Companies spend more than $366.2 billion globally each year to develop their people — making the corporate training space one of the biggest (and easiest) opportunities for you to expand your revenue as a consultant, coach, speaker, author, expert or owner of a professional services firm.

Even large corporations, which typically employ a sizable team of in-house trainers, continue to outsource more than half (54 percent) of their instruction and facilitation needs to external experts, like you.

With that said, there are only so many hours in a day — and only so many flights you want to be on. So there comes a time when offering train-the-trainer workshops might make a lot of sense for your business.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of train-the-trainer, this is when you train other people on how on to deliver your training content. And while on one hand that does mean giving up some element of control over your materials, on the other hand, the business benefits often far outweigh the downside.

 

Top 5 Benefits to Offering Train-the-Trainer Programs

1. It opens up additional and lucrative revenue streams for you.
2. It allows you to make money without requiring your presence — which is the true marker of owning a company versus merely being self-employed.
3. It makes you more attractive to large organizations when they know you have the ability to scale to meet their needs.
4. It allows you to reach more people with your expertise and thus have a bigger impact in the world.
5. It elevates your brand in the marketplace.

 

The 3 Train-The-Trainer Models You Can Leverage In Your Business

Depending on your business goals as well as what opportunity you’re seeing in the market, there are a few different ways you can go with train-the-trainer programs. Here are the three most common models.

 

Model #1: Train-the-Trainer for Your Clients

You can train employees inside of specific companies (i.e. your corporate clients) how to deliver your content. Typically this happens when either you’ve already delivered a handful of trainings for your client, and they want the ability to offer the training to more employees inside of their company without always having to book you to do it.

It also happens when they want to engage you only for the content development (or content sitting on your shelf) — and they want to handle all the facilitation of the training themselves.

 

Model #2: Train-the-Trainer for Your Bench

The word “bench” is a term we use here at BoldHaus to describe independent contractors who work for your firm if and when you need them. The term “bench” comes from a concept in the sports world, where a team, such as a basketball team, pulls players off the bench and puts them in the game when they are needed.

Bench members can be a smart way to expand your bandwidth without having full-time employees on your payroll. And training these folks how to deliver your proven training content is a great way to expand your reach and revenue potential — particularly if you have bench members located in different cities.

Of course, if you do have full-time employees, the train-the-trainer model would apply there as well.

 

Model #3: Train-the-Trainer for Certified Professionals  

Another train-the-trainer model comes into play when your training content is such a hit that other experts who don’t work for you would like to deliver your content to their clients.

This model requires some type of licensing agreement to be in place — so you’ll want to work with your attorney should you decide to go in this direction. Once the other professionals have completed your train-the-trainer program, and assuming they meet your standards in content mastery and delivery skills, you would then certify them to use your content with their own clients, and you receive compensation when they do.

 

What To Include In Your Train-The-Trainer Program

An important thing to understand is that delivering a train-the-trainer workshop to potential instructors is not the same thing as delivering your training content as you normally would to regular participants.

To walk you through exactly what you’ll need to include in your train-the-trainer workshops, here’s a video from Tara Powers, Senior Faculty of Corporate Training Programs here at BoldHaus. Tara is also CEO of Powers Resource Center — a nationally recognized firm delivering award-wining training programs to the Fortune 500 and mid-market space for 20+ years.

 

Plus, here’s what else Tara covers for you:

• The secrets to ensuring your clients are retaining what you’re teaching them in the train-the-trainer workshop
• Exactly how to calculate how much time you need to allocate for your train-the-trainer workshop
• Savvy up-sells to offer your clients so they can get even better results — and you can make more income
• And a bunch of other can’t miss tips on putting together effecting train-the-trainer programs.

 

With the right playbook, you can create a powerful train-the-trainer system that allows you to grow your revenue and scale to the next level. It’s a powerful tool that has helped several of our clients step away from being self-employed and fully into the role of CEO.

Have a question about train-the-trainer programs? Drop us a note below. And if you found this article helpful, please share it on LinkedIn!

 

About Tara Powers

Senior Faculty, Corporate Training Programs
BoldHaus

Tara Powers is BoldHaus’ Senior Faculty for Corporate Training Programs, as well as CEO and Founder of Powers Resource Center — a nationally recognized and award-winning firm that has developed and delivered corporate training programs to the FORTUNE 500 and mid-market space for more than two decades.

Her client list includes McDonald’s, The World Bank, Aflac, Virgin America, Caterpillar, Western Union, Mrs. Fields Cookies, Philips, DISH Network, Crocs and many more.

In fact, Tara is so good at developing training programs for big companies, that for 4 years running, her firm has been a Top 10 Leadership 500 Award winner by HR.com — right next to big brand names like Hilton, Honda and MIT.

Tara is also a judge for one of the biggest corporate training award competitions in the world: the coveted Brandon Hall Excellence Awards. AND on top of all of that, Wiley tapped her to write one of their newest books in their infamous “For Dummies” series: Virtual Team for Dummies.