Overcoming the "Ugh, No Way!" factor

As TrainingCity progresses in our efforts to build a "Best of Breed" Virtual Classroom, we increasingly face the challenge of "educating" our customers on the benefits and limitations of VC Training.

One challenge is the balance between "selling" and "critiquing" Virtual Classrooms. How do you convince clients to try Virtual Classrooms when you prefer Instructor Led classroom Training?

At TrainingCity we believe that live Instructor Led classroom Training (ILT) is almost always the "ideal". Virtual Classroom training fits somewhere between ILT and traditional static elearning, where students may, at best, interact with a distant "email help center".

The challenge then is not to "sell" Virtual Classroom training to hesitant clients, but to determine how best to meet their needs.

Virtual Classroom training may make sense for a client with one or two employees who need to attend a specific class offered only in a distant city, clients who cannot travel for medical reasons, or clients who have a team of employees dispersed in various locations throughout the country or the world.

With a dispersed team of say 10 employees, a typical Instructor led class held in one central location would require 10 travel expenses and up to 20 lost employee days spent in transit to and from the training location. Virtual Classroom training for a team like this offers a significant Cost/Benefit ratio when the lost productivity is factored against the limitations of a Live, fully interactive Virtual Classroom.

There is no "one size fits all" solution when it comes to training. The key is to prepare viable alternatives and listen carefully to the clients needs before making a recommendation.