When training your own employees, it’s all about knowing what skill you’re trying to help them learn or improve upon. That, and what certification employees are required or incentivized by your company to earn.

As opposed to internal training, with corporate training—instead of solving an internal problem—you are solving other companies’ internal problems. In other words, you have to contextualize training programs to fit the needs of other organizations.

The funny part is, the HR or sales training that your employees are following may be an effective program for other organizations, too. Still, whether you’re creating corporate training from scratch or simply reselling an internal program to organizations, there’s a lot to think about. Don’t worry though! We’re going to answer all your questions while we talk about how to sell employee training to organizations and businesses right now.

The Difference Between Training B2C & B2B

It should come as no surprise to you that eLearning in business is very popular. The two main types of eLearning are self-paced learning and virtual instructor-led training (ILT); self-paced learning is made possible thanks to online courses that run on their own and can be accessed on demand by employees. Alternatively, virtual ILT is essentially just an in-person class, but instead of the class meeting in a physical location, everyone meets online over a video call (using apps like Zoom).

Regardless of the medium being used for eLearning, there’s a big difference between selling training B2C to course takers, and selling corporate training to organizations!

Here are a few differences between B2C and B2B training:

• B2C training can be generic and not extremely specific.
• B2C training doesn’t have to be contextualized to a specific organization.
• B2C training doesn’t have to eliminate vendor ties and be visually branded.
• Selling corporate training B2B is more about what other organizations need, vs. what you think individuals in a market want.
• B2B training is sold in bulk vs. selling one course at a time B2C.
• B2B customers may be outsourcing training to meet compliance requirements.

When selling corporate training B2B you have to put yourself in the shoes of the other organization, and ask yourself what type of training does my team need? Unlike training your employees, or selling courses B2C, now, you’re directly dealing with other companies’ teams! This is not bad, it’s just a complexity that you need to consider!

Is Outsourcing Training Popular?

Believe it or not, many companies training employees online are not creating the training programs themselves. That’s why in 2021, on average, large companies spent $1.7 million, medium-sized companies spent $108,263, and small ones spent $24,996 on outsourcing training.

Questions Organizations Ask Before Outsourcing Training

Here are a few questions organizations may ask before outsourcing training:

1. Can I Visually Brand And Customize The Training?

People want their training to look and feel like their company. From logo to brand colors and the language training is spoken/written in, the eLearning platform that you sell training on should be customizable and brandable. Beyond the visual aesthetics of your eLearning platform, you will also want to make sure that training is contextualized to the organization’s specific needs. For example, if your company is dealing with communications issues between management, then you will want to make sure training addresses these exact types of issues. The same can be said for any type of training: sexual harassment training, sales training, safety & compliance training, any type of continuing education, and more.

2. Can I Generate Training Reports On Performance & Attendance?

When your employees are undergoing training it’s important to maintain records of completion and whatnot. The same is expected of you when selling employee training or other types of corporate training to organizations. Reporting is a critical feature of any effective eLearning platform so that managers can track completions, attendance and engagement levels, scores, and more! In our opinion, there’s no better online platform for creating and hosting training than a learning management system—-they are super flexible for reporting on training.

3. Is The Training User-Friendly And Easy To Get Started?

Remember, the main reason companies will outsource training is for convenience; it’s expensive to create training from scratch, and it takes a lot of time. That means when you’re selling corporate training, you have to create courses on a system that’s efficient for organizations to use. In other words, you can onboard organizations and have them train their employees shortly after signing a contract with you (ideally with little to no learning curve).

One feature in the Academy Of Mine LMS that helps you sell corporate training efficiently is called Portals; this B2B-focused feature lets you onboard organizations into customizable training environments that admins can use to manage training and learners can train inside of.

4. Can I Purchase Training In Bulk?

Especially when selling training to large companies, the expectation is to train thousands of employees at a time. So, you should make sure that you’re able to sell training at scale, before even targeting large companies. You should also double-check to see how many users can be logged into a training system at once. Some eLearning platforms may crash and have a lot of issues if too many people are on the server at once.

Coming back to the eCommerce considerations while selling training to organizations, you want to make purchasing training in bulk efficient. At Academy Of Mine (AOM), we have a feature called bulk purchasing, that allows organizations to purchase course licenses in bulk and then enroll large groups into training in a few steps.

Why Sell Corporate Training?

The same reason employees ask for a promotion is why you should sell corporate training: to make money. No, but seriously, selling employee training to other organizations can be a great new revenue stream for your business. Some companies base their entire business on selling training to other organizations, but even if it’s just a side hustle, selling corporate training is lucrative.

