Implementing a B2B model within your organization or transitioning to a B2B selling model could be an effective strategy to help you unlock the next stage of growth for your business.

The final session of our "Level Up With Plus" series, we talked with Paul Thomson and Simon Durant. They discussed practical and concrete ways to improve and expand your B2B offering.

If you're an entrepreneur in B2C looking to transition into a B2B selling model or are an integral part of a larger business that is trying to include online education into your offerings, Paul's tangible tips will help you develop concrete B2B methods to start.

The selling journey for B2B

Selling constantly is exhausting. If you are involved in making online courses, it's easy to get in the habit of continuously "selling" and trying to expand your audience. This takes a large amount of effort, time and effort, especially when a lot of effort goes into selling a lower-priced course.

To break out of the selling cycle you want to establish an effective sales process that grows according to your company's needs. This can help ensure consistent conversions to support the long-term development of your business and create an unified perspective for all parties involved.

Before you get started in the process of creating or re-inventing your B2B offering There are a few common mistakes to avoid:

• Reinventing the wheel: Do your best to avoid reinventing the wheel. A lot of times, when people dive into online learning and think they must start with something completely new and re-invent the wheel completely from scratch. Remind yourself that you don't have to start over - especially if you've already built an impressive B2C business.
• Don't "Ready to Fire, Ready, and Aim": Once you select a course topic be sure to not wait until after the launch of your course to consider where the course can fit into your larger enterprise plan.
• Don't give up until you've reached the edge of success: An important thing to remember when entering the B2B market is to not give up and you'll be just one step from the success you've always wanted. One agreement, one supplier or one salesperson may be the key to making your B2B offering a success.

The Lifetime Student Value Framework(tm)

The model is comprised of 3 pillars that are: Sales, Systems and students. Through focusing on these aspects the companies can run and operate at scale and provide meaningful customer experiences. The first step is to create great content that connects with your audience. Once you've brought them in, you'll want to ensure you have the right systems in place to move students between one product and another, as the stepping stone once they have become a fan of your material. To do so, you want "systems on the front and back end that can detect and trigger students at the right time," Paul, explains Paul who explains that they want to "incentivize students to buy the next product" by creating great student experiences.

The framework is designed to help you support new students coming in and ensures they have transformative experiences to enable you to provide students with additional offerings and services in the future down the. A lot of organizations and businesses have taken this route, pioneering online education models and finding the most effective methods to attract students.

The three ways to grow in the B2B market

1. Implementing a customer success strategy
2. The implementation of an additional offer to retain customers and reduce the number of customers who leave. to reduce churn
3. Utilizing accreditations, certifications as well as partnerships to boost expansion and increase your presence in the B2B market

1. Implementing a Customer-Success Strategy

It's important to remind yourself that you're already performing amazing work within your business delivering your products, services, and knowledge. Incorporating online courses and online learning into your enterprise will help to develop an approach to your clients' prosperity, enhance your current business offering with innovative products, provide more benefits for your customers and grow your business.

 What is HTML0 "Echosec Systems" executed a successful customer strategy

Echosec Systems created a customer education center that is also an integral part of their employee onboarding process and serves a double purpose to their company.

Some good questions to think about while implementing the customer-focused strategy include:

• Are you able to use the training courses to help you build your company?
• What function, purpose, or need could courses resolve for your company?

 2. Implementing an additional offer to encourage customers to stay and to reduce churn

You already have a means that your business can benefit. It could be a product, service or other method to help your customers, students or clients. Making an extra offer available is a good way through how you will retain your customers , and lower the likelihood of them leaving your business. Training courses can be a great option to offer that added incentive to your clients, which will reduce the possibility that they'll leave your company.

 What is HTML0? Lansa A low-code development platform, implemented the "additional deal"

In Lansa The team at Lansa tried to address an issue: despite the abundance of documents written in English There was a need from customers and prospective customers to have a formal education experience with their product. They needed help from their customers to learn the best way to utilize their platform.

