Setting up your own soft skills training business comes with a lot of advantages; it gives you the freedom to work from the comfort of your home, choose the work timings that best fit your schedule, become your own boss and maintain a great work-life balance. But as easy as it sounds, becoming a training entrepreneur comes with a lot of responsibilities. And the biggest one of them is scaling up your business and expanding your customer base. But with these three very important tips, you will be able to achieve your goals. Read on.
Step 1 – Get Certified
You may have come across a lot of uncertified training entrepreneurs and might have believed that a certification isn’t necessary. Well, this may be true in cases where people gain a lot of industry experience while working at an organization and decide to switch to a soft skills training profile. However, for someone who is just starting or wants an edge above others, a soft skills training certification makes a world of difference. Moreover, in soft skills training program you will be trained in a well-structured manner around creating training content, handouts and activities to train others. It will get you where you wish to be, faster.
Step 2 – Offer Customized Training Solutions
The importance of soft skills training is growing increasingly and this will soon result in a huge number of professionals turning to careers in this field. So how can you stand out from the herd and be identified as more credible even 5 years down the line? A great way to do that is to ditch the ‘one-size-fits-all’ training method and offer solutions customized to the needs of your clients. While all soft skills are every bit important for various professionals, offering solutions that directly contribute to their success is what will help them the most. Here’s how you can do that:
- Understand the unique needs of your client.
- Assess their personality and gauge their shortcomings.
- Create a customized training plan that directly caters to what they expect from the program.
- Discuss the plan with your client and create a roadmap keeping in mind their adaptability.
Step 3 – Market Yourself
To build a good client base, you will have to first build an audience. And to build an audience, you will have to think like a marketer. You will need to look at the world as a marketplace and create business opportunities for yourself. As a soft skills trainer, you will need to be where your audience is and CREATE the need. Many people aren’t aware of the importance of soft skills even today. And to market yourself, you will also have to market the importance of soft skills. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- A major chunk of your audience is on social media. So, create your business profiles on all social media channels and market yourself to the right target audience.
- Create a blog and use it to educate people on how to develop 21st-century soft skills. How you can help people with your expertise will increase your credibility.
- Offer free webinars and workshops to increase your visibility.
- Offer soft skills training free of cost to organizations or people who can market you further, giving you just the right exposure.
If you’d like to take a bigger step towards accelerating the growth of your soft skills training business, find out more about ICBI’s soft skills training course.
