Comparing Contracting Business Training Resources
In the August 2023 Snapshot Survey, we asked contractors about their preferences when choosing contracting business training resources. Here’s one survey question and its results from the summary report, which is available in it’s entirety by Contractor University members here.
How Do You Decide Between Contracting Business Training Resources?
Surprisingly, cost was not much of a consideration when choosing educational resources, ranking number one for only a small portion (4%) of respondents and number two for only a slightly more significant piece of the pie (19%). This may be due to a number of similarly priced educational resources that are widely available, and the fact that most businesses dedicate funds to ongoing training so that it does not amount to an out-of-the-ordinary expense. Instead, the driving factor in ongoing education is the value taken from education resources (38% selected as most important), followed closely by noted professionals in the industry working on said resource (35%), both of which can be seen interchangeably because a noted professional likely has a large following from the value they add to their content, and vice versa. It’s important to note that both were also rated highly as number two choices, along with trustworthiness and brand reputation, which earned a solid section of number two choice voting (38%) likely for the same reason.
While any value taken from a single educational resource clearly justifies its cost, the same is not necessarily true for brand reputation or from the endorsement of a noted professional or speaker. In this way, biases in the industry may wrongly support specific educational resources under the false impression that they are providing value, when they may just have the look and feel of valuable resources without the substance to match. So it’s important business owners identify particular areas in which their ongoing education is making an impact on their business rather than assuming all training resources are created equal.
HVAC & Plumbing Contractor from North Carolina:
“Our biggest training opportunities lately have come from new products available for our company and/or vendors. We recently had several of our plumbers attend on-demand water heater training that was a vendor training session but was not free. This has been an amazing ROI in that we now offer a very desirable product line installation and support that was not available before.”
