Its not often that you come across an argument presented in superb totality.

Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, Inc. recently posted “Sales Training Company Revenue Models” in his blog titled ” Commentary on Sales Leadership”

This post deals with

“how sales training companies make significantly more margin from training classes than consulting“

Dave says

“In fact, many training companies only do classroom training and are not at all interested in the assessment, methodology, process, customization, design, technology enablement, coaching and post-program support work that we believe is vital to a successful sales performance improvement intervention”

Why?

“Margins! A classroom day generates a lot more margin than a consulting day. As a rule of thumb, a training day generates between 600 to 800% more margin than a consulting day “

So what about the ROIs

“Companies that only offer out-of-the-box training rarely deliver the kind of long-term sustainable results that those that take the holist approach do”

“On the other end of the spectrum are companies that will not do any classroom training unless it is part of a complete solution”

And the lesson according to Dave

“You, the client, need to have the proper mix of consulting and classroom time as well as post-program support that will result in the greatest level of sustainable performance improvement for your team. Don’t jump for what the training company proposes. Don’t be willing to slash what’s required for success (like post-program coaching) because a vendor recommends it. They may be willing to drop a less profitable but more important line item in your proposal because it suits them”

I agree wholeheartedly with Dave’s arguments and logic and would ask that you click on the link above to read the full post. Well done Dave Stein for presenting the facts in such a well crafted and transparent manner.

Posted by Niall

Tags: analysis of training, training analysis, training definition, training evaluation, training needs analysis

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Top Tips Series, training, training ROI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.