This article will walk you through the benefits of using the CRM to track and manage training projects and how to setup and use training projects.
Training Projects
As a company your customers may be required to be trained on your products. This could be:
How to use your equipment
How to effectively communicate the benefits of your products to consumers
The Benefits
The benefits of training are:
Better product knowledge for customers
Better product loyalty
These benefits will be transferred to the end user, leading to increased brand awareness and sales for you. Training shouldn’t be considered a one-time activity, however, it should be something that you are doing annually and proactively working with your customers so that they're geared up for their annual training session and coming to you for additional training throughout the year when new colleagues start or new products are added.
[Add screenshot of Training Project report showing revenue for trained and not trained customers]
Use Cases
You can use the CRM to:
Track and manage your customer's training requirements.
Report on customers that are due for their annual training session.
Report on revenues based on customers that have been trained and those that have not been trained.
Training Project Setup
The best and most effective way to track training is to use a problem record. Training records can be logged under companies, contacts and even opportunities and quotes. The best practice is to raise training under a contact, you can use the related tab to include all of the contacts that were trained.
Please use the steps in the Set up your Problem Pipelines & Statuses guide to create a Training Project problem pipeline so that you can track your training sessions. If you conduct different types of training sessions, then use the Analysis field to track the type of training that was provided, this could be:
Face-to-face or virtual
One-to-one or group
Technical or customer focused
Full training or a refresher session
You should use the Analysis to categorise your training sessions so that it is relevant to your company and what you want to measure.
[Add screenshot of Analysis field configured with the options listed above]
Your training pipeline should be brief and only have 3-4 statuses i.e. Schedule, Prep, Deliver, Feedback.
Schedule – This is where you would confirm a date for the training session. Use an email template and a booking system like Calendly to make this as easy as possible.
Prep – Ensure that you have everything needed to conduct your training session.
Deliver – This is where you actually deliver your training session.
Feedback – Use an email template to get feedback from the attendees.
[Add screenshot showing Training Project pipeline]
You will use the training problem pipeline when:
You have identified a customer that needs training.
A customer has contacted you to request training.
Output
Your Training Project pipeline should include the following items:
Training problem pipeline.
Update to the Analysis field
Training scheduled this next week/ this month
Training completed last week/ this month
Next training session due in the next three months.
Total revenue this year for customers trained and not trained
[Add screenshot of Training Project report]
Your Training Project pipeline is something that you can go ahead and setup yourself. If however, you would like us to setup your Training Project pipeline for you then please get in touch and we would be happy to help you.