Q:
Best webinar ever! Thank you! How did you develop your SME
from 7 to 110?
A:
We first adjusted our attitude about what we thought Subject
Matter Experts were. We had not been developing partnerships
with them, but rather treating them like they were just part of
the class (a book, a classroom, laptop, projector, SME). In
realizing that we did not have a service or product without
them, we began to cultivate these partnerships and establish
protocols, tools and programs that reflected how important they
were to us. We developed guidelines that helped everyone
understand the expectations and level of quality we sought. We
reviewed our instructor fees and made adjustments (typically
upwards) to reflect the high quality of instructors we wished to
attract and make available to our clients. We began to
communicate regularly with our instructor pool, even if we
didn’t have a job for them. We made staff development
opportunities available to them and hosted a forum designed just
for them. We made non-training opportunities available to them
as well (curriculum development projects, train the trainer
projects, in-house consulting, etc.).
It was amazing what happened… in that once we started talking
about high quality instructors, communicating our expectations
clearly, openly communicated and shared opportunities, willingly
paid for the quality we sought… two things resulted… more high
quality instructors sought us out and clients willingly paid for
these high quality services. The value proposition was clear,
that if you work with us you will get high quality services –
and to provide those services we have to have high quality
instructors. Your SMEs are your business! You won’t find a
more committed group of individuals to help you grow the
business as they directly benefit from you being successful. Q:
When you increased your SME's from 12 - 110, how did you do
that? I worry about setting up people but not being able to
supply them with classes.
A:
See above for more details… but to address your concern about
not being able to supply them with classes… I would strongly
recommend you develop a partnership with the ones you have to
help you grow the business. Don’t treat them as passive players
that get to sit back and wait for a job to come their way, but
offer a referral fee to them for bringing business to you while
they are out in the community – or the mention another class at
the end of the session they are currently teaching – going to a
60-40% split with your community ed instructors is a great way
to get their head in the game!
Q:
What's your current annual revenue?
A:
My department’s current annual revenue is just shy of a million
dollars.
Q:
Regarding the comment about interactive website -- is that
where the Lumens product comes in? Or, do you have a
separate website that must be maintained?, What role do
instructors play in determining program mix? Does your sales
person connect with and bring an instructor along on sales
calls to define a scope of work for the client?
A:
We have a separate website for my department that has a link to
the Lumen’s registration site. I was insistent about a separate
website for our department because our audience is so different
from the college’s.
Your institution can have its own
website, with a link directly to Lumens. You can customize a
Lumens landing page (website) with your school colors etc. so it
appears that the student has never left your school website. No
webmaster needed
you have the ability to set this up
on your own.
Instructors do not determine program mix. They are sought in
response to the market needs.
Depending on the complexity of the sales call our salesperson
may bring an SME along to help define the scope of work for the
client. The SME understands up front that this pre-sales work
is a cost of doing business and they cannot collect a fee for
it.
Q:
How much business do you do outside of your immediate area?
Do you go after national business? What % of your product is
delivered face to face vs. 100% online?
A:
We have two regional grants that require us to provide services
to the Inland Empire (a region that covers both Riverside and
San Bernardino Counties). We have delivered statewide contracts
as well. We have not delivered a national contract as of yet,
but have plans to pursue national opportunities in the future.
We do 80% of our business face-to-face. 20% is done online
through our online partners (Ed2Go and Gaitlin).
Q:
How do you compensate your SME’s? In terms of sales person;
how is this person supported, where does funding come from,
what are his/her responsibilities With this organizational
structure how many employees do you have? What is the break
down of each area?
A:
For our SMEs working in community ed, we do a 60-40 split of the
gross (40% for them). For our SMEs working in contract ed, we
pay a negotiated hourly rate. The sales person is paid a
commission only plus a small stipend for mandatory meetings that
are non-direct sales related. That means the funding for the
position comes directly from revenues generated. Their
responsibilities are very straightforward: close business. They
are provided with the brand strategy, marketing plan and we
mutually determine targets to pursue.
