| FROM OUR EXPERIENCE |
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| Selling trainings in times of crisis! |
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For several reasons I started to consciously avoid the word "crisis":
1. Because it's scary and it inclines towards cautiousness (as a sales person
I don't want this from my customers!)
2. Because it's a waste of time ( I'll develop this idea in the article)
3. Because it's on everyone's lips and it doesn't allow me to be any different (kidding!)
I noticed that every time the word "crisis" appears in conversations, people
around you start to state their opinions: it's a crisis, it isn't a crisis. Or
it hasn't reached us already - but it's coming! Or just that some areas of the
industry will be affected. Some say that it will affect everything - that's why
it's called
an economic system, because one influences the other. And here's how, from a
simple uttering of a word with which you try to describe a real situation, you
end up developing scenarios ranging from "worst-case" to "best-case"...sparsely,
I admit. I'll try to argue the opinion I put forward at the second point.
When it comes to scenarios, some of them have been one of my main preoccupations
these days. And I'll talk about them from a sales' person point of view.
Certainty: organizations are becoming cautious when it comes to budget allocation.
To be more specific, training budgets. Whether it's a sound strategic decision
or not is still up for debate.
Consequence: I'll be meeting the same clients, but with smaller budgets for the year 2009 then what had been estimated a couple of months ago. This is not reflected to a very high extent in what we already know as reality, but more in the type of decisions we'll be meeting with when talking to managers.
Scenario 1:
Although I have a smaller budget, I want to cover the need of as many employees as I can. This will be seen as a decrease in the budget allocated per each participant. Starting from a tried and tested logic that says "costs reflect value of solution", this means that the decision maker will have to choose solutions that range from low to medium quality but... pay attention!... it's still training for a lot of people.
Scenario 2:
Because I have a smaller budget, I'll be more careful as to how I spend them more efficiently. In sales language, the decision maker will pay attention to the quality and the ROI of the solutions he buys. This practically means that we're talking about a scenario in which organizations will invest in developing a smaller number of carefully selected employees.
Conclusion: even if other scenarios can be developed based on these ones, the two presented above are the groundwork. What is interesting is that none of them have anything new to add, both types of decision have been here up till now. To keep it simple, action oriented, this means that training suppliers will continue to make the same efforts in order to balance the quality of solutions with competitive prices. What is new, however is that these efforts will increase.
This is the reason for which I tend to avoid using the word "crisis". I prefer "a more special situation" or "reality".
Bogdan Pode
Trainer |
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Human Invest is a Premier League company in the arena of training and
organizational development consultancy services, present on the Romanian market since 1998.
We are recognized for conceiving and implementing programs which offer managers an authentic experience towards improving their leadership
performances, and thus we support companies in becoming more and more engaged in delivering excellent services for their clients.
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