Incorporating a B2B offering within your organization or transitioning to a selling model which is B2B can be an effective way to unlock the next level of success for your company.

When we last held an event of our "Level Up by Plus" series, we had a conversation with Paul Thomson and Simon Durant. They talked about practical and tangible strategies to increase and enhance the B2B services you offer.

If you're an entrepreneur from B2C looking to transition into a B2B selling model or are in a bigger company that is looking to incorporate an online educational component in your product Paul's clear guidance will provide the practical B2B ways to begin.

Selling journeys for B2B

It is exhausting to sell constantly. If you're involved in the field of creating online classes, it's very easy to be obsessed with "selling" and finding ways to extend your audience. It takes a significant amount of resources, time and effort, especially when lots of energy is put into selling a less expensive program.

To get away from the cycle of selling it's crucial to establish an effective sales process which adapts to the demands of your business. It's going to ensure your conversions are consistent and help you grow your business and help to create an aligned strategy for everyone that is involved.

Prior to launching your B2B offering or refining your B2B service There are common mistakes to avoid

• Reinventing the wheel Try to not reinvent the wheel. If people enroll in online courses, they believe that they need to create an entirely new idea and reinvent the wheel from scratch. Be reminded that you don't have to begin from scratch, particularly if you've already built an efficient B2C company.
• Don't "Ready or Fire": Once you've chosen the topic of your course be sure to not wait until the day you start the course before you consider the best way for your course to be integrated into your overall corporate plan.
• Don't give up until you've reached the edge of success: The most vital thing to keep in mind when you're starting out within the B2B sector is to never abandon the cause - you'll find yourself only one step to success. A single agreement, just one vendor or salesperson can be what makes the B2B offering a success.

The lifetime value of a Student Framework(tm)

The model is comprised of three components: Systems, Sales, and students. By focusing on these areas it allows companies to function and perform at scale while creating authentic user experiences. Start by making stunning content that appeals to your target audience. After you've got them on board it's important to make sure you've got the proper methods in place for moving students from one item to another, as an escalator once you've made them fans of your content. To do this, you'll require "systems at the front as well as the back which can alert and guide students to take action at the appropriate moment," Paul says. Paul says that they want to "incentivize students to purchase the next model" by providing a memorable experiences.

The framework is designed to help you support the students who are just beginning their studies. The framework also assists them in having transformational experiences so you can give them more offerings and services into the future. Many companies and organizations have taken this route and pioneered the use of online education methods and discovered ways to draw students.

Three methods to enhance your visibility in the B2B market

1. Implementing a successful customer strategy
2. The company offers an additional benefit to maintain customers and to reduce the number of customers who abandon. To reduce the rate of customer churn
3. Using certifications, accreditations, and alliances to speed up the growth of your business and extend your reach in the B2B industry

1. Implementing a Customer-Success Strategy

It is important to keep your mind on the fact that you're doing amazing work within the way you offer the goods and services you supply along with your experience. Integrating online classes and online learning into your enterprise will help you create ways to improve your customer' satisfaction. It can also enhance your existing offerings with new products and services, you can provide more benefits for your customers and expand your business.

What was the process by which "Echosec Systems" executed a successful customer strategy

Echosec Systems created a customer education facility that is an integral part of their onboarding process for employees and also serves as a dual purpose to their company.

The most important questions to think about when considering the effectiveness of the strategies that are geared towards the needs of the customers comprise:

• What are the benefits of workshops to help build your firm?
• What role, purpose or challenge could these training courses help to solve within your organization?

   2. An additional incentive to keep customers in the store and reduce the chance of them returning

There is already a way to support your business. An item, service, or another method of helping your customers, clients or students. Making an extra offer available can be a great way keeping your customers and reduce the amount of turnover. Courses on training can be excellent ways to offer the extra reward to your customers in addition to reducing the likelihood that they will leave your company.

What is it? Lansa, a low-code programming platform, implemented the "additional option"

At Lansa The team had to address a concern in spite of the abundant amount of documentation written, the team had to deal with the request of clients and prospective customers to provide the formal introduction of their platform. Customers needed assistance in learning how to make use of the platform.

Prior to using the Plus Lansa team, Lansa utilized an approach that incorporated time-mentorship in order to instruct new users on how to use their software and to share their best practices. This can take an enormous amount of time and also resources in the form of a huge amount.

