LERN Club Articles
Selling Training and Other Services
You know how to sell STUFF—right? You’d talk about its virtues and demonstrate it and let the prospective buyer try it out. But much of what we sell are SERVICES, and the approach is a little different. Here are some new ideas for selling services. The more you do, the more you’ll sell!
Staffing Structure with Small Numbers
Many lifelong learning organizations operate with five or less staff. With a limited number of staff it is more challenging to implement LERN’s Ideal Staffing Structure.
Benchmarks That Get More Support
Lifelong learning organizations are always challenged convincing their central administration to invest and provide resources to help the lifelong learning organization grow participation and/or revenue. The following are the three industry benchmarks having the greatest impact on generating central administration support.
More on Gen Z
From her hot new book, Invisible Diversity, Julie Coates outlines more ways Gen Z may be different from Millennials.
Student Recruitment
With an increase in the price of continuing education offerings, especially certificate programs, continuing education programs are having to be more proactive about student recruitment.
There are so many information and communication channels in Contract Training right now, but email is still a go-to medium.
The Importance of the Welcome Message
A welcome message or email is the first thing someone sees when they join your email or newsletter list. This email will have the highest open rate of any email you send to the customer, so you need to make it count!
Increasing Your Success as a New Leader
Many continuing education and lifelong learning programs are led by “Baby Boomers” who have been and will continue to retire, over the next five to ten years.
Working with Your Shy Streak in Contract Training
It’s not a sin, it’s a personality quality: you’re shy. Shyness itself is not a problem, but if it’s getting in the way of your sales success, then here are some tips for working with your shy self to get sales.
Target your Summer Camp Brochure Mailings
With summer camp brochure mailings right around the corner, make sure you are mailing to the right people and not wasting valuable brochures!
Recession Memo
This memo is to help you prepare for what some economists, as well as the NineShift historical parallel, say may be a soon-to-be coming 18 month recession, probably in 2019-2021.
How Much Programming Can a Program Staff Person Manage?
A question a supervisor of program directors, managers or coordinators may ask is…How many programs, courses and classes/sections should a programming staff person be able to manage during a year?
How to get Started on Instagram
Instagram has been described as “Twitter with Pictures.” Although Instagram does not have the same limitations for text as Twitter, the description is apt. Instagram provides a platform to tell your story with pictures, which, in today’s world of social media, is very important.
New Social Media Best Practices Video
Check out our new video on social media best practices
Go/No-Go Process and Timeline
Kirkwood Community College’s Continuing Education & Training Services Operations Team decided to streamline their go/no-go process and timeline and gather data to determine the impact of the change.
Digital Marketing Duties
Continuing education and lifelong learning programs are embracing digital marketing. By mixing digital marketing with direct mail and other promotion methods, their marketing efforts are becoming more integrated.
New Product Development Position
Successful continuing education organizations advocate for the importance of new offerings, whether they are new courses, activities, events, services and/or programs, such as a certificate program.
Top Ways to Cope with Rising Print Brochure Paper Costs
With paper costs projected to rise 25% or so, the increased price of paper could cost your program money. But you have to maintain the quality of your print brochure, and your brochure distribution.
Value Creation
At the LERN Annual Conference in Baltimore, Senior Vice President Greg Marsello fount that his presentation on value creation was as popular as ever. Greg feels that this show that programs continue to need strategies to demonstrate their value both internally within in their institution, and externally within their local and/or national/international communities.
In the complicated and changing world of brochure distribution it can be hard to decide what techniques are best to get your print pieces in the hands of your customers. As mailing and printing costs increase, each brochure becomes more valuable and making sure it ends up the in right hands is that much more important.
More Money = More Mission
Very few lifelong learning programs operate as independent, for-profit or nonprofit businesses, but many endeavor to employ business best practices.
Shift from Customer Service to Customer-Centric
Continuing education and lifelong learning programs are normally given high scores by customers on point of sale – performing a transaction for a customer, such as handling a registration or processing a refund – customer service. Operations Team staff work hard to add value to their customers’ point of sale experience in an effort to build an enduring relationship.
How to Capture Leads from your Website
Plain and simple: Your website’s main goal should be capturing leads. Yes, your website should inform visitors, but that too is a means by which you capture leads. If you’re not already using your website to capture leads, you might have a lot of work ahead of you, but in the end the work will
Marketing Contract Training
Contract training units looking to increase sales have ramped up their marketing efforts. The goal of contract training marketing is lead generation and with the contract training lead:contract ratio benchmark at 4:1, generating leads is very important.