Product Training for the Technical Expert

23 The Strategy of Hands‐On Learning: An Executive Summary

Overview

Just as knowledge can be powerful when students put it into action, a great philosophy also becomes powerful when instructors have a strategy to execute it. This is the driving message in Part two.

Chapter 5 provides an overview of a business strategy and may be helpful for executives to read and absorb. There are at least three main ways to run training as a business. One way is to operate it as a profit center. Usually that involves selling training seats. The more seats you sell, regardless of the audience, the more money you make. For some companies, this approach can be successful. For most, it is not, since the “profit” they are making amounts to barely covering their costs. As a rule, if you would not run a product line for the profit you are making through training, you should not run it as a profit center.

Companies can also run training as a cost of doing business. Sales people generally prefer this option, since it helps to limit the total cost of ownership for their customers. You should always have a price associated with training, even if you choose to give it away to certain or all customers. This helps to maintain the value of the training program. It may also lead to a hybrid approach. In this third option, managers run training as a cost center while submitting the payments received for training as an offset to the budget.

Regardless of the business strategy, the true value of training is ...