calculator-paperclip-pen-office-66862.jpegWe recently released a new eBook, How to Create a Customer Training Strategy, and in the past couple of weeks we’ve given you a few glimpses at what’s inside. So far we’ve discussed Why Your Organization Needs a Customer Training Strategy and Creating a Customer Training Strategy: Objectives. Today’s post will be covering how to strategize the pricing and packaging of your training.

By the time you’re getting to pricing and packaging, everything should be all set on the content side. Your next step is to decide whether or not you will be charging for your course.

If you’re not charging, your training will be a cost center, or will be a cost to your organization in order to keep it running. The cost of the LMS or other delivery platform, and the cost of paying training managers and instructional designers will take from the overall company budget.

There are benefits to offering free training, such as greater accessibility and higher participation rates. Often, the open-door nature of free training leads to increased product adoption, therefore generating more revenue for the company and making up for the cost of delivering the training.

If you decide to charge for your training, it can become a profit center. Depending on how much you charge, you may be able to meet or exceed the cost of delivery. Your training program can actually be an additional channel of revenue for your organization if you can get enough participants.

The most direct way to drive participation is to strategically market your training in a way that demonstrates the value of the knowledge that the training will provide. If customers perceive that the value of the knowledge outweighs the cost of taking the training, they are likely to participate.