There are very few negatives to offering training opportunities within your business. It can be a natural progression of working with your customers, business partners, and staff. It can also be a conduit for responding to changes in the market and therefore expanding the remit for your business.
Getting the best out of your staff
To be successful in any business you need people who can help you grow. Instigating new training programmes for coaches may have overhead costs but in the long run, they are revenue-boosting. Investment in staff training is an effective way to show your support for the work they’re doing, making it essential to reducing staff turnover and absenteeism.
For current staff, new training opportunities can save you time and money. Put simply, training prevents or reduces stagnation, workplace incidents and ineffective cycles of work. Instead of using up-to-date software, tools, or coaching materials, they’re writing emails outside of your CRM, producing registers on Word and they’re misgendering customers. Training can nip those pain points in the bud and build smooth transitions, so nobody is ever out of the loop.
The engine of expansion is rooted in those who are attracted to opportunities to expand their skills. Coaching best practice and methods change all the time. For many, just coaching one person can be the spark they need to re-discover strength and conditioning or building a rapport supporting PE in schools.
Whilst training is an all-around morale booster, those who come to your door ready stocked with a passion to improve themselves will be the driving force when it comes to expansion. It’s the solid relationships they build with the customer base that will give you a real insight into where your customers would like to see your business go next.
Adapting to a changing market
Your existing client base is a great place to start from when you’re considering how to expand your service offerings. Your team can help you understand what your customer needs and whether your business is able to address them. Are your customers looking for professional sports prep? Do they want pathways into cycling, music, or performative sport? Are they looking for more learning opportunities?
These questions represent how your customers’ needs correspond with local, regional, and national changes in the market. If customers are looking for learning opportunities, you’ve found a springboard for growing a select number of staff, whilst simultaneously showing what could be your next gap in the market.
Consider COP26. It’s just one node in a collective move by consumers to become more sustainable. Surveys show that healthier and more sustainable equivalents for fitness, training and nourishment are on the rise, and amazingly more than 300 gyms have opened this year despite the pandemic. This is, therefore, the time to invest in expanding active travel training for your business or to consider becoming a hub for new talent by employing apprentices.
Become a one-stop-shop for your customers’ needs
Expansion should take heed of the market, examining local and national developments. Yet it’s your customer’s needs that can really focus or direct that expansion. Your goal is to simplify their journey by providing as many services as possible in a single package, to ensure the proper execution of that package and the retention of that customer.