• Think about that Lifetime student Value Framework for a few seconds and the purpose behind it, which is to create an ecosystem: you want your clients, students as well as potential customers to feel at ease in a real and healthy approach that will bring profits for your business, and helps them stay in your systems for longer. It is important to provide an overall experience that ensures that your customers are committed to your service or product.

The best questions to ask yourself while analyzing the possibility using an "additional offer" to decrease churn within your organization include:

• My customers are leaving or outgrowing my company?
• What program could I design in my company to ease the load?

3. Utilizing accreditations, certifications, along with partnerships, for expansion and to increase impact in the B2B market

Even if your business is currently growing and expanding It is important to expand the reach of your enterprise and increase your growth beyond your services to your students, clients, or clients through the use of courses and the advancement of the certification, accreditation as well as other programmes with partners.

How IntelyCare has increased its capacity and enhanced its capabilities above the current offerings for business through gaining accreditation and certification

The IntelyCare team IntelyCare designed a course that is in line with their company that was capable of teaching more than a million students efficiently and in a speedy manner. Additionally, the team utilized certificates, and utilized social media as important forms for assisting students in their learning.

The key to success is incorporating the accreditation or certification into your B2B service . It is an excellent method to speed up your business's growth in the B2B Market. People want to learn something new, and they want proof they've acquired the knowledge and kept up-to-date information in order so that they can use it for job purposes and also for questions about the compliance. A certificate from an official source is a method to provide your students and clients the opportunity to prove the expertise of safety, expertise, and knowledge you have taught them through your courses.

 How Keap expanded its growth and more extensive capabilities that go beyond the current services through partnership

Since the Keap members were responsible of assisting their customers in the integration of their platform with their partnership in the onboarding process by using Plus.

The most important lesson is that Keap was already a thriving platform, they increased the development of their business through expanding into new markets and also tried to attract new customers that they had no access to. They relied on their partners to defend them and then implement their platform in their name through the process of Partnerships.

Some good questions to ask yourself while analyzing the use of using certifications, accreditations, and partnerships to accelerate expansion and increase your presence inside the B2B marketplace are:

• Which B2B Acceleration path would be the most beneficial for my company right now?
• Does my company stand to gain from Certificates and Accreditations, or partnerships?

How to iterate and grow your offerings for B2B in a larger scale. from the trenches of Simon Dunant

In the last part of our Level Up with Plus session We discussed the topic together with Simon Dunant, Director of Online Learning at Engaging Networks. Simon is an active users of Plus and has a solid background in online education and over 25 years experience in the tech industry. Simon is the director of the network of online learning academies at Engaging Networks. It's the leading SaaS platform that is used by non-profits for marketing and fundraising. He is in charge of the development, curating and delivery of training for customers and certification for partners of customers and their agency partners all over all over the world.

Simon is the manager of Engaging Network's Staff Academy, helping the firm provide security and compliance training for its employees. Simon has over decade of B2B experience and B2C interactions including the coaching of training and mentorship coaching through in-person, online, and on-demand content at leading global companies and conferences.

If you're thinking of the possibility of implementing strategies to expand and improving the B2B services you provide, Simon offers some tips from the viewpoint of someone who's gone through these last four years working in online training , both as a consultant, and also as an employee who is accountable for the delivery of online training and building the customer education department within Engaging Network from the ground up and migrating to Plus by 2021.

What online learning options can incorporate into company's plans and objectives?

When Simon first joined Engaging Networks, the company was looking to develop an online educational platform to both partners and customers. Initially, the goal of Engaging Networks was to offer an online, scalable customer education system that would turn the customers into proficient users of their software , which allowed the company to improve retention rates, draw new customers and decrease the amount of time employees spend on onboarding when they expand their company.

The principal goals that were the focus of Engaging Networks' online platform to learn were:

• To educate clients about their product and to provide top practices to their clients within the digital world
• for training customers on the use of the tools and platforms that enable them to use effectively and achieve the needs of the organization.

One of the key problems that faced Engaging Networks was to be capable of delivering courses quickly due to their fast-paced course development cycle and the frequent changes to the features released every six to eight weeks. It was crucial for them to be competent in creating and updating courses that align with release dates in order to educate their customers about the most effective ways to utilize them, and also make sure that they are delivering value to their clients.

