An IT company just hired me as a consultant in the role of Director of
Business Development for their training department. Essentially, I'm
now the sales guy for computer training services, but I have enough
influence to steer the company and offerings. I thought I would throw
out some facts and ask for advice. I've been a member of this group
for a couple of months, and I've always found it helpful.
The offerings are small cl***** about Microsoft Office products, e-
learning guides of Blackberries (essentially flash presentations made
with Captivate for self-paced learning), Webinars, and one-on-one
training. Part of my role will be to grow and direct these
products.
The e-learning guides will be built out for all of the MS Office
products by mid summer. We will start offering more cl***** on
Adobe / Macromedia products in a couple of months. I would like to
add quickbooks to this as well. What other trainings should I
consider?
The e-learning guides can be sold one off, but primarily we plan to
use them for the intranets of companies that buy a lot of trainings.
If a company were to send 10 employees to a training on Excel, then we
would also sell them an e-learning guide on Excel for their intranet
so that the employees would have a reference. They also have a
limited value in terms of marketing.
The cl***** are pretty straightforward. We have a couple of
advantages over the big international gorilla in the room. Our class
sizes are limited to 12 people. Our trainings cover the same amount
of material in 2/3 of the time, and we are considerably less
expensive, though I've considered changing this.
I've also considered that there is some market for specialized
training products. Perhaps a company would be interested in having
training done on their proprietary software, either in classroom or in
e-learning module form. Also, a manufacturer might like to have
training done on their products as well in supplement to or
replacement of the instructions manuals.
The skill set we've developed for the e-learning modules could be
translated into building automated sales presentations. Maybe a
company is launching some new initiative and a flash presentation
could help promote it. Perhaps some companies and universities have
orientation trainings that could be outsourced to us.
I'm getting a little far out, but this should give you an idea of what
we are trying to accomplish.
As far as marketing, we will start by trying to sell to groups of
companies, for instance, recruiting companies, associations, private
technical schools, and universities. Then, I'll start working on
large companies with a lot of turn over or large companies that are
growing. To fill in the corners of my day, I'll work on the far out
stuff, like building training modules for software companies.
What are your thoughts? Am I on the right track? The link to the
company website is below, but please direct questions to me.
Steven Nichols
Director of Business Development
Mission Critical Systems
www.mcstech.net
|