In my current organization I have the following number of
employees in the respective areas:
-Leadership: 2 (myself and my
dean)
-Marketing and Sales: 3 (one marketing consultant, one
salesperson, one marketing coordinator)
-Programs and Services: 2 program managers, 75 SMEs (temp
employees or independent
-Logistics: 3 (2 training assistants and one administrative
assistant)
Q:
How often do your e-newsletters go out? What's the avg.
hourly pay for adjuncts or SME’s? What advertising medium do
you prefer?
A:
I have to admit I am behind in the e-newsletter department.
Want them to go out quarterly… have just hired a marketing
coordinator to ensure that happens along with the website
updates.
No average rate for SMEs… depends on what they teach. See
questions 1 & 2 for more info.
I prefer anything electronic for advertising (websites, e-news,
email blasts), but for this community a PSA in the paper seems
to really be the ticket for our community ed programs. I have
stopped mailing schedules to every home… just not a good ROI
there.
Q:
How is the commission structured for your sales person?
A:
This is the current language around compensation in our sales
rep’s contract:
Stipend of $50/hr for attending CTD meetings not directly
related to sales calls – Not to exceed $3,000.00.
Commission Scale
v
15% commission on gross sales amount up to $10,000 of new
contracts and additional contracts with existing clients
v
10% commission on gross sales amount over $10,000 of new
contracts and additional contracts with existing clients
v
5% commission on student fee for Community Education
instructor-led courses
v
No commission for Community Education online courses
v
Contractor will forgo commission in lieu of consulting fees when
Contractor secures a contract for services that the Contractor
is able to, and does, deliver
Q:
How did you get your college administration support the idea
of a commissioned sales person? Are you using Salesforce.com
for your e-blasts? Great job!
A:
We have friends in the business office (really good idea to make
friends there) and made our case that it didn’t cost the college
district anything for us to do this and could, in fact, result
in significant revenue for the college district if it was
successful.
We use a company called e-Mail Networks for our e-blasts.
Q:
Please describe what you mean by an interactive web site and
how you use it for marketing - beyond simply having class
info and on-line registration? Also, what means do you use
to drive people to your website
A:
An interactive website to me means that we have ways built into
the website for people to engage with it, instead of a passive
distribution of information. We are working towards that with
ours at this point, but it is far from the level of
interactivity I would like to see. I want to add a job board
for our SMEs, chat capability and industry blogs. It’s coming…
just takes time
J
To drive people to the website, the web address appears on every
marketing piece you do from an ad to a brochure to your schedule
to your business card. It is the place you send people for more
information about everything (events, classes, what’s happening
in the industry)…
Q:
I
want to learn more about how fiscal accountability is
determined.
A:
I am not certain what the question is here. We develop an
annual budget for the department and monitor it regularly is the
short answer… but I think there is more to this question than
that. If the person wants to be more specific about their
question perhaps I can be more specific in my answer.
Q:
How did you recruit a sales rep? How many people do you have
in each of the functions? What's the commission rate?
A:
We recruited our sales rep by word of mouth. We started talking
to everyone (staff, SMEs, community partners) about our desire
for a commissioned rep. He actually came to us from our SME
pool, but has this incredible sales background working with
training products. See question 6 about staffing and question 8
about commission rate.
Q:
You talked about your unit being a "stand alone" unit. Are
you set up as a non-profit entity? The way we are
established, we cannot carry funds over from one year to the
next, so I was curious as to how you handle that?
A:
We are not a set up as a non-profit entity though I know of two
colleges in CA that were set up that way. Neither is set up
that way now, as I think it is a tough fit in a college
setting. Happy to share my perspectives on this, but can’t do
it in a short answer format.
