Training As Marketing: Follow These Best Practices to Ensure Your Training Seminars Are Impactful and Maintain Credibility
- RE Casper
- Dec 21, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 23, 2024
As a solid B2B marketing strategy, companies such as Cisco and Toyota increasingly rely on technical training seminars as a key touchpoint with their commercial customers. Read their case study examples here.
In my experience, helping to manage hundreds of technical training seminars for a major automotive OEM, they can be an effective marketing strategy that can enhance customer loyalty, drive measurable sales results, and generate valuable leads. However, the delivery must remain professional, informative, and value-focused rather than sales-driven.
Here are some best practices to ensure your training seminars are impactful and maintain credibility:
1. Understand Your Audience’s Needs:
Research the pain points, challenges, and knowledge gaps of your target audience.
Tailor the content to address these specific needs, ensuring the material is relevant and practical.
2. Focus on Education, Not Selling:
Emphasize how-to demonstrations, problem-solving techniques, and case studies rather than directly pitching products or services.
Provide actionable takeaways that participants can immediately apply.
3. Leverage Subject Matter Experts (SMEs):
Have qualified professionals, such as engineers, technicians, or product managers, deliver the training. This enhances credibility and shifts the focus from sales to expertise.
4. Convenient Venue:
Select a location that easily accessible with plenty of parking.
Always have comfortable seating with desks or tables.
Provide water and coffee. Depending on the length of the training session, snacks and/or a light meal may be required.
5. Make It Interactive:
Incorporate Q&A sessions, hands-on exercises, and real-world scenarios to engage participants
Use live demonstrations or simulations when possible to enhance understanding.
6. Provide High-Quality Materials:
Offer well-designed slides, manuals, notebooks, pens, and supplementary resources that participants can refer to after the session.
Consider creating online resources or a learning portal for ongoing support.
7. Collect Feedback:
Use surveys or follow-up interviews to gauge participants’ satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
Apply feedback to refine future sessions or create training with new subject matter.
Capture as much profile information from the participants without being pushy or intrusive.
8. Avoid Excessive Branding:
Minimize overt branding in presentation materials to maintain a professional tone and keep the focus on the training content.
9. Offer Certification or Recognition:
Providing a certificate of completion can add value to the training and encourage participation.
10. Consider Incentives:
If incentives or door prizes are used, be sure to make them practical and relevant to the needs of the audience, such as tools and technical manuals.
Use a low key approach to offer appropriate discounts on parts, tools, and future training as needed.
11. Follow-up Training:
Use the opportunity to meet face-to-face by offering additional training opportunities, dates, locations, costs, and how to enroll.
12. Dealer Involvement:
If dealers are part of your distribution network, they would be important to the success of training seminars because of their close and working relationship with customers.
Dealer sales people, both inside and out, could use the training seminar as an opportunity to reach out to prospects for new business.
Some dealers have training rooms on site that could be used to host the seminar.
Dealers could also possibly share in the cost for hosting the seminar.
Two Examples of Companies That Put Effective B2B Technical Training In Action
Cisco Systems Networking Academy
Cisco offers a global technical training program aimed at IT professionals and students. The Cisco Networking Academy teaches participants how to design, manage, and troubleshoot networks using Cisco technologies. The program focuses on skill-building and certification preparation, not on directly selling Cisco products.
Why It Works:
Educational Focus: The program is centered on teaching network design and management, with little emphasis on pushing specific Cisco products.
Global Reach: It provides access to free and paid courses, ensuring accessibility and broad appeal.
Certifications: It helps participants achieve industry-recognized certifications (e.g., CCNA), which are valuable for career advancement.
Partnerships: Cisco collaborates with educational institutions and corporate partners to deliver the program, further emphasizing its focus on education rather than sales.
This approach positions Cisco as a leader in network technology while building a loyal customer base that appreciates its value beyond products.
Toyota Collision Repair & Refinish Training
Toyota, through its Toyota Collision Repair & Refinish Training Program, offers a comprehensive training platform for independent collision repair shops. The program equips technicians with the knowledge and skills to perform repairs that restore vehicles to factory standards.
Key Features:
1. Hands-On Training:
Toyota provides hands-on, instructor-led training that covers advanced repair techniques, including the use of Toyota-specific tools, materials, and repair processes.
Courses often include real-world scenarios and practical demonstrations of repairing Toyota vehicles.
2. Focus on Safety Standards:
Training emphasizes the importance of adhering to Toyota’s safety standards, particularly for structural repairs, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and hybrid/electric vehicle components.
3. Access to Proprietary Information:
Technicians gain access to Toyota’s repair manuals, technical bulletins, and diagnostic resources.
4. Certification:
Participants can earn certifications upon completing courses, which enhance their credentials and demonstrate their expertise in repairing Toyota vehicles.
5. Learning Management System:
Toyota offers an online learning platform for continuous education, enabling shops to stay updated on new repair methods and vehicle technologies.
6. Collaboration with I-CAR:
Toyota works with the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair (I-CAR) to ensure its training aligns with industry standards.
Why It Works:
Educational, Not Sales-Driven: The training focuses on repair techniques and safety, with little emphasis on pushing Toyota parts or services.
Value for Participants: Independent shops benefit from the credibility and knowledge that come with completing the program, making it appealing without a direct sales pitch.
Customer Retention Strategy: By ensuring repairs meet Toyota’s standards, the company indirectly strengthens customer trust and loyalty in its brand.
Want More Practical Marketing Ideas
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Online interactive training
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Presentation slide deck for planning sessions
Examples of measurable marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics
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