working closely with us to launch and promote it effectively, you give your organisation the best chance at becoming a trusted training provider.
Talk to us about how our specialist services can help your business create a revenue-generating training programme. Book a chat with our experts now.
