Grow Your Training Business

What Training Business Owners Can Learn from Steve Jobs

Many people have explained what one can learn from Steve Jobs. But few, if any, of these people have been inside the tent and experienced first hand what it was like to work with him. Guy Kawasaki worked closely with Steve and in the article below shares his list of the top 12 lessons he learned from Steve Jobs.

There is a LOT of insight here that is directly relevant to every owner of an independent corporate trianing business.

1. Experts are clueless
Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong with your product, but they cannot make a great one. They can tell you how to sell something, but they cannot sell it themselves. They can tell you how to create great teams, but they only manage a secretary. For example, the experts told us that the two biggest shortcomings of Macintosh in the mid 1980s were the lack of a daisy-wheel printer driver and Lotus 1-2-3; another advice gem from the experts was to buy Compaq. Hear what experts say, but don’t always listen to them.

2. Customers often cannot tell you what they need
“Apple market research” is an oxymoron. The Apple focus group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the left one. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you, “Better, faster, and cheaper”—that is, better sameness, not revolutionary change. They can describe their desires only in terms of what they are already using—around the time of the introduction of Macintosh, all that people said they wanted was a better, faster, and cheaper MS-DOS machine. The richest vein for tech startups is creating the product that you want to use—that’s what Steve and Woz did.

3. Jump to the next curve
Big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness. The best daisy-wheel printer companies were introducing new fonts in more sizes. Apple introduced the next curve: laser printing. Think of ice harvesters, ice factories, and refrigerator companies. Ice 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice during the winter from a frozen pond?

4. The biggest challenges beget best work
I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I, or my work, was crap. In public. This fear was a big challenge. Competing with IBM and then Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the world was a big challenge. I, and Apple employees before me and after me, did our best work because we had to do our best work to meet the big challenges.

5. Design counts
Steve drove people nuts with his design demands—some shades of black weren’t black enough. Mere mortals think that black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was a perfectionist, and he was right: some people care about design and many people at least sense it. Maybe not everyone, but the important ones.

The Apple iPhone, officially unveiled at the Macworld trade show on January 9, 2007, was arguably the single most anticipated gadget in the history of the high-tech and consumer electronics industries.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts
Take a look at Steve’s slides. The font is 60 points. There’s usually one big screenshot or graphic. Look at other tech speaker’s slides—even the ones who have seen Steve in action. The font is 8 points, and there are no graphics. So many people say that Steve was the world’s greatest product introduction guy. Don’t you wonder why more people don’t copy his style?

7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence
When Apple first shipped theiPhone there was no such thing as apps. Apps, Steve decreed, were a bad thing because you never know what they could be doing to your phone.Safari Web apps were the way to go until six months later when Steve decided, or someone convinced him, that apps were the way to go—but of course. Duh! Apple came a long way in a short time from Safari Web apps to “there’s an app for that.”

8. “Value” is different from “price”
Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price.

9. A players hire A+ players
Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization.

10. Real CEOs demo
Steve Jobs could demo a 'Pod, 'Pad, 'Phone, andMac two to three times a year with millions of people watching, why is it that many CEOs call on their vice president of engineering to do a product demo? Maybe it’s to show that there’s a team effort in play. Maybe. It’s more likely that the CEO doesn’t understand what his/her company is making well enough to explain it. How pathetic is that?

11. Real CEOs ship
For all his perfectionism, Steve could ship. Maybe the product wasn’t perfect every time, but it was almost always great enough to go. The lesson is that Steve wasn’t tinkering for the sake of tinkering—he had a goal: shipping and achieving worldwide domination of existing markets or creation of new markets. Apple is an engineering-centric company, not a research-centric one. Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?

Unique + Valuable = Has a market

12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value
Think of a two-by-two matrix. The vertical axis measures how your product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist. Bottom left: not unique and not valuable—you’re a bozo. Top right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin, money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the six biggest record labels.

Guy Kawasaki

Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen. When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts, facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it become real. Ditto for the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Not everyone will believe—that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.