Previous to using Plus, the team at Lansa used a time-mentorship model to instruct prospective customers how to use their product and share the best techniques. It would require a significant amount of time, and also resources in a large scale.

• Think back to your Lifetime student Value Framework for a moment as it aims to create an ecosystem. You would like your customers, students and clients to feel supported in a meaningful and wholesome manner that generates revenue for your company and keeps them inside your system for longer. Your goal is to offer an overall experience that will keep your clients on board and committed to your product or service.

The best questions to ask while analyzing the concept of using an "additional offer" to decrease churn your company are:

• Why are my customers currently leaving or outgrowing my business?
• What program could I design in my company to ease the burden?

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

Although your company has already grown, it is always beneficial to expand your reach and accelerate your growth beyond the services you offer to your students, clients or customers through the use of courses and using the certification, accreditation as well as partner programs.

 What is HTML0? IntelyCare increased its growth rate and options beyond its current offerings in business by gaining certification and accreditation

IntelyCare's team IntelyCare created an offering which was a complement to their business which was in a position to instruct about half a million individuals in a quick and efficient way. They also used certificates and leveraged social media as important forms of supporting the learning process.

The key to success is incorporating certification and accreditation in your B2B offering is an effective way for you to accelerate your business's growth in the B2B Market. Customers want to know something new, and they need proof of having completed their knowledge and retained the latest information to be able to use it for job purposes, as well as questions of compliance. The certificate provides an effective way to provide your customers and students with an opportunity to prove the expertise, safety, and compliance they have gained from your courses.

 What is HTML0? Keap accelerated growth and expanded reach beyond current business services by way of partnership

As the Keap members were in charge of aiding their clients in integrating their platform in their businesses and Partner Onboarding Program using Plus.

Important lesson learned: As Keap was already a highly successful platform, they were able to accelerate its growth by expanding to new markets, and tried to fit into new audiences that they had no access to, by trusting their partners to represent them and implement their platform by way of Partnerships.

Good questions to consider when reflecting on the practice of using certifications, accreditations and alliances to speed up expansion and increase your presence on the B2B industry include:

• What B2B accelerator path is the most suitable to my current business?
• My business could benefit from Accreditations and Certificates, or Partnerships?

How to iterate and grow the B2B offerings at scale: Notes from the trenches with Simon Dunant

In the second part of the Level Up with Plus session, we chatted with Simon Dunant, Director of Online Learning at Engaging Networks. Simon is an avid user of Plus with a strong background in online education and more than 25 years of experience within the tech industry. Simon has led the network of online learning academy academies for Engaging Networks, the most renowned SaaS platform for non-profit fundraising and marketing. He is responsible for the development, curating, and execution of education for customers and certification for partners of customers and agency partners across the world.

Simon manages the Engaging Network's Staff Academy, helping the business deliver compliance and security education to employees. He has over 10 years of B2B as well as B2C expertise, including mentorship, training, as well as coaching via in-person, online as well as on-demand material at top global corporations and at conferences.

If you're trying to develop methods to expand and improve your B2B offering, Simon offers some tips from the perspective of someone who's been through this experience in these past four years working in online training , both in the capacity of a consultant, and also as an employee who is responsible for training online, developing Engaging Network's Customer Education Program beginning from scratch, and then transferring it to Plus by 2021.

How online education can integrate into the corporate plans

When Simon first came to Engaging Networks, the company was keen to dive into online education for customers and partners. The initial goal of the company was to deliver the highest quality online education to customers that transformed their clients to experts in their application to improve retention rates, draw new customers, and cut down on the time to onboard employees when they grew the company.

The objectives of the Engaging Networks' web-based platform for learning were:

• to educate customers about their product and to provide best practices for their clients within a digital environment
• In order to educate clients on the use of their platform and tools to help them use their products effectively and reach their organizational goals

One of the major problems for Engaging Networks was to be able to produce and deliver classes quickly, because of their rapid product cycle and the ongoing product feature releases every 6-8 weeks. It was imperative that they were capable of creating and updating courses that were in line with the latest product release dates in order to inform their clients on how they could use them, and ensure that courses were providing value to the business.