I have fought the no carry-over battle before… it is a difficult
one, but not insurmountable. Again, this is not a short answer
question as there a several ways to address the issue. Bottom
line you have to figure out to retain funds in your division to
grow the business. Lots of ways to do this, some with
leadership’s support, some without
J.
Q:
Who 'owns' the materials that your SME's use? Do you pay for
the content development?
A:
Depends on who developed the materials. If the SME did, they
own them and I get to use them. If I
paid for the SME to develop them, I own them. And if a client
paid to have them developed, the client owns them. I seldom pay
for content development that is not directly related to a
client’s contract. On occasion I will invest in a product or
pay to have content developed if there is a strong market case
for doing it.
Q:
I
am very interested in the "simplified strategic planning"
(an oxymoron from my experience) framework. Please share the
source of this framework.
A:
I first started working with this framework with an independent
consultant from Northern California – Marc Porter. He had
developed it as a part of his body of work as an organizational
consultant. I know what you mean about the oxymoron… but it
really is much simpler than any other I’ve worked with and
really gets to the heart of the matter quickly instead of
spending all your time on wordsmithing the friggin’ mission
statement.
Q:
How do you identify advisory board
members? How long do they serve, when do they meet, etc.
What type of content is in your e-news? Is it opt-in only or
sent to current students?
A:
For the ISSE (our service sector initiative) our industry
advisory board members from industry actually pay to be members
in the ISSE. It is too much to explain in the short space I
have here, but check out our website at
www.ISSExcellence.com for more info being a member in the
ISSE. The other advisory board members come from faculty from
our service programs in the credit side of the house,
representatives from non-credit and not-for-credit, K-12,
workforce development board, the regional CVA and economic
development agency.
We do not have term limits for their serving on the board. We
meet monthly during our “season” here and are dark for the
summer.
It is an opt-in only newsletter, our e-news for our service sector business has the following
sections:
ISSE
Events
Upcoming Training
Membership
Highlights
Resources
Advisory Board
Contact Us
Q:
Please talk about the role of your SMEs? Do they also teach,
or only develop curriculum? Do you use instructional
designers to compile your curriculum content?
A:
See other responses related to SMEs for answers about the role
of the SME.
We occasionally use instructional designers to compile
curriculum content, but that is not the rule. I have found it
to be much more cost effective to buy curriculum developed by
reputable firms and customize for our clients, than to start
from scratch.
Q:
I
don't know how to do a simplified strategic plan
A:
Call me. Happy to help.
Q:
How do you get existing staff to buy into this concept? How
are the sales people to become knowledgeable enough in so
many areas? What percentages of staffing do you see in each
of the areas between Strategy (20%),
Marketing & Sales (30%), Products & Services
(20% not including SMEs), and Logistics
(30%)?
A:
We got buy in from existing staff by including them in the
strategic framework process and valuing the contributions they
each made… talked to them about how this planning process and
potential reorganization was about making their jobs easier and
finding more opportunities for them to use their strengths.
There is more this clearly, but that’s how we got started.
We train our sales staff to use a consultative sales approach.
In this way they are working with the client to identify those
gaps in the business where performance is not meeting
expectations. Sometimes there is a training solution, sometimes
it’s not. But the sales person needs to be able to hear clearly
what issues the client is facing and then bring those issues
back to the program and product people to identify the solutions
and prepare a proposal.
Q:
Looking at your website I do not see a link your business
and industry training. How do you pay your technical
instructors? Credit and Non-Credit.
A:
Yeah, the college just redid their website (literally launched
it while I was on the webinar with you) and we got buried under
“visitors”… We’re working on rectifying that… but to get to it
directly try
www.codtrainingcenter.com.
I only handle not-for-credit and fee-based instruction. See
questions 6 & 7 for instructor compensation.
4050 Olson Memorial Highway Suite 245
Golden Valley, Minnesota 55422-5353
info@augusoft.net
augusoft.net (612) 605-1200 Fax (321) 260-5165
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