Business and Money Tips

20 Ways to Drive Training Consumption Gordon Johnson, author of “The Ultimate Guide to LMS Marketing", all rights with the author.  Training is arguably the most important part of every customer success program, but customers don’t have the time to master your product like you want them to. Sometimes they put off training until it’s too late, which results in expensive support and unhappy customers. The solution is to treat your training programs like your company’s products and insert a healthy dose of marketing to drive training consumption. Here are 20 marketing ideas that can turn uneducated customers into highly-trained advocates who would never think of replacing your product with anything else. 1. Market that next class The most important way to measure the success of your marketing is by how much training each individual consumes. An extraordinarily high percentage of your customers will take one class and never come back.They all need more to be successful, so how do you

Yes, you'll be surprised that your training participants said that they have learnt nothing much from your training. Before you get depressed as a Trainer and wondered what went wrong, why not listen further to the feedback? I said, "Since you said 'nothing much', that means there is something that you learnt.  Could you share with me so that we can help others in future?" There are 5 things that he learnt but dare not shared with me in the open, they are as follows: They learnt about themselves, like who they are as a person with fears, hopes and dreams.  In our training we get everyone to do the impossible : cut a piece of wood with just a piece of A4 paper They learnt that other companies are worse than them , that their bosses are not so bad after all. This is achieved when I shared with them my experience in training over 13,131 people since 2001 in 16 countries They learnt that commercial movies video clips are very educational too.  When I playe

Many managers say training is important, yet they fail to do much about it.   A good training program accomplishes 3 goals. Firstly it imparts the skills necessary for efficient work habits and a high degree of competency.  If I am training people on sales, it must teach them the habit of making 5 sales calls a day and asking clients' questions using a professional format.   Second, it builds an employee's knowledge to allow for them to learn and do more on their own. For example, in our How to Be a Better Manager program, we teach managers how to inspire people based on their current weekly staff meeting. Third, a good training program must motivate and inspire people to take action, not in the distant future, but now. That's why in all our trainings we have this 7-Day Profit Action Plan that all participants get to fill in during the course.  In this way they can apply what they learn immediately. We will also compute the increase in profits from that application

(Note: You can take advantage of $500 Training Credit now, not 2016, details at here ) A quick summary of Singapore Budget 2015 as announced by Finance Minister on 23 Feb 15: High-income earners hit with higher taxes. Personal income tax top marginal rate to rise by 2% from 20-22% for top 5% of earners with chargeable income of $320,000 and above SkillsFuture $500 Credit f or all Singaporeans aged 25 and above: each will get $500 credit in 2016 that can be used for all types of training.  GST Voucher will be increased by $50 for all. Seniors will get another $300 GST vouchers All individual income tax will be reduced by 50% , capped at $1,000 for each person Companies will enjoy income tax rebate of 30% , capped at $30,000 Domestic maid levy will be halved to $60 from May 2015 for households with children aged 16 and below One-year 20% road tax rebate for cars and 100% tax rebate for commercial vehicles.  But petrol duty tax will increase by $0.15 to $0.20 per litre w

As a Trainer Coach specialising in sales, management and executive skills targeting audience from China to Singapore, people often asked us what business are we in.   We are in the Show Business. You see, as a Trainer Coach, we are there not to talk or deliver a program, but to put on a show.  What do we show?  Other than showing our body and learned mind, we also show them our heart and most importantly, our  spirit or passion .   Trainers are there to show people the proven paths, strategies, stratagems and methods to get more done with less. Experts called this Productivity and Work Effectiveness.  We are also there to show the leaders and managers that they too can transform their organizations if they lead and manage effectively. For people in sales, customer service and marketing, we show them the winning ways - how to win over the most difficult customers, crack the sales code and even sell ice to the Eskimos!   For people that just want to make their lives les

Your mind has no form or shape, it is not anywhere but it is everywhere.  Your mind is not your brain, nor is it your thinking brain or your feeling brain.  Your mind is actually your perception or your consciousness. Your consciousness has no form or shape but it can perceive a sense object (e.g. a car) and take in sense objects in various forms and shapes.  The mind travels afar, it can go back time (even to your past lives if you can remember) or the future (we call it dreams).  Your mind wanders alone and has no physical form. But your consciousness appears and vanishes very quickly.  Early in the morning, you wake up and read something negative in the newspaper.  This affects your mind.  In time to come your physical attributes (e.g .your temper, character etc) would also be affected.  Imagine if you were to be born and brought up in a war torn country where killing and all kinds of sin are common.  Your mind would be trained this way and in time to come your physical appe

Since doing training part time from 1996, and full time from 2001 (under ActionCOACH) and from 2007 under Asia Coaching Training , our company, together with 3 associate trainers have developed over 428 programs.  Many people asked us what are these programs and we only have 3 words: Sales, Management and Employee Skills. But recently from our How to Be a Better Manager course (click here for details) with one trainee (a Managing Director from an European MNC), I realize that we only teach 2 things: Challenges and Solutions. Our courses deal with real-life challenges facing people in business, government and the private sector RIGHT NOW, not some text-book cases.  We get our participants to share their current work challenges, and we group them into 3 categories: Self, Others and the World.   Note that the challenges are built into the courses, like in the How to Close Every Sale course , we talked about sales objections as a main challenge.   But we don't stop there at t

A training that has high value is one that leaves a deep impact on the trainee long after the training is completed. To have impact the training must hit the trainee right on the head, there must be an instant 'ah ha' exclamation and the feeling must be right.  You cannot fake an impact, but you definitely can tell a fake impact from a real one. Some trainers, in their bid to make an impact, do certain things that have the opposite effect.  Instead of leaving an impact on the trainees, they leave a bad impression on them.  The wrong things that these trainers do include making assumptions, forcing answers for questions and going all out to please them with too many jokes, games and too little content.  In my experience since training over 81,131 people in 14 countries (from 1996), there are 5 steps for the training to have an impact on the trainees: Like .  Trainees must like the trainer, that's why the trainer must greet and smile when they first encounter a trai

There's a Zen story in which a professor visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The master served tea. When the visitor's cup was full, the master kept pouring. Tea spilled out of the cup and over the table. "The cup is full!" said the professor. "No more will go in!" "Like this cup," said the master, "You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" If you want to understand and learn, you need to empty your cup.  So how do people empty their cup when they go for training courses?  From experience in conducting in-house trainings for over 440 companies and over 81,131 people in 14 countries since 1996, there are 7 ways to empty your cup:  (click here for list of courses) (For slides, read here ) Learn with an Open Mind . Do not hold any fixed ideas before the course.  Like the parachute, the mind is only useful when it is open.  Opening your mind also mean

You'll be surprised if you have a heart-to-heart talk with the people that you sent for  training .  "Tell me what have you learnt."  They will say, "Nothing much, I learnt those strategies that we may have taken for granted and not used much".  Is this their real answer? What do people really learnt from training?  You'll be shocked to discover the truths: there are 5 main things that people learnt but dare not tell you: They learnt about themselves: their weaknesses, strengths and most importantly, their potential.   Like people learnt that they can do magic: cut a piece of wood with paper.  Many people are frightened with this new discovery: they are afraid that now that they know they can do much more, will they be worked to death to implement the strategies learnt? They learnt about the best practises  that may not be practised in their organization, like having half-yearly dialogue style performance appraisal.  Some are afraid of telling this to