The B2B Education Frontier: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Corporate Training

For 10 years, I’ve been immersed in the world of online education.

Courses, social media, blog posts, videos – these have been my daily tools of the trade in developing the Building a Second Brain (BASB) ecosystem.

Yet I’ve recently been haunted by the feeling that we’re still barely scratching the surface – that after almost a decade spent translating my methodology into every medium I can think of (even a bestselling book), we’ve not yet reached even 1% of the people who could most benefit from it.

That haunting suspicion led me to spend much of the past year researching and investigating what it would look like to radically expand our footprint and spread my message much further and wider. I’ve had dozens of conversations with experienced leaders and entrepreneurs who have built sizable businesses, changed how companies operate around the world, and impacted millions with their ideas. 

Those conversations have led me inexorably to one destination: business-to-business (or B2B) education, also known as “corporate training” and adjacent business models like licensing, certifications, train-the-trainer programs, and others.

As popular as direct-to-consumer online education has become, the fact is most people still learn, work, and collaborate inside of institutions: schools, universities, small and medium-sized businesses, multinational corporations, government entities, non-profits, civic organizations, and countless other organizations.

I’ve come to believe that if you really want to change the conversation around an important topic, you have to reach inside these “commanding heights” of the economy. If you want your ideas to go beyond just your personal efforts, you need a lever much more powerful than your own company – you need to leverage the existing institutions that run the world.

I thought I knew a lot about how for-profit education worked, but as I began to research and talk to people, it slowly dawned on me that this B2B world I was entering was completely different from the consumer-centric (or B2C) world I knew. 

In many ways, they work in opposite ways, like a mirror image flipping all our most sacred assumptions on their head.

I’m documenting what I’ve learned about B2B education in public so you can accompany me on the journey to understand and master this new domain. I see so many online creators trapped in the same situation as me: We’ve worked so hard to grow an audience, invented valuable ideas, and demonstrated a proven track record of creating change in people’s lives at the individual level. 

And yet, like me, I don’t think most online creators have realized even 1% of the potential of their knowledge. They have no idea just how much value is locked up in their heads and in the content they give away so freely. They don’t see their content as intellectual property – an incredibly valuable business asset that could touch the lives of millions, not to mention creating an immense amount of wealth for themselves, their families, and their communities.

It strikes me that we online creators spend an overwhelming amount of time and effort on the “front-end” of our business: acquiring followers, nurturing them continuously, creating content, promoting it on social media, etc. But hardly any corresponding effort is spent on the “back-end” of the business – ways of capitalizing on the value of that content and turning that following we’ve built into a real, sustainable business. 

We might have a course or other product we can sell, but then what? What do we do with this vast amount of attention we’ve aggregated?

After years of developing my Second Brain methodology and establishing its validity and credibility, I’m finally ready to pursue a new chapter: teaching professionals within companies and organizations a better way of working, learning, communicating, and creating using technology.

The B2B versus B2C mindset

My first surprise has been just how distinct B2B education is from B2C education. They require a completely different set of attitudes to navigate successfully.

Working in public versus dealing in private

The B2C education world includes everything falling under the umbrella of “online education” – all the content, webinars, books, podcasts, and courses you can find publicly online, whether on open platforms like Udemy or Skillshare or white-labeled platforms like Kajabi or Circle.

This is the world of thought leaders and public intellectuals, of YouTube videos and podcasts, of massive audiences built on social media and sales funnels designed to turn them into customers. It all exists in public, visible for all to see. Anyone can simply perform a Google search, visit a webpage, pull out their credit card, and buy any educational product they want. It’s a performative arena that’s all about attracting the maximum amount of attention from the greatest number of people.

The B2B education world, I’ve learned, works very differently.

Little of it is publicly visible, which means you can’t just look up which training programs even exist, much less at what price or with what features. It is an ecosystem of professional trainers and facilitators, who maintain long-term business relationships and make personal sales calls, pursuing major contracts in the six or seven figures, and delivering their expertise in day-long seminars held in hotel ballrooms.

And it all happens to a large degree in private.

Low-ticket versus high-ticket spending

Many of the differences between these two markets come from the far higher level of spending a company is capable of compared to an individual. A consumer might put more effort into considering a $100 purchase than a company needs to make a $10,000 purchase.

With so much money at stake, it clearly makes sense to have a much more involved, high-touch, personal sales process based on phone calls and in-person meetings, rather than the mass market approach of email broadcasts. When a decision maker is investing such a sum, they want to speak to a knowledgeable human being they trust to look out for their interests and craft an offering customized for their needs.

When you’re making bespoke deals that are priced differently for each client, you don’t necessarily want everyone to know about them, so it’s not in your interest to publicize all the details on your website. And the best leads are much more likely to come in via referral anyway, so the website hardly matters.

