Implementing a B2B model in your company or moving to a B2B selling model is a great method to unlock the next level of success for your company.

The last time we had a session in our "Level Up With Plus" series, we had a conversation about the topic with Paul Thomson and Simon Durant. They provided practical and practical methods to expand and improve your B2B service.

If you're an entrepreneur working in B2C looking to transition to the B2B selling model or are an integral part of a larger business that is trying to include online education to your offering Paul's concrete guidance will give you useful B2B ways to begin.

The B2B selling journey

It's exhausting to constantly sell. If you're in the business of online course creation It is easy to fall into the habit of constantly "selling" and working to expand your audience. This takes a large amount of resources, time as well as energy, particularly when an enormous amount of time and effort goes into selling a lower-priced course.

In order to get rid from the sales cycle, it is essential to develop an efficient sales strategy that can scale with your business. This will help create consistent conversions to support the long-term development of your business and create an aligned perspective for all parties involved.

Before starting in the process of creating or re-inventing your B2B service, here are some common errors to avoid

• Reinventing your wheel Do your best to avoid reinventing the wheel. A lot of times, when people dive into online courses believe that they have to start with something completely new and re-invent the wheel completely from scratch. Be reminded that you do not have to start over - particularly if you've already established a strong B2C company.
• Do not "Ready to Fire, Ready, and Aim": Once you have chosen a topic for your course be sure to not wait until after the launch of your course to think about how the course can integrate into your overall enterprise model.
• Do not give up before you reach the point of success: An important factor to consider when it comes to starting out in the B2B marketplace is not to give up as you'll soon be one step from being successful. One deal, one seller or even one salesperson could make your B2B business a success.

The Lifetime Student Value Framework(tm)

The model is comprised of 3 pillars which are Systems, Sales and students. By focusing on these areas the companies can run and operate at scale and provide meaningful customer experiences. Start by making excellent content that is able to connect to your target audience. After you've enrolled them, you'll want to ensure you have the right methods in place for moving students from one product to the nextone, much like an escalator, after they've become an avid fan of your content. For this it is necessary to have "systems at the front as well as backend which can identify the students and alert them at the right time" Paul says. Paul, to "incentivize students to buy the next one" by creating great student experiences.

This structure helps you to support newly enrolled students. It also ensures they have transformative experiences so you can provide your students with more items and services later on down the down the. Many companies and organizations have already walked this path, pioneering online education methods and identifying excellent ways to acquire students.

The three ways to expand within the B2B marketplace

1. Implementing a successful customer strategy
2. Offering an additional service to attract customers, and to reduce the number of customers who leave.
3. Utilizing accreditations, certifications as well as partnerships to boost the growth of your business and extend your reach on the B2B industry

1. Implementing a Customer Success Strategy

It's important to keep in mind that you're doing amazing work in your business delivering your services, products, as well as your expertise. Incorporating online courses and online learning into your company is a way to create an effective strategy to ensure your customers' success, complement your existing business with new products, provide more value for your customers, and grow your business.

 How "Echosec Systems" implemented a customer success strategy

Echosec Systems created a customer education academy that is now also an integral part of the new process for onboarding employees and has a dual purpose to their company.

The best questions to ask in evaluating the implementation of a customer success strategy are:

• How can you use training courses to help you build your firm?
• What purpose, role or problem could these courses resolve in your business?

 2. The implementation of an additional promotion to keep customers loyal and decrease the likelihood of them returning

You already have a way that you serve your business. It could be a product, service or other method to help your customers, clients or students. Implementing an additional offer can be a great way by which you can retain your clients and decrease churn. The use of courses is a good option to offer that added incentive to your clients, which will reduce the possibility that they'll leave your company.

 How Lansa is a development platform that uses low-code. platform, implemented the "additional deal"

In Lansa, the team had to resolve an issue: despite a large amount of documentation written, there was a demand from potential and existing customers for an official learning about their products. Their customers needed help learning how to make use of their system.

Prior to using Plus the team at Lansa used a time-mentorship model to instruct the new users on how to use their product and to share their best methods. This would take a large amount of time and money in a large scale.

