Why Your Clients Don’t Need IT Training [Bingo]

Which reasons do clients give when they say No to IT training? That’s a question we wanted to have an answer to. See, we ensure our training partners have access to courseware and exams. But if our partners are not able to convince their clients they need training, there’s no point in having courseware at all. So why do our partner’s clients say no?

The Rejections

To answer this question, we asked our training partners, instructors, and consultants about which rejections they often hear. We received a lot of helpful responses. After going through all of them, we identified 24 frequently used rejections.

Here they are, in no order of importance.

1. Our people don’t need training
2. We’re too busy for IT training right now
3. We don’t see the ROI
4. There’s no budget budget
5. We have other priorities
6. It’s not strategic
7. We already work with another supplier
8. Someone’s cheaper
9. Too much downtime
10. We tried that, and nothing here changed
11. The courses offered don’t meet our needs
12. We do all of our training internally
13. I expect my staff knows their stuff.
14. We already trained everybody
15. My folks use self-study
16. We have a tied contract with our home supplier
17. Technology will solve it
18. We have a tool for that
19. We have our own L&D department
20. Interesting, but not for our department
21. There so much free online stuff
22. Our people teach each other
23. That takes too much time
24. Our employees don’t want training

Practice Makes Perfect

Having been on a few sales training courses myself, I know first hand how important it is to practice having a response to these 24 rejections.

Positioning (or selling) a product or service becomes a lot easier if you know what people are going to say because you can have a response ready. When was the last time you received a call from a salesperson wanting you to switch to another utility provider/cable company / mobile operator? Usually, it’s all scripted and although I personally don’t like it, if you do it well, it will work in your favor.

Now What?

Share the bingo sheet with your colleagues. It’s fun to challenge them to think about how to position IT training. You can initiate an engaging role-play with your sales teams and use the sheet to guide you in evaluating the roadblocks to training. Or, simply review it to see which ones you recognize. Have any other rejections we haven’t listed, let us know.

If you cannot create a compelling answer to overcome these rejections, you have a problem you need to fix. Either change what it is you offer or start fishing in a different pond but I’m pretty sure that if you think long and hard, you will come up with a response for each of the 24 rejections.

Bingo!