If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. I need to add if you think training is expensive try bad training. It has been observed that over 90% of all lessons learned in training are lost within three months. It is called burning your training money in three months. Many people use this as an excuse to cut on training and development budgets. Unfortunately companies that struggle most train least, consequently they struggle more. A vicious cycle.
However, an organization you can drastically improve results in a big way if it focuses on doing training the right way.


Before the Course
A lot of training initiatives fail at what happens before the training. Many firms believe the most important preparation they can do is a training needs analysis. While TNA is an important step in preparing for training, many firms conduct it on their own without the involvement of the trainers who will deliver the training course.
It is important the evaluate the factors that necessitate the need for training. Not all competency gaps can be addressed through training. It is important to pick them from the ones that require training. When you involve a professional trainer who has expertise in his area he could give advice on the best way to approach so as to address the problem.
Many firms that come to us seeking sales training do so because their sales performance is unsatisfactory. On carrying out the evaluation of their situation we find out that most of their issues cannot be addressed through training. There performance could be an issue of wrong people in the right jobs, insufficient management systems, lack of adequate sales strategies, non-existent sales processes among others. The sales skills are just one of the many issues that require sorting out.

Course Design
Many trainers have one course that they deliver to every other organization. Customization of content is a key element in course development. The content must be tailored to the training objectives, the skill level of the team and the general context of the organization.
One the biggest challenges in the world of training is when trainers develop a great training programm and get organizations to take as it is in form and content. It is agreeable that there are many great courses out there. But however good a program is it requires customization for it to have maximum impact on specific organization especially at the point of application.
Trainers who desire to give the best value for their clients will go out of their way to understand the internal and external context of the organization in order to develop the most effective course content as well as a delivery plan to achieve the training objectives.

The Morning After
What happens after the training is more important than what happens during the training. A well designed course must have strategies, activities and tools that will ensure that the lesson learned are reinforced post the training as well as applied as they were learned.
The feel course evaluation at the end of training can only measure how much the participants were entertained but very inadequate as a tool to measure the effectiveness of a training programm. The best measure is the behavior change after the training. When preparing for a training you would want to be sure that the trainer has a plan on how you are going to get maximum application of skills learned post the training. He may not be responsible for what happens after the training but he needs to give what you require so that you can maximize your returns on training investments.



Sam Kariuki is a Business Growth Strategist, Consultant and Trainer with Growth Partners.  Contact us on sam@growthpartners.co.ke  or call 020  8012627/ 0721303864 for more details.