Online Marketing to Grow Your Training Business

 

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to learn more about Frontline Learning's Affiliate program. Just CLICK HERE to view a brief informational video.

 

Most independent training professionals have a limited marketing budget. And they can clearly see that compared to traditional print and promotional media, the internet is much more likely to be a productive marketing resource for them.

However, every other corporate training business owner has the same realization, so how are you going to drive more relevant visitors to YOUR website?

The good news is that there isn't any single silver bullet. In fact, there hundreds of complex, time consuming and sometimes mind numbing things you need to do in order to maximize the marketing potential of your website. Why is that good news? Because it means that very few other training businesses will invest the time (and/or money) needed to do it right.

While we are not breaking much new ground here, this is a LONG list, and our most important advice is to do EVERYTHING on this list. Don't just pick and choose. That's what everyone else is doing. You can quickly scan down the paragraph headings below to identify the actions you have already taken along with those you have yet to complete.

Google Profile

If you haven't set up a free Google profile for your business, do it now. Go to www.profiles.google.com to set it up. Research shows that Google is still the most trusted search engine for business people. Make sure your profile description includes the most common search terms that individuals might be using when looking for your specific training or coaching services. When someone does a Google search to find who you are and whether you are legitimate, it is often that your Google profile will be the first thing they notice. Plus the key words and phrases within your profile will raise your ranking in the search engine.

Linkedin Profile

A close second to Google in terms of credibility and usage by most business professionals, LinkedIn allows you to create a free individual profile along with a seperate free profile for your business. Set up both of these, and be sure to include links back to your website. Go to www.LinkedIn.com to do this. Much of the same content from your Google profile can be used here. 

Write Keyword-Rich Page Titles. Write a descriptive title for each page on your website, one that is rich relevant keywords you want people to find you with - using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Encourage searchers to click on the title by making it compelling.

Bad Page Title Examples:

• XYZ Training Home Page
• Customer Service Training
• Untitled-new-page3

 Great Page Title Examples:

• Improve Employee Productivity with XYZ Training
• Customer Service Training with Quick Results
• Sales Training Proven to Drive Sales Growth
  
  

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in communication skills training and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Training, Inc.," use "Communication Skills Workshops - ACME Training, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

Write a Description META Tag for Every PAge

Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don't include keywords that don't appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:

The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed. When you write an article for your website, create the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (see above). Then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It's no longer used much for ranking, but leave it in anyway, because it may have some minor value.

Photo Tagging

Photo tagging has proven itself one of the best methods in online marketing to get traffic to your website. This means that you use keywords below your photo to describe important data. The digital photo or document must be something that fits in with your keyword usage. You can put the photo with a keyword(s) in your website, on a website farm, or even in your profile. You also can put a link in the keyword that will direct traffic back to your website. Many people use the photo tagging in order to increase traffic, which proves that it is a successful means to increase your online presence.

Search Engine Strategies

 Perhaps the most important -- and inexpensive -- strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content of your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called "search engine optimization," abbreviated as SEO.

Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3)

Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text

Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags.

This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors (www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

Use Keywords in Hyperlinks

Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly

You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don't set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

Create a Site Map

A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way,  Google Webmaster Central (www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords

SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let's say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword "teddy bear," "teddy bears," "vermont teddy bears," "vermont bears," "the teddy bears," teddy bears picnic," "teddy bears pictures," etc. You'll write a completely different article on each topic. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization

Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition's Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to many SEO articles (www.wilsonweb.com/seo/) on my site.

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization. If you'll explain your needs to me on my online form, I can refer you to appropriate SEO firms that I know and trust (www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

Promote Your Local Business on the Internet.

These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business (places.google.com/business), Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com), and Bing Local Listing Center (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/). That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, see articles on local marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/local/) on my site.

Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content.

Google's "universal search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips.  Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on "optimizing images" or "optimizing videos." You can see how I use videos to promote my business on my Web Marketing Today YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/WebMarketingToday).

