Having a strategic plan plays a major role in landing a successful business training session. You can strongly inspire and educate your trainees when you create and pivot to unconventional but relevant topics that will expand their knowledge and improve their skills.
For you to come up with an agenda, here are some key points to consider:
Set your goals for the session:
One of the best approaches to make your goals clear to your attendees is by sending them an invitation along with a few questions about the topic as well as the list of agendas that will be covered on the day of the training. Those questions you sent will be considered as a “pre-work” wherein they will be ready to provide possible answers or solutions to the problems you gave regarding the needs of the business. In the same way, their interests are already hooked up.
So, for example, you want to market training for an Auto Detailing Service to foreign customers who want to establish a business as part of their Singapore PR Application. If your objective is to make them understand how this kind of business would help them with their purpose as well as to teach them everything from initial inspection to cleaning and restoring process, you may roll out these brief tests of knowledge and experience:
- Is the mobile detailing business profitable in Singapore?
- How Auto Detailing is Beneficial to the Vehicle Owner
- What are the different components in auto detailing?
Outline your topics to hit your goals:
In presenting the overview of the topics you would like to share, be specific to make everything clear to your trainees. Emphasize what you are trying to teach, and what skills you want to hone. What issues and subjects to discuss in order to achieve your goals? Also, take into consideration the time you need to spend on each concept or theory.
For instance, you prefer a Detailing Business and your goal is to help them boost their sales since their line of business is a high-end luxury service. Now, you want to enhance their sales and marketing skills by imparting the best sales techniques. Hence, you may align your discussions through this guideline:
- What are the Dos and Don’ts in Selling Your Service?
- Who are the right people to sell your services to?
- How will you maximize every opportunity through phone skills?
Create interactive ways to facilitate the session:
Always remember that every person has his own strengths and weaknesses in skills and learning pace. So make sure that your training is dynamic so everyone can be on the same page. Create opportunities where they can learn, imitate, and practice. It’s not always about listening, they need to watch you demonstrating the process, they need to interact with their co-trainees, and they need to actualize their learnings.
Let’s say you have a Vet Clinic and you want to impart your mastery about Training Dogs. To get started, you may take a look at these examples:
- Use slide presentations, provide hand-outs and inject some humor when talking about the Dog Training Program. Lectures become smooth with those aids and humor helps maintain enthusiasm at peak levels.
- Implement some games into your dog training course. You have to meet the excitement of the dog owners, hence, learning becomes easier when having fun. Not only the fur mommies and daddies are engaged with the enjoyment but also, most especially, the fur babies!
- Bring your own dog, of course! Execute how you train your dog whether it is positive reinforcement, basic command, or fun tricks. Also, secure your own tools like crates, clickers, or whatever is deemed necessary during the training.
Finding an appropriate space:
Before launching any training, you have to secure an appropriate place. See to it that the location you choose: (1) has available equipment needed, (2) is conducive for learning, (3) spacious enough for the activities, and (3) is accessible to your participants.
If you plan to impose engaging activities such as actual training of dogs or coating cars in the venue, you are required with a bigger space, an outdoor one. Otherwise, you can rent a training room if you don’t have any.
Acquiring the right venue is important in order not to defeat the purpose of your program.
Begin and end the session on time:
Respect other people’s time. Stick to your schedule by starting and ending your sessions on time. Be ready for possible delays caused by other people and the most practical way to deal with it is to prepare for a Q & A Portion. If by chance there are any unresolved issues or questions left unanswered in a timely manner, you may set an appointment with the concerned individual/s. Segment your course for any untackled topics or unperformed relevant activities and reschedule to a later date.
Quantify the success of your session:
The benefits of the training you conducted are immeasurable. Your participant will obtain a new level of understanding in the business and additional skills to materialize the job. However, you need to evaluate if the session was successful for you to know whether your approach in teaching is effective or not.
For you to determine, you may organize self-assessment questionnaires, sskill assessment, post-training quizzes, and informal feedback with your trainees. In that way, you will be able to restructure your program flow and alter your training methods.
Conclusion:
Remember Benjamin Franklin’s quote ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’. Thus, to make your training program succeed:
- Set specific training goals that would fit your business or that of your attendees.
- Formulate agendas that would help you achieve your goals.
- Make training memorable to help them retain more information. Carefully select the type of materials you need to use and the approach you need to implement for a more enjoyable experience, which will keep trainees involved.
- Make sure that your venue is ready – equipment, furniture, space allocation, comfortable setup, location.
- Follow the schedule and be prepared for any unexpected circumstances including delays by having reinforcement schemes.
- Evaluate your training whether the objectives are attained and if the participants enjoyed it. Provide surveys or assessments.