A single decision maker versus multiple

Another major difference is that in B2C, the customer is spending their own money and will be the one participating in the training. They are therefore incentivized to be frugal, and to eke out every last bit of value from their purchase. This often shows up in the form of discount-seeking, complaints (whether justified or not), and sky-high expectations that are difficult to meet. 

In B2B, there are several roles played by different people: the decision maker (usually a manager leading a team, or an executive leading a department or division) is different from the buyer (an executive who has to sign off on the spending, or a procurement officer who has to process it) is different from the participant who will actually experience the training.

This means that there are different communications that have to be conveyed to each of these parties, and a variety of decisions and approvals that need to be coordinated among them to bring the training to fruition. If you’re the training company, this all means more personnel doing more high-touch work to fulfill everyone’s requirements. All this work takes time, which means B2B education operates on much longer cycles, with training events often scheduled 6-12 months or more in advance.

Quality content versus quality trainers

In some ways, B2B training has lower standards than B2C.

When it comes to the quality of the material – recorded videos, printed materials, graphic design – it is often far below what consumers expect online, where the fierce competition for attention demands that content be polished and optimized to perfection. On the public web, the half-life of trends, memes, and hot topics is far shorter, as the never-ending news cycle moves on within days or weeks. 

In B2B, everything moves much more slowly, since companies tend to be more conservative and risk-averse. They only jump on the bandwagon when a new idea has been proven, which might very well be 5-10 years after it first appears on the public web. This delay creates an incredible opportunity for those of us on the bleeding edge to ride new trends right into the heart of the corporate world.

Along other dimensions, B2B standards are higher. They usually expect an interactive component, whether in person (the traditional setting for corporate trainings) or, increasingly, via online video conference platforms like Zoom. This means you need facilitators who not only know the material and are excellent teachers, but who have the experience and gravitas to stand in front of a room of professionals with authority. These facilitators and trainers are therefore often older, in their 40s to 60s, with more career experience under their belt.

Entertainment value versus business value

Learners in corporate settings are generally more sensitive to the time demands of training.

They aren’t learning for the sake of personal interest or enjoyment – they are learning with a specific business outcome in mind, and every minute has a dollar value attached. That means they need the training packaged and contained within a certain number of minutes, hours, or days. 

Every lesson or module needs to take them closer to the result they’re seeking. There’s less room for material that is merely interesting or entertaining if it can’t be demonstrated to produce a result. Whereas with consumers, often being engaging and entertaining provides enough value to justify the purchase.

Why move into the B2B world?

So why enter this new arena at all? Why not stick with the tried-and-true B2C market I know so well?

From the perspective of a business owner, B2B education is an inherently more stable, predictable, recurring, and scalable business to be in, as I first learned from consultant and certification expert Pam Slim. It’s not driven primarily by trends, culture shifts, or what’s in the news, like the consumer markets. This can be a godsend for those of us who don’t want to comment on every emerging meme and pivot to a new idea every year or two.

B2B is about capitalizing on intellectual property that already works, again and again for many years on end. Paradoxically, it requires retreating from the frontier of pure innovation to tamer pastures where proven ideas have the time and space to mature to their full potential.

The three paths of B2B education

Every education company has Intellectual Property (or IP) as their core asset. That could include ideas, concepts, content, designs, frameworks, models, diagrams, tools, techniques, publications, software, patents, trademarks, or research you’ve developed or invented that conveys value to a learner.

The main question that determines which business model you choose is, “How do you want to deliver that value?” There are three popular approaches, depending on how much of the training you want to deliver yourself:

1. Licensing
2. Train-the-trainer
3. In-house delivery

Licensing

Licensing is the simplest business model, which involves fully outsourcing the delivery of your training to another company, contractor, facilitator, or in-house trainer (a trainer who works full-time within the company receiving the training). You create a legally binding agreement that grants the right to use your IP, with certain conditions and restrictions, in exchange for a fee (which can be one-time or recurring, or both).

An example of this model is Mike Michalowicz, a prolific author who’s written 11 books (such as Profit First and Clockwork) on themes designed to help entrepreneurs succeed. While he loves writing books, he’s not interested in building a full-scale training or implementation service to help companies put those ideas into practice. 

As he explained in a recent podcast episode, for each book, Michalowicz finds a licensed partner who becomes the “approved” implementer of that book’s methods. Usually he looks for a low to mid-six-figure consulting business that already offers a replicable, scalable service. 

That consultancy pays him an upfront fee plus a recurring percentage of revenue from the leads Mike sends their way. Which means he gets to spend 100% of his time (along with his 8-person team) promoting his books to their full potential, gaining a share of the financial upside from consulting, while not having to directly manage all the complexity that service entails. 