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren't all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. You'll find articles on linking strategies (www.wilsonweb.com/linking/) on our site.

Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.

Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don't try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money -- but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

SubmitWolf (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/submitwolf.htm) is a directory submission tool I've used with good success . You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It's a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not "linking sites."

Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use a online news release service such as PR Web (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/prweb.htm). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.

Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook (www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com). In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg (www.digg.com), Delicious (www.delicious.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), and Google Bookmarks (www.google.com/bookmarks/). Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don't join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don't hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. By the way, to get started, why don't you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook fan (www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Marketing-Today/85187746383) or a Twitter follower (www.twitter.com/ralphwilson) -- please! Thank you!

Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists -- "old school" social media.The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups (groups.google.com) to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don't bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis (www.addthis.com). When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

Promotion Strategies for Your Training Business

 If you have not already done so, we encourage you to learn more about Frontline Learning's Affiliate program. Just CLICK HERE to view a brief informational video.

 

 We have many friends and associates in the corporate training business. Some are internal practitioners (usually hoping to be independent some day) but most of our acquaintances are independent trainers, speakers, coaches and/or consultants. Not surprisingly, the focus of many conversations over the past few years has been the tough economy - more specifically, how to survive and even thrive during these challenging times. 

While many independent trainers are struggling, there are some who manage to do incredibly well even when the economic waters are rough and unpredictable.

We operate with the belief that success is almost never an accident, so we are always looking for the commonalities between successful individuals, especially those who are managing to drive growth during tough times. Here are a few interesting growth strategies we've observed recently:

• Leverage Multiple "Partners." Partner with other small businesses that can complement your offerings. If you're an sales training specialist, perhaps there is a local company that offers other resources for sales organizations (CRM technology, incentive programs, etc.) and perhaps both of your organizations would benefit from cooperative marketing. If you are a customer service trainer, perhaps you could partner with businesses that sell technology to call centers. The essence of the idea is this; ask yourself, who else is selling to your target market, and how could you profitably partner with them? If partnering seems too risky, think about gathering a panel of like-minded experts in non-competing fields and promote the event. Invite the trade and local media to attend.

• Brand Everything. The best way to market is to brand all sorts of correspondence and communication with your brand name. Some of the many ways where you can promote your brand will include electronic printed materials like emails, pamphlets, business cards, invoices, proposals, social media, press releases and networking sites, that which will link to your websites. Use every possible opportunity to promote your brand identity.

• Those who need your training the most may be least able to pay for it. Help them anyway. And then make sure your local media is aware of what you are doing. Offer free workshops for the unemployed. Free customer service seminars for all employees at a popular mall, because you know they need it and the stores probably can't afford it right now. Free confidence building or communication skills workshops for job seekers. This is a great time for you to truly help others - and it is a great way to generate free local publicity.

One final thought: Don't give up. There is plenty of money to be made, even during tough times. Hundreds of people became millionaires during the Great Depression. Thousands of people are finding ways TODAY to drive business growth. It isn't easy for any of them, they have to work harder, think deeper, move faster than the competition - day after day - and the one thing they all have in common is that they don't give up. Even when they fail, or when an idea doesn't pan out.

What's So Special About Your Training Business?

CLICK HERE to learn more about Frontline Learning's Affiliate program.

 

It has never been easy to build a corporate training, speaking or coaching business from the ground floor up, but in today's tough economy it is more difficult than ever for two reasons:

• Budgets for "nice to have" training have been cut. Sometimes even the "need to have" training budgets have been reduced or eliminated.

• A large number of recently laid off corporate training staff and human resources professionals have given up looking for employment, and have decided to try their hand at building an independent training business. So you now have more competitors than ever. It is relatively easy for them to pop up a website, print business cards, create a presentation on a specific training topic, then start marketing their corporate training "expertise."

So you are going to need to do more than ever to differentiate your training business from both traditional competitors and these new entrants into the corporate training marketplace. So with that goal in mind, here is a series of of practical tips and strategies to retain existing clients and maximize your potential to acquire new clients.

