Selling People Development Training: A Perspective

Just training, or selling training, or both? For trainer-entrepreneurs and freelance trainers, this is a perennial question, like To Be Or Not To Be. In my fourteen years as a trainer-cum-entrepreneur, I have come to realise the fundamental need to be a Selling Trainer rather than just a trainer where somebody else sells you.

The question is why should anybody sell you? What is the value that you create at the marketplace that others should sell you as a ‘product’? Again, it is about selling – whether you do it yourself or somebody else does it for you.

Many freelance trainers constantly grapple for work mainly because they are reluctant to sell themselves and their courses. “Hari, I can deliver these programs. You sell them for me,” I am constantly told. But the point is I am as much in the same boat as others. I too am looking for more work. It is a common predicament.

Selling is not a bad word and not at all a ‘below-my-dignity’ activity. Many people over the last fourteen years of my entrepreneurial journey have told me that I will get a better price for my programs if somebody else sells me. I have no quarrel with this idea. But my own thinking is that my business is my baby and nobody can talk about it with greater passion and conviction than me. So, selling is not just about getting work, it is more about communicating your worth through focused conversations.

Thus, this is how I look at selling training: ‘Communicating your worth and how you can help people and organisations by developing customised learning-based solutions by engaging in value added conversations’. So, it beats me why would any trainer not want to wholeheartedly do Business Development? If it is just about money and a business model and you need to work smart by getting others to sell you, then that is simply a worldly smart approach. My perspective is that selling is such an opportunity to talk about your work and the value you can create. It is a profession whose worth cannot be measured purely in terms of money earned.

I am in no way denying the importance of money abundance for trainers, but fundamentally, money value is relative. Sometimes, even a lac of rupees for a program is less and even 10,000 is more.

So, it all depends. Selling trainers can not only get more work, they can also build a robust network, and most importantly, build strong one-to-one relationships.

The thing I enjoy the most about interacting with prospective and existing clients is the learning I get out of those conversations. Every industry and every company is unique and the interactions help you share examples in your workshops.

People development trainers should be strongly driven by the desire to add value to self and their participants. Selling is fundamentally not about asking for work. It is more about understanding client needs and engaging in value added conversations.

Selling is just that – Having Conversations, and therefore, if understood in this way, why should anyone have any issues with selling themselves and their programs? ?

So, essentially, to make this world a better place, which is what we are into, we need more Selling Trainers, and not just trainers.