Selling Autism Courses & Programmes

Today, I want to talk about something that floods my email inbox, my LinkedIn inbox, and comes up all the time whenever I'm on Zoom calls all the way through the week. That question is “Why can't I sell my training?” So I wanted to compress a lot of frequently asked questions into this really handy blog that you can take immediate value from.

It doesn't necessarily come down to pricing. Everyone always asks the same thing,

"Is my training too expensive?” "Is it too cheap?" No. Get out of that mindset, get out of the mindset of the price. What you need to get into the mindset of is the value that your training brings, not only for the information contained within it, but from the actionable takeaways that the staff or recipients, or the company purchasing your training can gain from it.

I've worked with businesses that charge tens of thousands for their training and development programmes. I've also worked with startups and smaller training operations that charge into the hundreds for their training. So the first thing that stops people from buying training from you, is because it's not relevant to them. 

Let's face it. Let's not hide from this topic. Pretty much anyone with their heart in the right place can set up a training company, can incorporate it, throw some PowerPoint slides together, and then try and pitch it to companies. For some people it works, if you're a naturally gifted salesperson, but more often than not, those companies are found out very, very quickly, and don't tend to last very long.

So what is the first thing that any training provider needs to do? The first thing is that you need to nail down the very specific niche of whom you are selling your training to, because everyone has a mission to help more autistic people manage within the workplace environment. But what workplace environment is that? Is it the tech industry? Is it the education industry? Is it the culinary industry? I mean, who knows? Who knows?

If you have a very specific niche for your training, that you can sell it to easily, to a decision-maker who feels that your training is relevant, it's going to make this journey so much easier for you. So much easier.

I get a lot of questions, people saying, "You know, I have talked to huge corporations that are worth hundreds of millions and they won't buy my training." The reason why they're not buying your training is that it's not relevant to them. It's not relevant, it doesn't matter how cost-effective it is, what matters is that you don't pitch your training in terms of the cost, you pitch it on what value the recipients are going to get out of it, and ultimately how the price of your training isn't a price, it's an investment, you're creating and fostering a culture change within that niche that you're working in.

At the moment, I'm actually working with a great company that has a very specific niche

with the travel industry. That's a good niche where the training can be tailor-made within the challenges that autistic and neurodiverse people face when it comes to the travel industry. So whenever that training is being pitched to hotels, airports, any travel and leisure industry business, then it's immediately going to be relevant, and the value they're going to get out of that will be seen in a much more favourable light than what the price of it actually is. This is from a consultancy basis.

I can't say this enough, I sound like a broken record when I'm working with the companies that I work with, the training has to be relevant. Yes, there are autistic people everywhere, but a one-size-fits-all training programme isn't going to work. It's not going to fly and it's not going to sell. Unless you're incredibly charismatic, incredibly charming, and are a wonderful salesperson. And if you're all of those things, that's wonderful, but that's only going to get you so far, believe me, I've been there.

So with NTI, for example, I have a very specific niche in that my training, the NTI schools training, is rolled out to mainstream schools with autistic children in them, in very specific places. So that makes our training easier to sell, and if you do that for your industry and who you're tailor-making your training for, it's going to make it easier for you to sell as well. I can't stress that enough, always be relevant.

Jude Morrow

Neurodiversity Training International

www.neurodiversity-training.com