7 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 27 Dec 2023
Share by emailOver the past few weeks, I’ve focused on the different types of products you could incorporate into your business as an independent security professional.
In this article, I’ll focus on online training as a product.
I’ll discuss different market segments for online training, along with some of the challenges you might face as you develop your training products.
At a high level, you’ll have two potential customer segments for your training products: companies and individuals.
Each of these segments has very different needs. You could choose to focus on one segment or both. However, as I’ll describe below, a training solution developed for one may not be appropriate for the other.
In the context of this article, your objective when developing training products is to develop a product that can be sold to multiple companies. There’s a distinction here between training you might develop for a client based on their specific requirements and training you develop that’s suitable for a large number of clients. Tailored training is effectively a consulting service, not a product.
If you intend to develop training solutions for the corporate market, one approach is to identify mandatory training requirements and focus on those. Good examples for most organisations would include basic security awareness and traveller security awareness. However, one of the challenges with this type of training is that it would need to be necessarily generic if you intend to offer the same training module to multiple clients. As such, you may find it difficult to get traction with large customers who will want training to be tailored to their requirements (e.g., they may want the training to include specific policies and procedures).
Another possible approach when considering training for corporate customers is to develop training for their security teams, rather than the entire organisation. The key advantage with this approach is that you don’t have to be so concerned about generic content. For example, you could run training in investigation techniques, crisis management techniques, or security systems design.
Let’s move on to explore training for individuals.
An alternative to offering training for corporate clients is to offer training to individuals.
I’m not suggesting one-on-one training here. Rather, individuals sign up to your training and pay for their own attendance.
You’ll have two options when it comes to offering training to individuals:
Let’s explore each option in more detail.
Pre-recorded training involves you developing one or more training modules, which you’ll then make available online. Individuals can pay for and can attend the training at their convenience.
The key advantage of pre-recorded training is that, once it’s developed and online, you won’t need to allocate your time to delivering the training. As a result, you’ll be able to scale your training, reaching an infinite amount of customers without any additional work on your part other than marketing and promotion.
This model also provides opportunities for growth. Over time, you could expand the number of different training modules you provide. When someone attends one training module, you could send them an automated email recommending related modules. Anticipate the need to update and improve your training modules over time. A good approach would be to ask for participant feedback after each session and incrementally improve your training based on that feedback.
Developing a pre-recorded online training module is a serious endeavour. You’ll need to carefully evaluate your ability to develop a professional product. A professional product will require professional video and audio. To record professional video, you’ll need a good camera and lens. You’ll also need a good lighting set up. To record professional audio, you’ll need a good quality microphone, and perhaps a pre-amplifier or audio interface. You’ll also need to know how to edit audio and video, including such skills as colour grading video, and equalising and de-essing audio. All of these skills can be learned, but learning them takes time. Alternatively, you could pay someone to edit your video and audio. Of course, that would add to your costs.
Another potential downside to pre-recorded training is that participants won’t have the opportunity to interact with you as a trainer. If this factor is important to you, you can consider scheduled online training.
The alternative to pre-recorded training is to offer scheduled online training sessions. Taking this approach, you would develop a training session, then schedule that session for a specific date and time. Individuals would purchase tickets to attend that training session.
You could run multiple scheduled training sessions per year, and can consider providing a number of different modules. A key advantage of scheduled training is that you don’t need to worry about the production factors of the training module. Provided you have well-designed slides and good quality studio equipment, you’ll be able to deliver high quality training.
If you’re running scheduled training sessions, you’ll need to consider the following factors:
Over time, you’ll be able to get a sense of demand and be able to schedule training sessions to meet that demand. Similarly, if you find you’re not getting any interest in your training, you’ll need to either increase your marketing and promotion efforts or scrap the training module and try something different.
You could adopt both approaches. For example, you could develop several 15-minute pre-recorded training sessions, which will not only provide a revenue stream but also an introduction to your work. In addition to these sessions, you could offer a more in-depth online workshop or masterclass, which would be longer, more interactive and engaging. Customers that complete your pre-recorded sessions may decide they want to attend the online workshops, providing you with a pipeline of potential customers.
In terms of your pricing, your short pre-recorded sessions could be inexpensive, while the price of your workshops or masterclasses could be more expensive, reflecting the additional value provided. You’ll also need to account for your time with scheduled training.
The key is to ensure that the pre-recorded sessions offer some value, but not as much as the scheduled online sessions. There should be a significant benefit to customers to attend your longer sessions.
You could also consider a variation on the approaches described above, where you offer training for individuals from companies. In this model, instead of offering your training to a single company, you open up your training sessions to security managers from different companies. You might find you get some traction with this approach, as the individuals attending the training may be able to claim the cost of the training (if they don’t need to pay for the training themselves, they’ll be more likely to be willing to attend).
One of the challenges you’ll find with training is juggling two very different types of customers. Typically, your sales and marketing efforts will be directed at corporate clients. That’s traditionally where the money is with security services. Trying to divide your sales and marketing efforts to address organisations and individuals will be difficult and will require additional work.
Before wrapping up, let’s review a few different aspects to consider when developing training products.
In the sections below, I’ll describe a number of factors to consider when developing training products. Applying these factors will help you to build a useful product.
As with the other products mentioned in earlier articles, one of the keys to your success will be the topic you select for training. As a baseline requirement, there will need to be a demand for the information conveyed in your training. The benefit of the training should be sufficient to enable an individual to justify to their boss why they should attend your course.
If your selected topic is too specialised, you may find you don’t get sufficient interest to make your training products profitable.
There should be a natural synergy between your online training solutions and your other services and products. If you’ve written a book or written articles, it would make sense to focus your online training on the same topics. You can reference your training in your articles. Similarly, people who attend your training may then buy your books.
If you’ve been writing articles or books, you might also find that you have an existing audience that will be interested in learning more
As noted above, you can build related training modules. Customers who participate in one training module should leave the session wanting to participate in others. Over time, you can develop an ecosystem of related products and services.
Training can also provide a segue into higher-value services, including consulting.
Don’t underestimate the time it takes to prepare an online training course. Preparing slides, writing scripts, recording scripts, and editing all takes a significant amount of time. As noted below, a good approach to be efficient with your time is to build on existing training.
In addition, ensure you factor in time for ongoing improvements. If your training modules include case studies, updating these case studies based on recent events is a great way to keep your training current and relevant.
When developing online training, an effective approach is to build on a training package that you’ve already developed and delivered to clients. Ideally, iterate this training package over time to ensure it’s robust. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the training is not associated with a particular client. As you might expect, some clients may not be happy with the idea that you’re taking a product they’ve paid for and trying to sell that for more money. The key here is to ensure that you retain IP rights over your own materials. Some client contracts pass your IP to the client (they paid for it so they own it). That’s okay if the training is delivered specifically based on the client’s requirements. However, if the training is generic, you should retain IP rights so you’re able to re-use the training as needed.
Overall, training products are an effective way to demonstrate your competence in your chosen particular speciality while also sharing your knowledge with others. Delivering training will expose you to a large number of customers. Some of these clients may then go on to purchase other products and services.