In Search Of The Perfect Training Program

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What do you do when your training program doesn't train? It happened to Control-o-fax Corp. a Waterloo, Iowa, company that develops and distributes accounting systems for health-care professionals. For more than a decade, the company marched employees through its homegrown sales and sales-management seminars at a rate of up to 275 participants a year -- only to realize last year that neither the trainees nor the company were getting all they could out of it.

"Most trainees could go through the basic sales course, spend six months in the field, and come back to our advanced course -- still not knowing the basics of selling," says Matthew Mieszkowski, manager of sales training. "They could tell a doctor everything about Control-o-fax systems -- but they had trouble closing the sale."

Mieszkowski went shopping for a prepackaged training program, and, like others before him, he found the task confusing.

"There's an incredible range of programs available," says Philip Jones, editor of Training magazine. Training's annual "Marketplace Directory," published each August, lists more than 1,000 training companies and consultants. Some do nothing but tailor-make training programs to a company's needs, but most sell prepackaged programs, or advise companies on which ones to buy.

Prepackaged training can be anything from a short course built around a single movie (for example, a 34-minute, edited version of the World War II film, Twelve O'Clock High [distributed by Films Inc. of Willamette, Ill.] is said to be a great motivator for managers) to multifaceted programs that can stretch over days or even weeks. Training subjects and techniques range from A to Z, and teaching tools include books, cassette tapes, slides, and interactive video or computer software.

This is big business, Jones says. "Organizations with more than 50 employees spend $2.95 billion on materials and equipment to train 33.4 million working Americans each year -- and salaries for trainers aren't in there." That $2.95 billion, he says, could represent as little as 10% of what companies actually spend on training.

To select the "right" program from this maze, Jones advises, start as Mieszkowski did -- by identifying what training needs exist and how much you can afford to spend. With prices as low as $5 for a book, and less than $100 to rent a movie, companies with modest training needs can get by for well under $1,000. But more sophisticated tools, such as video or software, can cost up to $5,000, and companies with extensive training programs serving many employees can find themselves spending up to several hundred thousand dollars.

"Unless you figure out your problem, you're not going to find the solution in a training program," Jones says. "You could end up spending too much, too little, or you could find out that what you've got is a motivation problem, or a working-conditions problem -- something for which training isn't usually the answer."

Jones says that is why it is often advisable to invest in a consultant who knows the training ropes and who can conduct that sort of needs assessment. A less expensive option, however, is to take advantage of a relatively new phenomenon called the retail training store. Such operations can be found in Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Princeton, N.J.

"There are places where you can get advice on what's available," Jones says, "and get it from somebody who doesn't have a vested interest in any particular prepackaged program." Each center commonly represents dozens of training providers, and can pull samples off the shelf for previewing without the cost and delay of ordering them from the companies. Some of these enterprises report that customers fly in from across the country to take advantage of this one-stop shopping.

But most retail training stores specialize in filmed or taped programs -- not the comprehensive, multimedia packages that some companies seek. For them, the selection process becomes a matter of searching ads and directories (such as Training's for candidate programs, or soliciting advice from professional organizations representing trainers and training providers (such as the Instructional Systems Association in Boston). Trade or industry associations often collect information on prepackaged training programs as well.

Mieszkowski went the more circuitous route, and last January, he settled on a Xerox Learning Systems prepackaged course called Professional Selling Skills II. Xerox's programs, like the training courses of many other major providers, use workbooks, cassette tapes, and interactive videotapes and disks, and they are meant to train small groups of people in seminars lasting two to three days.

The $100,000 cost of a year's materials raised a few eyebrows at Control-o-fax; after all, it necessitated a 50% hike in the training budget. But what troubled Control-o-fax executives more was the fact that the package was, well, a package. Some suggested that it would be more effective if Mieszkowksi would customize the course to better reflect company products and policies, but Mieszkowski disagreed. "By doing that, you're switching the emphasis from the selling skill itself, to product knowledge." Not that he has anything against product training; Mieszkowski says he is all for it -- after trainees master the basics of selling. Too much concentration on product knowledge too soon is what weakened Control-o-fax's previous training efforts, Mieszkowski says, "and we'd be crazy to make that mistake again."