5 Responses

1. PD training

   Hi Mark, I don’t know any other way to learn and change than via personal development so PD has to be on the agenda or anything else could be a waste of time? 

   What did you mean by corporate land?

   Cheers,

   Nick

2. Personal Development

   Hi,

   Thanks for your reply.

   By ‘corporate land’ I mean businesses.

   My question is for me to understand the size of the market of individuals booking themselves on PD courses and not their employers…

   For example an individual wants to develop their confidence and their employer won’t pay or another example maybe that an individual is not in work but they have savings and they wish to book themselves on a PD course…

   Thanks

   Mark

    

    

    

    

3. PD learning potential

   Hi Mark, thanks for the clarification. My experience is that most people will not invest in their own development easily. Looking at the net to see what is being advertised the growth area for personal development courses seems to be in the behavioural change area – stopping smoking, phobias etc. which are NLP / Hypnosis focused. This may be an option?

   In my first career as a financial adviser I used to go to a factory where the owner let me talk to employees about pensions over lunch. The employer had no financial commitment and it was up to each employee to make their own decision about doing a pension or not. You may find that some smaller employers might go this way for  personal development for their employees? In effect outsourcing personal development? 

   Cheers and good luck.

    

   Nick      

    

4. PD training outlook

   Mark, Nick

   I believe there’s opportunity, with potential interest building up as people are displaced from their comfort zone by layoffs and business re-organisation. Personal development training for business skills puts ‘re-tooling’ in the hands of the individual as part of their own positioning strategy (at least, that’s my pitch) and I’ve been offering that myself. Just started, but the early feedback has been that it’s well worth the time taken. Nick is right though. As with any new (or perceived to be new) product, it’s the prospects’ willingness to pay that you’re really up against.

   Peter

5. Possible but difficult

   People are interested in personal development. There are hundreds of life coaches around and I assume that they are earning enough to live. You need to have something special that differentiates you from other providers, if you are going to succeed in finding business. This is often much more difficult than doing it.

   People in business are interested in personal development, if it will help them and their business. The key seems to be finding a subject that is salient for them. Many years ago I worked for a company as an internal consultant. We could not get senior managers interested in their own development at all. This was until we found that out they were worried about being too busy. We offered a half day workshop on time management. In a week half the 170 managers had signed up. In a year all but one had attended. I ran it for 20-30 live teams too. The full story is here http://www.nickheap.co.uk/articles.asp?ART_ID=251

   One advantage for a provider of personal development in the corporate world are that corporations will easily pay at least four times as much per day as individuals will. A more significant advantage is that you may only have to make one sale to generate much work. If you are selling open events to individuals, you have to make one sale per attendee. This is costly and time consuming. I noticed last week that Coverdale Training http://www.coverdale.co.uk, a very well respected provider of management training, no longer offers open courses.

   If you want to explore any of this further, my contact details are on the website, below.

   Best wishes,

   Nick Heap

   http://www.nickheap.co.uk