• Take a moment to think about that Lifetime Students Value Framework for a moment and consider its goal of creating an ecosystem. You would like your students, customers, and clients to feel supported in a meaningful and wholesome manner that generates revenue to your company, and keeps them inside your system for longer. Your goal is to offer an overall experience that ensures that your customers are dedicated to your product or service.

The best questions to ask while analyzing the concept of making use of the term "additional promotion" to decrease churn your business are:

• Why are my customers currently leaving or outgrowing my business?
• What course could I develop in my own business to help ease that

3. Utilizing accreditations, certifications, and alliances to speed up expansion and increase reach in the B2B market

Although your company is growing already, it is always beneficial to increase the reach of your business and increase expansion beyond what you are providing for students, customers or customers through the use of courses and the introduction of certification, accreditation, and partner program.

 How IntelyCare has accelerated its growth and increased options beyond its current offerings in business by gaining certification and accreditation

The IntelyCare team IntelyCare developed a course which was a complement to the company's offerings, and was able to teach half a million people in a quick and efficient manner. They also used certificates and social media to provide crucial ways to support the takeoff of the course.

Important Learning: Including the certification or accreditation into your B2B service is a good method to speed up your business's growth in the B2B Market. Customers want to know something newand would like to prove of having completed their knowledge and retained the latest information to be able to use it for job purposes and compliance issues. An official certificate can be a tangible way for you to give your clients and students with an opportunity to demonstrate the experience of safety, knowledge, and understanding you have taught them through your classes.

 How Keap increased growth and a wider reach beyond current business services by way of collaborations

Because the Keap partners were responsible for aiding their clients in integrating their platform in their businesses, they implemented a partner onboarding program using Plus.

Key learning: Since Keap was already a thriving platform, they were able to accelerate its growth by expanding to new markets, and tried to reach new markets they didn't have access to by relying on their partners to be able to advocate for them, and then implement their platform for them via Partnerships.

Some good questions to think about in evaluating the process of using accreditations, certifications, and partnerships to accelerate growth and expand your reach in the B2B market include:

• What B2B accelerator path will be the best fit for my business right now?
• My business could benefit from Accreditations and Certificates, or Partnerships?

It's a challenge to develop and expand an offering for B2B at scale: Notes from the trenches with Simon Dunant

In the second part of our Level Up with Plus session We had a chat in depth with Simon Dunant, Director of Online Learning at Engaging Networks. Simon is an avid user of Plus and has a solid background in online education and over 25 years experience in the tech industry. Simon has been the leader of the group of online learning academies within Engaging Networks, the most renowned SaaS platform for non-profit fundraising and marketing, directing the creation, curation, and delivery of educational programs for customers and certification for partners of customers as well as agency partners around all over the world.

Simon also runs the Engaging Network's Staff Academy, helping the company provide compliance and security training through employees. Simon has more than 10-years of B2B as well as B2C experience: coaching, training, and mentoring coaching via in-person, online as well as on-demand material at major global conferences and companies.

If you're looking to implement strategies for expanding and improving the B2B services you offer, Simon offers some tips from the viewpoint of someone who's been through the experience over the past 4 years in online training both as a consultant as well as an employee who is responsible for the delivery of online training, constructing Engaging Network's Customer Education Program from the ground up and migrating to Plus in 2021.

How online education can be integrated into the company's goals

When Simon first came to Engaging Networks, the company wanted to explore online education for customers and associates. Initially, the company's vision was to provide scalable online customer education that turned their customers into expert users of their software to help improve retention rates, find new clients, and reduce the amount of time employees spend on onboarding as they scaled the business.

The goals of the Engaging Networks' web-based education platform was:

• To educate clients about their product and to provide the best practices to their customers within the digital world
• To train clients in how to use the platform and tools that allow them to utilize their products effectively and reach their goals as an organization.

One of the key challenges to Engaging Networks was to be capable of delivering classes quickly, due to their fast-paced course development cycle as well as the regular updates to features that are released every 6-8 weeks. It was crucial that the business was in a position to create and modify courses that were in line with the latest product feature releases to be able to teach their customers the best ways to use them and make sure that they provided value to their company.