1. Speak up, be heard and be known. Speaking is one of the best ways to leverage your natural talent, establish you as an expert and generate qualified leads. If you put your mind to it, you will be able to identify dozens of speaking opportunities. Local business groups, school groups, community organizations and church groups - find every venue possible to share your expertise and spread the word about the passion and capability you bring to your particular corporate training arena.

If you have already identified a certain market to target, relentlessly appear before them in as many ways as you can. Appearing in different speaking venues reinforces a strong impression that you are the person to see when any need related to your expertise arises.

2. Start writing. Writing is another effective way to tell people that you are the obvious expert and increase your visibility. Magazines, trade journals and newspapers are some of the publications that you can write for. Make sure your articles are interesting and easy to read (e.g. use shorter paragraphs and bullets). Focus on practical tips for improvement rather than broad philosophy or perspective.

Your writing, along with your speaking engagements, will help establish you as an expert available to take calls from reporters and editors. Develop relationships with them, and let them know you are a good source that they can turn to for information and story ideas. Once you are able to achieve that, your name will show up everywhere, and readers will notice and remember you as the expert that they can rely on when they need your services.

3. Get referrals from existing clients. This is by far one of the easiest and the least expensive marketing strategies. If you are not already getting most of your business from referrals, you need to work hard in this area. Getting referrals is not that difficult--you just need to ask for them. A simple question such as, “Do you know any other organizations that might benefit from a similar program?"

At least once a year you should conduct an "annual impact review" with each client organization. If there are several key individuals within the organization, meet with all of them (either together or individually) and go through a series of questions to help you gauge how much of an impact your training is having on the company, and where there might be room for improvement. This review meeting is a perfect opportunity to ask for referrals.

One of the best ways to get referrals is to give referrals. Help your client organizations gain new business, and they will be even more highly motivated to do the same for you.

 

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to learn more about Frontline

Learning's Affiliate program. Just CLICK HERE to view a brief informational video.

Is "Word of Mouth" Enough?

 Last year I met a (relatively) young man who had just launched his own independent sales training business. He had lost his job as the lead sales trainer for a large local company and decided that now was the time to finally pursue a long-held dream of owning his own company.

His first client was his previous employer. His second was a company owned by a friend of a friend. Only a month into his new life, he was feeling pretty good. When I asked about his marketing strategy to acquire additional clients he smiled and said "word of mouth, that's the key."  He had talked to a number of other independent training professionals in the area who had all built successful businesses (decades ago) and many had horror stories of the money and time they wasted on marketing and promotions.-their advice to him was simply "word of mouth, that's the key."

Recently I caught up with the intrepid entrepreneur to ask how things were going, and it was clear that he had been struggling. His first two clients had faded away, and he was barely getting by with a string of short-term speaking and training engagements. Feedback from his clients was exceptionally positive; they all loved his work and were more than willing to "spread the word." But the word just didn't seem to be enough.

And I think that is the experience of many in the corporate training business today. While it is great to have enthusiastic clients who are willing to tell others how wonderful you are, it just isn't enough to sustain a business. Especially if you are just starting out.

At the same time I would hesitate to reccomend spending significant time or money on traditional advertising and marketing strategies. When your funds are limited and the economy is exceptionally tight, you have to leverage the one thing you have that no one else does: your creative mind.

Start with the question: Are there, right now, organizations and individuals in your market who would benefit greatly (in a tangible, measurable way) from your training services? And would they benefit to such a degree that it would make sense for them to PAY you for your services? Remember, when money is tight, a business needs to justify every dollar spent. So if you were the client business, would you realistically be willing to pay for the type of training that you - the trainer - are providing?

Think about these questions carefully. I know too many people who are struggling to selling soft, mushy, feel good training that "empowers" people and "engages" employees.  And when I suggest that they consider something a little more tangible (sales, negotiation, telephone skills, customer service, etc.) they turn up their nose. That stuff is boring to them. But... it is not boring to their prospective clients.

