It’s that time of year again, time to review the previous six months: what went well and what can be done better for the next half? For anyone working in education, this time of year may signify the time to wind down. However, it also provides a great opportunity for reflection before the summer ends and the chaos of the new academic year begins.
Alternatively, if like several of our clients your key business is short courses and Continuous Professional Development it may be that unlike the academic faculties, summer is peak business time.
And for those businesses who have reached the mid-point in their business year, are you taking time to reflect? Are your courses overflowing or under filled? What have you done differently in 2015 or is it time to change up your processes? How do you measure success and are you doing it at all?
For businesses currently using a training management system to automate processes, it should be a fairly simple task to analyse this information and use it to make business improvements. Without one, this may be an extremely laborious and difficult task or not done at all which significantly reduces competitive advantage year on year.
The amount of delegates registering for and attending your courses is a key measure of success for any training business, and course viability even more so. What is the point in filling a course if you are only just breaking even?
Automation supports course viability in so many ways. With online course booking, delegates book in real time so courses cannot be overfilled. This has the added advantage of early alerts which enable you to set up new course dates or consolidate existing ones depending on course numbers.
Additionally, ensuring that you have a system with the capacity to report on viability allows you to see at any time course numbers against overheads including trainer, venue, travel and equipment costs.
Make sure that you are finding out how your courses impact delegates further down the line by embracing automation to schedule follow up evaluation surveys. This will allow you to investigate not just the immediate course deliverables (how a happy sheet is used) including venue, content and trainer, but more importantly how the content matches the delegate’s needs over a period of time.
It is all well and good that the learner enjoyed the course but if they don’t remember what was covered 3 months down the line will their employer really be interested in sending them on another course?
Find out more by reading this article on The Importance Of Feedback In Training Companies.
We live in a world of the Amazon experience where we now expect to be offered additional products prior, during and post purchase. So why should training be any different? Surely learning has no boundaries! However, as a customer you would probably be keen to undertake one course before committing to others which is where more subtle sales techniques come in.
Upselling is the ideal tactic here, it can take the form of offers on the bottom of surveys, or vouchers for loyalty and targeted promotional emails using information you have gathered throughout the sales process. Automation offers multiple ways to subtly increase sales.
So what can you do to ensure that your next 6 months are even more successful than your last?
Looking for a course management software solution to allow you to do all of this and more? Book a demo with accessplanit today.
Other related articles include:
4 Tips For Effective Online Surveys
How Automated Training Evaluations Gain Meaningful Feedback
Reducing Risks In Training Course Automation
How Your Business Goals Drive Success In Your Company