It’s also worth mentioning that you don’t always have to create corporate training programs from scratch. Imagine, you’re a midsize company with many departments. Ask yourself – are your employees taking any training courses in different departments? If they are, and the training is designed internally, why not just repackage the training and sell it externally? This is a common business model for monetizing training programs that your teams are already using.

We have many different clients that use our software in combination with their knowledge to repackage their internal training and sell it externally. Here’s another idea—if you’re a real-estate company try repackaging sales or real-estate training and selling it to other companies in the industry to other real-estate firms and partners.

How To Create Effective Employee Training Programs

Most likely, you’ve already created employee training programs for your own team or you wouldn’t be thinking about selling training to others. The main difference in selling corporate training is the employees taking your training will expect content to be personalized to their company and job role. Still, whether you’re repurposing an internal program or designing training from the ground up, you need to make sure the training program is effective.

Follow these steps to create effective employee training for organizations:

1. Choose A Sector And Type Of Training To Focus On

If you’re reselling internal training to corporate clients, just think of the best internal training programs you have to offer. If you’re creating a training program from scratch, we recommend thinking about which type of training your company can most effectively service!

Let’s say you’re a successful HR company, you can probably create effective training for other standalone HR companies or companies in need of training their HR department.

When picking a training type to focus on, remember that some training is carried out to provide certification and legally required credits, and another training is less formal. You should consider all of these options, especially since accredited training will require you to follow specific rules from governing bodies to maintain accreditation.

2. Partner With Industry Subject Matter Experts

Since you’re creating training for other organizations, you may already have subject matter experts in your organization. I.E., if you’re a software company providing corporate IT training, you probably have tons of IT and security experts that can help you create the training. On the other hand, if you’re extremely ambitious in your corporate training goals and want to sell a training type that your company doesn’t have much experience in, reach out to your network and partner with subject matter experts.

3. Design Content With An Instructional Designer

After you have figured out the type of training you’re going to sell, as well as found subject matter experts to write the training curriculum, you need to design the eLearning content. We’re not talking about writing the material that training is created for; we’re talking about converting documents, PPTs, and other training materials into full-on branded eLearning courses and presentations.

Self-paced courses should be visually branded and have interactive activities for employees to demonstrate their understanding of training (quizzes, assignments, etc.) Subject matter experts use their knowledge to help create training courses, but designing content is the job of instructional designers. Instructional designers aren’t only experts in designing nice-looking eLearning, they’re also trained in how to export and design following standard eLearning formats. In the case of creating online training, the standard format for learning management systems is called SCORM.

Even if the organization outsourcing training from you is using virtual instructor-led training instead of courses, it’s still worth using an instructional designer to create PPT slides & presentation materials. Each instructional designer is different, but especially if you’re going to be hosting training with a learning management system (which we recommend), instructional designers are experts.

One last thing to remember while selling corporate training is that many companies will prefer training to be contextualized to their organization’s needs. In the most basic sense, this means the training platform employees use should be designed with company colors, a company logo, a custom domain, etc. Looking a step further, some of the training courses you’re selling may have to be personalized more for some clients. For example, if a client is looking to outsource their sales training, to sell more products, but your sales courses are all about selling a service, the value may not be there.

What Platform Do You Need To Sell Corporate Employee Training?

So far, we’ve talked about how to create corporate training, the difference between B2C and B2B training, and the benefits of selling training to organizations. What we haven’t talked about yet, is the type of software platform you will need to professionally deliver training to other organizations.

Without an eLearning platform, your training courses are just files on a hard drive that can be accessed manually. This means that companies will have to send courses over email or upload them on the cloud for employees to download. However you splice this manual style of delivering training online, it’s ineffective and primitive.

The main reason company’s outsource in the first place is for convenience—they also want to report on the attendance and engagement of employees in training. One last thing, they want to do everything on one nice and neat platform; ideally, a system on the internet that employees can log in to from anywhere in the world to take training courses! We are describing everything that is best done with a learning management system (LMS). These effective EdTech tools are designed specifically for professional development and for creating plus managing training online.

There are different types of learning management systems available. If you want a training platform where everything happens online, choose a cloud-based LMS.

Are You Ready To Effectively Sell Corporate Training?

When a training program accurately addresses an organization’s needs, and the training is easy for employees to take and for administrators to report on, it’s usually effective. Easier said than done. Still, if you invest in an LMS like the one we offer at Academy Of Mine, and work with your team along with instructional designers to create training, you have a good chance of selling effective corporate training.

If you want to talk more about selling training courses to other organizations, find out how our software can help!