Call it ANYTHING but TRAINING . . .
Freelance instructional designers and content developers find it easy to talk to professional in-house trainers in larger corporations. Often part of HR, sometimes tucked into a specific department (credit training, safety training, etc.), these are people who spend all day thinking about training, delivering seminars, and so on.
But the bigger market is probably people who don't have "trainer", or anything close to it, in their job titles. These are people who have been tapped to spread best practices, because they exhibit best practices in their own work. A manager figures that so-and-so does the best job at this, so that person should show other people how to do it.
In other words, an enormous portion of the training happening in corporate America is developed and delivered by people who do many other things in their jobs. They aren't exclusively trainers, and they don't have a background in education or training.
They are just trying to help company employees perform better. That said, they may actually spend a lot of time working on training issues, and devote sizable budgets to same. They just don't think of it as "training".
And they often need help. Being the best at something is not the same as being the best at teaching someone else how to do that same something! We've all been in rooms with experts who can't share their expertise. This is an area where outside training help can really be valuable to the client company.
So what do you want to talk about with these prospects? Here are a few ideas:
- Policy Dissemination
- Employee Communications
- Service Goals and Standards
- Orientation or Overview, to specific tools and functions, or to the company
- Documentation
- "Forum", "Conference", "Regional Meeting", and similar functions where best practices are shared
- Specific topics that they think of as functional goals rather than as training topics, such as "handling objections", "maintaining quality", or "controlling costs".
What can you add to the list?