Train-the-trainer

Train-the-trainer goes a step further. You “train the trainer,” giving someone the tools they need not only to practice the new skill themselves, but to teach others how to practice that skill with accuracy and integrity. Once they’ve demonstrated proof of competence as a trainer, they become not just a practitioner, but a teacher in their own right, with permission to access and use licensed material such as participant workbooks and trainer guides.

These trainers can be “independent” trainers, offering their own services on the open market, or “in-house” trainers who work exclusively for one organization. They often have to complete “continuing education units” (CEUs) to maintain their status and can usually display an official designation (such as a badge or logo) on their website, email signature, or LinkedIn profile. In some cases, these trainers receive ongoing support such as updates to the training material, invitations to advanced training, coaching on best practices, access to a community of other trainers, or promotion via the IP owner’s website (often requiring the payment of an ongoing fee to maintain their active status).

An example of this model is the Sparketype Advisor Training and Certification Program, offered by Jonathan Fields’ company Spark Endeavors (inspired by his book Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive). 

A “sparketype” is a personality type, which according to Fields’ research and experience helps professionals discover the kind of work that enlivens them and helps them fulfill their potential. They position themselves explicitly against existing “type-based” methodologies such as CliftonStrengths, VIA Character Strengths, DISC, MBTI, and the Enneagram, seeking to modernize and update them for the post-COVID world of rampant employee disengagement and burnout.

According to their website, over 850,000 people have taken their online assessment, creating a flow of warm leads who are primed to pursue further training. They created the role of Certified Sparketype Advisor (or CSA) to facilitate that training for companies and other organizations.

The CSA certification is designed for existing coaches, facilitators, career counselors, L&D professionals, HR professionals, and managers, and costs between $2,500 and $3,500 depending on when you enroll. It is delivered over 11 weeks in a hybrid format combining self-paced content consumption and small group coaching sessions in “learning pods” of 8-10 people guided by a “mentor.” 

Participants are taught how the Sparketypes apply to the real world workplace, how they can be used to enhance professionals’ sense of meaning, engagement, motivation, and performance, and how to weave the Sparketype tools into their existing client engagements. 

Once certified (and as long as they maintain their active status for $500 annually), CSAs are equipped with a variety of tools and benefits, including:

• Expanded “premium” Sparketype profiles and workbooks for participants
• Official CSA training manual
• A quarterly “fireside chat” with Spark Endeavors founder, Jonathan Fields
• Facilitated weekly small group and pair practice sessions with other CSAs
• An “official” certification letter, certificate and digital badge for public display
• License to use the Sparketype® processes, tools, resources, presentation templates, materials, brand identity, and programming in client engagements
• Access to monthly virtual office hours with Spark Endeavors staff to ask questions, get updates on new offerings, and connect with other CSAs from around the world
• Discounts on future trainings, in-person events, and other educational experiences
• Public listing on the searchable Global CSA Directory
• Accreditation by the International Coach Federation for continuing education credits

In-house delivery

In-house delivery is the most involved option, allowing the creator of IP to maintain the most control over its delivery by handling it themselves. This requires either delivering the training yourself as the instructor or hiring your own trainers and ensuring quality control at every step of the process.

An example of this route is Box of Crayons, a company founded by Michael Bungay Stanier (author of the bestselling book The Coaching Habit). The company offers a range of training and services based directly on the book’s teachings – to instill “coach-like curiosity” as a business skill in companies.

Their website claims over 132,000 people within organizations have participated in their programs, including companies like IBM, Upwork, Expedia, and Salesforce (think for a second how long it would take to reach that many consumers individually on your own). They deliver their training themselves, via a mix of self-paced, cohort-based, videoconference, and in-person experiences. 

They also offer a range of “customized” options such as licensing, localization and translation, and train-the-trainer models for in-house facilitators. Which demonstrates that you don’t have to choose just one model to follow.

All these options have to do with who owns the delivery of the training. In any case, the company that owns the IP is responsible for creating and maintaining a variety of assets needed to make that delivery successful: participant workbooks, trainer guides, learning aids, video modules, resource guides, marketing materials, sales support materials, etc.

Other examples I’m studying include Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead programs, and even education not based on a single expert’s body of work, such as the Mayo Clinic Wellness Coach Training Program.

Pricing and costs

$1,500 per person per day is a typical cost for premium corporate training. For example, a 20-participant training for 3 days would come out to about $100,000.

A typical full-time trainer can handle up to 200 days of training delivery per year and makes around $1,500 per day, which means they can make $150,000 per year using only about half their capacity. Trainers who want to handle more training days or who are more experienced can make considerably more, while also pursuing their own business on the side.

Using these basic numbers, it takes serving about 666 training participants per year to create a 7-figure business. If there are 20 people in a typical group training, that requires delivering only 33 training days in a year total. 

For an 8-figure business, you would need 6,666 trainees, or 333 training days, which could be handled by as few as 2-3 trainers. This begins to paint a picture of what’s possible with relatively few staff, as long as you have a steady supply of leads.