The advantages of an online academy
In terms of reducing onboarding times in Engaging Networks, starting an academy resulted in a reduced workload for account managers and support teams. Through an online academy, many of the tedious instruction that support teams go through when onboarding clients can be eliminated through the use of self-paced classes, which allow account managers and Support teams to spend more 1-1 time with clients.

Establishing a network of partners with accreditation and certification

Engaging Networks built a community of nonprofits and marketing agencies who are interested in working together in order to implement their platform. They built a partner network by implementing an academy for agencies online that could accredit and validate the academy.

The most important benefits of partnership and accreditation:

• Accredited partners can play a key role in helping to implement an application, platform, or service, and train clients on its use.
• Accredited partners are able to help their clients deliver their ideas and also refer potential customers to businesses.

Accredited partners have been able to transform Engaging Networks' partner program. Prior to the establishment of an academy for agencies it was not possible to establish a standard method to verify the high-quality of the partners that the business was delivering to their clients as well as being uncertain of the' customer experience was going be.

Engaging Networks saw an opportunity to provide training to their partners, as well as accredit and confirm them, and strengthen their relationships with the partners. It allowed them to create solid partnerships with organizations that were familiar with their tools, and had a good understanding of their frameworks. They were confident that accredited partners now knew their system inside and out since they had been certified by the online academy course.

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 an innovative product or service feature. In the case of Plus, Simon advises taking advantage of the bulk importer in order to build several course modules at once, bulk upload videos, and create lessons in an outline format.

In the case of building your course, you'll be able to film all of your videos at once, upload them, and build a course from start to end with a strict deadline. This lets you spend more time in the making of the material that's going to be in the course, while making sure that it is going to fulfill the requirements that you've set out.

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

The transition from B2C B2B

When working with an B2C audience, the course can typically be focused around a single topic. As a course creator, you have more independence and a variety of stakeholders you have to answer to. On the B2B side you must consider that if you are offering any type of training delivery for another company, there is going to more departments and people to answer to. Thus, you must be aware of the organization that you work with or even within. No matter if you're an outside consultant or an internal one operating within the B2B scenario will probably involve greater training and training processes, as well as more courses and training topics as well as strict compliance regulations.

There are key difference between B2C and B2C

• You'll have a larger range of stakeholders to deal with: when you work for a company, you will have a wide variety of internal stakeholders which you need to interact in conversations and discussions with. It is possible to talk to the customer success managers within the organization, the marketing team as well as the customer service team as well as sales engineers and sales personnel to get information on the best way to offer training to customers.
• It is possible that you will need to increase your courses' offerings when you sit in the middle of planning a course, you may have to get into a different mindset on how you will instruct a crowd of participants on one topic. B2B is also able to offer a larger course inventory, and you may discover that when the business you are working with recognizes the benefits of a training course and wants to increase the number of courses and training available to multiple users like clients and employees, partners, and other audiences.

Tips for B2B content management

• Make use of a project management program to organize course content When you're in a B2B scenario, you might need to regularly update the content of your courses in order in order to keep up with the evolving needs of your business. needs. It's helpful to employ the project management tools like Asana as well as Trello for tracking your course and the content they contain and also the changes made over time, or that will need to be implemented in the future.
• Be sure to collaborate with the businesses' internal team members: when developing B2B courses, it's essential to have an understanding of your business' onboarding, customer retention strategies, partnerships programmes, as well as customer education modes. Speaking to subject matter experts within the industry who possess specialization will allow you to gain insights for the training and courses you're creating. Inquiring about your "buy-in" and asking them for their insights that you can incorporate into your courses can be an enormous benefit when you are developing your offerings.

Selecting an LMS that can scale and grow with you

With Engaging Network's previous LMS it was easier to do administration work to be accomplished in order to build the courses. Using Plus as their new Learning Management System, Simon has been able to take approximately 30% of his time to be able to invest it in creating content.