The benefits of an online school When it came to reducing times for onboarding at Engaging Networks, starting an academy led to a reduction in the amount of work required by account managers and support teams. The online academy can mean that the majority of repetitive instructions that support teams have to undergo when taking on new customers through the use of self-paced classes, which will allow the account managers as well as support teams to spend more 1-on-1 time with their clients.

It is the creation of a partner network through the establishment of the accreditation and certification program

Engaging Networks built a community of marketing and non-profit organizations who are interested in working together in order to implement their platform. They created a partnership network by implementing an academy online for agency professionals that could accredit and certify their members.

The main advantages of partnerships and accreditationinclude:

• Accredited partners can be a crucial part of helping to implement a platform, product, or service, as well as in training clients on its use.
• Accredited partners can aid their clients with the delivery of their projects and also refer prospective customers to an organization.

Accredited partners have managed to improve Engaging Networks' partner program. Prior to the establishment of an academy specifically for agencies, it was impossible to develop a common method to guarantee the high quality of the partner programs Engaging Networks provided to its clients, as well as they weren't sure about what the experience would be.

Engaging Networks saw an opportunity to train their partners, credit and verify them in order to establish better relationships with their partners. They could establish a strong partner network through companies they had identified as working with their tools, and were well-aware of their frameworks. They felt confident that their certified partners knew everything about the program as they had received certification through the academy's online education.

From the beginning of your course to instructions, speedily

In the case of a bigger enterprise there is a possibility that you require short timeframes to design courses around an ingenuous product or service function. If this is the case, Plus, Simon advises taking advantage of the bulk importer in order to build many course components at one time and to upload videos in bulk and develop lessons in an outline format.

In the case of building your course, you're capable of filming all your videos in one go, upload them, and create a course from beginning to finish , having a set deadline. It allows you to devote greater time to the design of the material that will be included in your course while making sure that the course is delivered and meet the goals you have outlined.

It's helpful not to spend too much time on administering hosting, hosting, and changing the platform, rather than providing the information that you've gained from your writing. The platform assists in this process.

Transition from B2C B2B

If you are working with a B2C students, courses will usually revolve to focus on a single theme. If you're the creator of training courses, you will have more independence and different stakeholders to be accountable to. In the case of B2B, it is important to take into consideration the training you provide is a kind of training service in conjunction with another business, you will have many more departments and individuals that you must answer to. Therefore, it's essential to take into consideration the business which you are working with or are part of. Who you work with, whether an external consultant or an internal employee working within B2B. B2B setting, it is likely to involve more extensive training as well as the necessity for more subjects and courses in addition to rigorous compliance requirements.

There are key distinctions between B2C and B2B

• There's a larger range of stakeholders to consider: when running a company, you'll encounter an array of internal stakeholders that which you need to interact with and interact with. There may be a need to talk to the manager of customer service at the firm along with the marketing staff and support personnel for customers or sales engineers as well as sales representatives to gain insights into how best to offer instruction to your customers.
• It is possible that you'll have to expand your selection of courses: When you are in a conference room to design a class and you're going to instruct an entire class, you may require a change to how you teach your students on the subject you are teaching them about. B2B is also able to have a wider selection of course offerings in addition, and you could find your business with realizes the importance of having a course in training and wishes to broaden their selection of courses and training courses that are available to a variety of users including clients, partners, employees, as well as other audiences.

A few ideas for content management for B2B

• Make use of a software for managing projects to control course content If you're working in a B2B scenario, you could need to keep updating the course content to keep up with the evolving requirements of your company. needs. It's beneficial to use the project management tools like Asana as well as Trello to track your progress and the content they contain along with modifications that were put into place over time. They will require changes later on.
• Make sure you collaborate with your company's internal teamswhen creating a B2B course It is crucial to have an understanding of your business' retention strategies, onboarding as well as partnership plans and educational methods. Talking to experts in the field within the business with specialized knowledge can help you gain knowledge for your courses and the training you're building. Asking about their "buy-in" and requesting the input of their experts to incorporate into your training will be extremely beneficial when you're developing your training offerings.

Choosing an LMS which is adaptable and expands with your requirements

With Engaging Network's previous LMS it was easier to do administrative tasks that needed to be accomplished before creating classes. By using Plus as their brand-new learning management system Simon has been capable of reducing approximately 30% of his time to and be able to put his time into creating content.