The advantages of an online academy
In terms of reducing time for onboarding to Engaging Networks, starting an academy has resulted in a decrease in work load for the account managers as well as Support teams. Through an online academy, most of the routine training process that Support teams must go through while they are onboarding customers can be avoided with the implementation of self-paced classes, which enable account managers and support teams to spend more 1-1 time with their clients.

Building a partner network through accreditation and certification programs

Engaging Networks built a community made up of non-profits and marketing agencies interested in working together in order to implement their platform. They created a network of partners through the implementation of an academy online for agency professionals that was able to accredit and certify them.

The main benefits of partnership and accreditation:

• Accredited partners can play a key role in the implementation of the platform, product or service, as well as in training users on how to use it.
• Accredited partners can assist their customers in delivering their plans in addition to referring new customers into a business.

Accredited partners could transform Engaging Networks' partner program. Prior to the establishment of an academy for agencies it was not possible to establish a standard process to check the caliber of the partners the company was delivering to their clients, and they were uncertain of the' customer experience was going to be like.

Engaging Networks saw an opportunity to train their partners, accredit and verify them, and build stronger relationships with them. This allowed them to build solid partnerships with agencies that they knew worked using their software and were knowledgeable about their platforms. They were confident that accredited partners now knew their system inside and out since they had been certified by their online academy training.

Taking your course from concept to training in a snap

In the case of a bigger company, you might need to work with a shorter timeframe for developing a curriculum around the introduction of a new service or product characteristic. With Plus, Simon advises taking advantage of the bulk importer feature in order to build many course components at one time and upload video in bulk and then create the lessons using an outline format.

In the case of building your courses, you're able to film all of your videos in one go then upload them and develop a course from scratch to finish , with a predetermined time frame. It allows you to devote longer on the development of the material that's going to be in your course while ensuring the course will deliver and meet the goals you have outlined.

It's beneficial to not spending too much time on managing, hosting and tweaking the platform rather than working on delivering your knowledge through content. This is made easier by the platform. process.

The transition from B2C to B2B

In the case of an B2C audience, courses can usually be designed around one subject. Being a course designer You have greater autonomy and different stakeholders to respond to. For B2B purposes you must consider that if you are offering any type of training services for another company, there is going to be a wider number of people and departments to answer to. So, it is important to be aware of the organization that you work with or within. No matter if you're an outside consultant or an internal one operating in the B2B context will likely involve more training activities, more classes and topics for training, and may involve strict compliance regulations.

Key differences between B2C and B2B

• There will be a greater range of stakeholders to deal with: when working with a business, you will have a wide array of internal stakeholders that who you must interact with and have conversations with. There may be a need to talk with the managers of customer success within the organization, the marketing team as well as the customer service team as well as sales engineers and sales personnel to get insights on how to best offer training to customers.
• There is a possibility that you need to broaden your courses' offerings: When you are sitting in the middle of planning a course it is possible that you need to get into a different mindset on how you will train a group of people on one topic. B2B will also have more courses available which means you could find that after your business with sees the value in the training program, they will want to increase the number of courses and training accessible to multiple audiences, such as clients as well as employees, partners and various other types of audiences.

Strategies to manage B2B content

• Make use of a project management program for managing course content For a B2B scenario, you might have to constantly update the content of your courses in order to ensure they are up-to-date with a businesses' changing demands. It's beneficial to use project management software such as Asana and Trello to keep track of your courses as well as their contents and also changes that have been implemented over time and will require changes later on.
• Make an effort to work in conjunction with internal teams: When building a B2B course, it's essential to have an understanding of the business' onboarding and customer retention methods, partnership programs, and educational methods. Speaking to subject matter experts within the industry who possess specific knowledge can help you learn more about the training and courses you are building. Making sure you get the "buy-in" and soliciting their input to include into your training will be a big asset when you are developing your offerings.

Choose an LMS which can scale and grow to meet your needs

In the past, when Engaging Network used to be their LMS it was easier to do administration work to be completed in order to build the courses. Using Plus as their brand new learning management system, Simon has managed to free up approximately 30 percent of his work time to be able to invest it in creating content.