6 guiding principles for entering the B2B market 

Through my conversations with knowledgeable people in this area, I’ve arrived at a set of helpful principles I plan on keeping in mind as we embark on this path:

#1 – Everything out there – all the content and advice – is designed for B2C creators; you have to look elsewhere for B2B

Most of the popular content you see online is designed for the masses. The masses are, by definition, mostly beginners, trying to make their first buck online. 

Therefore, to gain insight into B2B education, you have to largely ignore the vast majority of the advice you find on the public web, in favor of behind-the-scenes learning directly from entrepreneurs who have done it themselves. This requires a conscious effort to ignore certain sources of information (like social media) that are loud and certain, in favor of others that are more nuanced and mostly found behind closed doors.

#2 – Clients want to be seen as a partner and co-develop the training with you (not “I have a product and want to sell it to you”)

In the B2C world, we are used to creating our courses in private and then “unveiling” them to the world all at once via a launch. We hope to sell it to hundreds or thousands of largely anonymous consumers, which means no one person’s opinion is decisive in deciding what to create. 

In the B2B world, it’s very different – you are designing a training experience specifically for one client, which means you must show up as a partner and co-creator who takes their unique needs and goals into account.

#3 – However large your audience is, 1/10 of them will pay 10x as much, 1/10 of them will pay 10x that much, etc.

In other words, there is almost certainly a small segment of your customer base that is not price sensitive and would be willing to pay 10 times what you currently charge in exchange for a training event that suits their needs 10x better. 

They are often leading teams within large companies, have existing learning and development (L&D) budgets to spend, and have an urgent problem your education is perfectly suited to solve.

#4 – Target companies with more than 500 employees, which are likely to have substantial training budgets

As B2C creators, we are accustomed to selling to customers who can evaluate an offering, weigh the pros and cons, and then make the decision to purchase, all by themselves. That leads to a very efficient sale – the entire sales process can happen within one person’s head. 

But it also means, by definition, that we are limiting ourselves to individual consumers, freelancers, or small businesses. To grow beyond those small-ticket purchases, we have to wade into the arena of procurement, learning and development departments, executive sponsors, and requests for proposals, all of which come into play when the budgets approach 6 or 7 figures.

#5 – Teams are the secret to enterprise – everyone is on a team, and every team has a leader who is worried about “team performance”

While we will need to work primarily with large companies, that doesn’t mean that we can tackle the entire company as a whole. As Mo Bunnell (founder of leading business development training firm Bunnell Idea Group) told me, “Teams are the secret to enterprise.” 

Teams are discrete, clearly defined groups with a common purpose and a leader. A team usually has a budget to spend and can participate in training together without too much complexity. Focusing on a specific team allows you to deeply understand their context and needs and design an educational solution that suits them.

#6 – You need a funnel for recruiting trainers as robust as the one for recruiting employees

This was another eye-opening idea I heard from Mo – that in order to attract, retain, and eventually replace the best trainers and facilitators, you need to have a recruitment funnel just as robust as the one for recruiting employees. 

That means a dedicated website with messaging that speaks to people’s needs, an application and interview process, and a way to identify and follow up with the best candidates continuously, among other things. Since these trainers will be an extension of your team, you need to put as much thought and care into their experience as for the team itself.

The critical importance of sales

Succeeding in B2B education requires succeeding in sales.

Public online courses can be sold without ever interacting directly with the customer, but not with B2B. This is another reason most small-scale online creators never enter this market – they don’t typically have the means or motivation to master a full-fledged sales operation.

This means recruiting, hiring, training and quality-controlling a team of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), since you don’t want all your sales efforts relying on one person long term. It means identifying and starting conversations with a continuous series of leads, whether inbound (they contact you) or outbound (you contact them). It means creating many systems – from software systems to tracking systems to customer relationship management (CRM) systems to account management systems.

I’ve been intrigued to hear from experts like Tim Grahl who have also found sales calls to be one of their richest sources of customer research. And from experienced entrepreneurs like Grant Baldwin and Bryan Harris who report that if you’re selling high-end, 4-figure training programs, you can likely afford to hire a part-time salesperson as soon as you’re closing 5-10 new customers per month (and pay them based on commission only to keep costs in check).

This is a domain I’ve only begun to familiarize myself with, and which I plan on studying further in the coming months.

Talk with us

I’m interested in having more conversations with people experienced in B2B education, whether entrepreneurs who have built businesses in this area, trainers and facilitators who’ve become certified and practice existing methodologies in their work, or potential candidates for our own certified Second Brain facilitator program.

If any of those match your interests, you can email us at hello@fortelabs.com.

Thank you to Mo Bunnell, Pam Slim, Chad Cannon, Jeremie Kubicek, and others for generously informing these ideas and insights.

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