Choosing an online learning platform that is intuitive, scalable as well as allowing you to create courses in a matter of minutes gives the flexibility of growing your customer base, as well as have distinct learning spaces or sites for students. Before becoming part of Plus, Engaging Networks had one large Academy which was a service for clients as well as partners and other stakeholders. With Plus, they have been able to build several various academies for their customers and have a focus on tailoring each learning experience for them.

Another advantage of Plus when used in a B2B setting is that with the use of various learning environments, you as well as many other participants of your business can keep track of the progression of your clients, partners, and employees on their own learning path.

As an example, an HR manager is able to login to the platform and get updates on the progress of employees who are undergoing the process of onboarding. A Customer Success Manager could join the platform's learning environment for customer education and track the learning progress of the company's clients.

Tips for launching your first B2B course

• Find a way to meet a company's most pressing need. you build your first B2B product, one important aspect to be aware of is to make sure that the first course you create focus on the most pressing need of the business you're working with. As an example, suppose the company you plan to market your course to is currently struggling with the onboarding process for employees, you should start there.
• Ask for feedback: Asking for feedback from your students and clients can be one of the best ways that you will be able to improve your next course offerings and keep improving the quality of your B2B products. Keep in mind that starting your first course will always induce anxiety. Try to mitigate this nervousness by doing your best you can for your first course. You should be constantly soliciting feedback from your students, then using it for the next iteration. It will help you improve your courses with each launch.
• Utilize surveys, focus groups and check-ins with clients: It's helpful to utilize survey, focus groups and community forums to gather feedback. In order to stay in contact with your customers as well as their requirements, it helps to implement a survey with your clients once every six months, to inquire about their experiences with your course and how you can improve your support for them by providing them with more information.

The KeepingTrack Of Reporting early On:

As you build and launch your first B2B offering, make sure that you're getting data from your users. Utilize reporting tools in your online learning platform to keep track of your students' progress and whether they're interacting with the content in your lessons, and also to determine if there is any need to improve.

Key metrics that should be considered are:

• Number of registered students
• Course Enrolments
• The number of courses that have been started
• Number of completed courses
• Complimentation Rate
• The student's most recent login

The ability to spot pattern patterns within your report as well as the metrics you use can give you insights into the way that your content is performing with students. You can also determine when it's time to alter your approach. When using the platform, you can download the weekly reports to allow you to stay on top of the latest information, as well as build an extensive database of metrics.

What To Do To Stay On The Learner's Journey in Mind

• Give suggestions for what you would like you'd like to study next.
   An effective way to expand and iterate your B2B offering when you are expanding your course offerings is to provide your students with a roadmap of what to study next. On your course progression and finalization pages, you'll be able to make suggestions on the courses that your students need to be taking next in order to broaden their understanding of a particular subject.
• Explore your creativity with the App Store
   Another way to keep students active and engaged in their educational process is by exploring an App Store. There's a variety of apps available that will let you diversify the learning experience for your students and extend it beyond text, video, presentations, and quizzes.
• Introduce micro-learning in order to keep students interested  
   In a B2B setting, including micro-learning into your curriculum can retain students' attention. It is best to make sure that you keep every video you use within your classes to the maximum of 15 minutes and to keep each course to a maximum duration of two hours. It will enable your students to follow through on their journey of learning with greater engagement and will keep your completion rates for your students in a higher proportion.
• Apply real-world case studies
   Providing your students with instances and case studies of topics they've just learned at the end of your course allows them to put their learnings into perspective and see how what they just discovered can be used in a practical context.

Key Takeaways For Building Your Online Learning Education Strategy

• Create the course. Show potential customers that there is value in your course and the course will meet their business needs.
• Your course must address an issue the prospective student is experiencing. Establish specific KPIs to the course, and define a problem that you are looking to address so that you can prove that the worth and effectiveness of the course.
• Request feedback, and keep improving and improve your B2B offerings after it's launched in the world.
• Start thinking bigger, and develop other possible educational opportunities and courses for your company, and expand your own growth as a course creator in the process.
• Do your best to be a collaborative partner with your client. Also, make it a a habit of keeping close on the reporting