Selecting an online learning platform that is easy to use, adaptable and lets you build courses with ease allows you more flexibility to grow the customer base you serve and also have separate sites or learning environments for your students. Previous to becoming part of Plus, Engaging Networks had one large Academy which was a service for clients, partners, and several different stakeholders. Thanks to Plus, they've been able to build several different academies to serve their clients and partners and concentrate on tailoring each learning experience specifically to their needs.

Another advantage of Plus within the B2B scenario is that, through the implementation of different learning environments, you and others involved in your business can monitor the development of customers as well as employees, partners and customers on their own learning path.

For instance: An HR manager is able to log in to the platform and get updates regarding the progress made by employees who are going through the onboarding process. Additionally, a Customer Success Manager can access the learning environment for customer education as well as keep track of how well the employees are learning business's customers.

Tips for launching your very first B2B class

• Try to address a business's most pressing need. you build your first B2B offering, a key thing to keep in mind is to have your first-course address the largest need for your target company you're working with. For example: If your business that you want to sell your course is struggling to handle employee onboarding, then start at the beginning.
• Request feedback Request feedback from your students and clients is among the most effective ways you could improve the quality of your courses and continue to improve the B2B services you offer. Remember that launching your initial course is bound to cause an element of anxiety. Make an effort to ease this anxiety by doing the best job that you can during your initial course, continuously soliciting feedback from your students, then using it to the next time. This will allow you to improve your courses with each launch.
• Use surveys, focus groups and client check-ins: It's beneficial to make use of surveys, focus groups, and communities to collect feedback. To stay in touch with your clients and their needs, it also is helpful to conduct a survey to your customers every six months. They can ask questions regarding the experience they had with your classes and the ways you could improve your support for them by providing them with more the content.

KeepTrack of Reporting Early on:

When you are constructing and launching your initial B2B product, ensure that you're getting data from your users. Utilize reporting tools in your learning platform online to keep track of the progress of your students, and how they're engaging with the material in your lessons, and also to determine where there's areas for improvement.

The most important metrics are worth your attention are:

• Students who are registered
• Course Enrolments
• Courses that were started
• Courses completed
• Complimentation Rate
• Last login of the student

Recognizing trends in the reports and measurements can provide insight into how your content is performing with students, and help you determine when you need to adjust your course. With the application allows you to download reporting data every week in order to keep up-to-date with these data, and create an extensive database of statistics.

What To Do To Stay On The Learning Journey In Mind

• Make suggestions on what you'd like to know next.
   One of the best ways to increase and iterate your B2B offering in order to expand your offerings of courses is to supply your students with a roadmap of the next steps to take. Through your course's progress and completion pages, you'll be able provide suggestions for which courses students can enroll in next to expand their knowledge on a specific topic.
• Make your own ideas with the App Store
   Another option to keep them active and engaged in their education journey is to explore the App Store. There is a wide range of apps available that will enable you to broaden the educational experience of your students and extend it beyond text, video, presentations, and quizzes.
• Integrate micro-learning into keep students engaged  
   In a B2B context, incorporating micro-learning in your courses can help retain students' attention. It is best to make sure that you keep each video that you include within your classes to an maximum of fifteen minutes in length and each course to a maximum duration of two hours. It will enable your students to keep on track with their journey of learning with greater enthusiasm and keeps the completion rate of your students in a higher proportion.
• Use real-world case studies
   Providing your students with case studies and examples of the topics they have been learning about towards the end of your class allows students to put what they have learned to the test and consider the way in which what they have learnt can be applied in a real-world context.

Key Takeaways For Building Your Online Learning Education Strategy

• Develop the course. Show potential customers the value of the services you provide and the course will meet the business goals of their clients.
• Your course must address any issue that your potential student is experiencing. Establish specific KPIs to the course, and define your problem you're seeking to resolve in order to prove that the worth and effectiveness of the course.
• Get feedback from users as you continue to refine and refine your B2B service once it's out in the world.
• Start thinking bigger, and think of other course offerings and learning opportunities for your company, and expand the scope of your growth as a course creator by the result.
• Try your best to be a collaborative partner with your client. Make a an effort to keep the progress of reports