Selecting an online education platform that is easy to use and adaptable, as well as the ability to design courses quickly gives you to expand the number of customers you serve as well as having separate areas for learning or websites for teaching your students. Before joining Plus, Engaging Networks had an extensive Academy which served customers as well as partners and other different stakeholders. With the help of Plus, they've created numerous Academies that serve different stakeholders and are focused in tailoring the learning experience specifically to their demands.

A further benefit of Plus used in a B2B setting is that with the use of various learning spaces, you, as well as many employees of the organization are able to monitor the development of your clients, employees and partners separately in their learning journey.

For this scenario, an HR manager is able to log in to the platform to receive notifications regarding the progress made by employees who have completed the onboarding process. The Customer Success Manager is able to login to the Learning Environment to provide customer education and be aware of the extent to which employees are being taught by the about the clients of the company.

Tips for starting your initial B2B class

• Be sure to focus on a company's most pressing needs. When you are creating your first B2B business, the most important factor to consider is to have your course's first focus on the most pressing needs of the business that you're working with. In this case, if the business you'll promote your course is currently experiencing issues with employee onboarding then start at the beginning.
• Get feedback from your students and clients Request feedback from both your students and clients can be one of the most effective ways you will be able to improve your next course offerings and continue to improve your B2B offerings. Remember that launching your initial course may cause fear. Make sure you are prepared and taking the most effective steps you could for your first class. You should be constantly asking for feedback from your students, and then incorporate your feedback into the next version. This way, you can continue to improve the quality of your teaching every time you launch.
• Utilize surveys or focus groups, as well as checking-ins with customers: It's helpful to make use of surveys, focus groups and forums for community members for gathering feedback. In order to stay in contact with your clients and their needs, it is helpful to create a questionnaire for your clients every 6 months to ask questions about the experiences they have had in your class and how you could help them better by providing them with information.

KeepingTrack Of Reporting Early on:

As you build and launch your initial B2B offering, make sure that you are receiving data from your students. Use reporting tools on your platform to track the performance of your students and how they're engaging with your class, as well as determining the areas where you can improve.

The most important metrics are important to pay attention to are:

• Students who are been registered
• Course Enrolments
• The number of courses started
• Completed courses
• Complementary Rate
• Last login of the student

The patterns you see in the report as well as in the measures you choose to use will give you insights into the way the material you've created is working for your students. You can also determine when to adjust. If you use the software, you are able to download the report data each week, in order to stay up-to-date on the latest information, as well as build an index of measurements.

How to Stay On The Learner's Journey with a clear mind

• Offer suggestions about your ideas for what you'd like know the next time.
     One effective method to increase and broaden your B2B offerings when you are expanding the range of courses you offer is to supply your students with guidance about what they need to learn next. On your course progression as well as completion pages, you can to provide suggestions for the classes which your students should take next to increase their understanding of a certain subject.
• Get creative with the App Store
     Another method to keep your students interested and engaged in the studying process is to explore the options available in the App Store. There are a variety of apps to diversify the educational experience of your students and take it beyond video and text lectures and tests.
• Introduce micro-learning in order to ensure that the students are engaged    
     In an B2B setting, including micro-learning is a great way to keep students engaged. Make sure to limit every video you use in your class to a maximum of fifteen minutes and every class should be at least two hours. This will allow your students to follow through on their learning journey with greater involvement and keep the rate of completion for your students to the highest level.
• Make use of actual case studies from real life
     Giving your students examples and cases studies about the subjects they've learned about at the end of your lesson allows them to put their knowledge to the test and contemplate the ways in which their knowledge can be used in real-world situations.

Key Takeaways For Building Your Online Learning Education Strategy

• Design your course. Make it clear to prospective clients that there is value in the service you offer and that your course will help to achieve the goals of business clients.
• Your course must tackle a specific issue that the potential client is currently facing Create specific KPIs for your course, and also define your problem that you want to solve to demonstrate that your course is worth the effort and value your course.
• Get feedback from customers and continue improving and refine the B2B services once they're available to the public
• Start thinking bigger and also think about additional learning and courses that you can offer to your business, thereby broadening your growth as a course creator .
• Do your best to work with your client. Make a a habit of being attentive to the report

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