So the first thing to do is think clearly about the training services you are offering. And whether or not they are the right services for the times were are living in today. If not, make a change (more about this in a later posting).

Assuming you are providing a compelling training service that produces tangible value for your client organizations, the next question is - where is your PROOF? Not referrals, not just testimonials, but actual cold hard PROOF that you can deliver that value you are talking about? In today's world everyone is talking a good game. What will truly separate you from the thundering herd of average desperate trainers is solid, tangible evidence. 

Write three brief case studies of your most successful client engagements. Describe the initial situation, your training solution, and the ultimate outcome in terms of tangible business results. Get quotes from your clients to back up everything you are saying.

If you want to know how to structure a good marketing case study pick up a copy of the Harvard Business Review and emulate their caste study structure. Except that you want to use fewer words and more graphs.

Click here for several good examples of marketing case studies. The key is to build a rock solid, bullet proof case that you absolutely can produce the results you are talking about. Then build another. And another. I'm not totally sure why but in my own experience, presenting a single case study to a prospect is interesting and effective, but presenting three case studies is far more powerful.

So let's assume you have amassed the evidence you need. Now what? Pick the prospect organizations you want to work with (more about this in a later post as well) and start at the top. Call the CEO, the President, the Executive Director - whoever is ultimately in charge. Lead with the OUTCOMES and RESULTS you have produced for others and ask for a BRIEF conversation to determine if this organization would benefit from the same OUTCOMES. 

"Mr. Jones, I was hoping to talk to you for just a few minutes about how I worked with Dunbar Corporate and two other local companies to reduce unplanned employee turnover by 12% and increase employee job satisfaction scores by more than 20%, even as their benefits packages were being scaled back. Would you have time for a brief conversation to talk about how we did that?"

This approach - starting at the top of the corporate food chain, leading with compelling RESULTS (that you can back up with tangible evidence) and asking for just a brief conversation to talk about how you did it - will almost always get you either a meeting (or telephone conversation) with the top person, or they will refer you down the food chain to someone else.

Now of course you have to convert that first conversation into a second, deeper discussion. More about that in the next post...

Use a Buddy System to Grow Your Business

We can all agree that business growth is tougher when the economy is pushing against us. And I know more than a small number of business owners who are just focused on survival. They aren’t even considering a growth strategy because they are just hoping to keep the doors open. I think that is their first mistake. If you play the game toward a tie or draw, you are likely to lose.

One interesting approach is to find a (non-competitive) business or a group of businesses, and enter into a cooperative promotion and marketing agreement with each other.  If you can find a small group of businesses whose customers are essentially in the same demographic, and who do not directly compete with one another, try some of these ideas to drive business growth in both directions:

• Print joint promotional offers on your bills and/or receipts.
• Offer a reduced price, special service, or convenience if customers buy a minimum amount of services or products from you and your partner. Make a much better offer when they buy a larger amount.
• Hang signs or posters promoting one another on your walls, windows, or products.
• Mention one another’s benefits when you speak at local events, write an articles or are interviewed by the media.
• Describe the situation where you and your partner’s products or services work well together.
• Pool mailing lists and send out a joint promotional postcard.
• Promote your partner’s products during their slow times, and ask them to do the same for you.
• Share inexpensive ads in local shopping papers or a nonprofit event program.
• Give a joint interview, demonstration, or Q & A session to local media.
• Put  one another’s promotional messages on Lucite stands on counters or floor stands in waiting areas.
• Encourage your staff to mention how your partner’s products can be used with yours.
• Give your partner’s product to your customers when they buy a large quantity of your product, and ask your partner to do the same.
• Use door hangers, posters, flyers, or postcards to promote special offers for one another’s products.
• Co-produce an in-store or office event, a demonstration, celebrity appearance, free service, or lecture.

The bottom line: when partners serve their mutual market better together everyone wins. At the very least you get introduced to your kind of customers through businesses they already know and trust.