How to Train Your Clients (and Customers)

If you’ve built something (anything) for people, you know that training and support can be the hardest part of the job. You need to communicate what you’ve done in a clear and concise way that also teaches people how to use the product. It’s easy to leave this part until the end of the project timeline, or leave it to the support team with products, but it’s an important aspect of everything we build. In this session, we will look at effective ways to create training materials, decrease your support costs, and increase your sales toolkit.

Transcript

1. How to Train Your Clients (and Customers) Joe Casabona wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona
3. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Learn by Doing
4. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Learning Retention • Lecture – 5% • Reading – 10% • Demonstration – 30% • Group – 50% • Practice and Doing – 75% src
5. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona How Does this Apply to Training?
6. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona - Benjamin Franklin “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
7. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Creating Your Training
8. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona High Level Process Overview • Come Up with Concept* • Develop Outline • Do & Document • Record, Write (formally), or teach IRL
9. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Come Up with a Concept • This works best for courses or specific topics (like how to use LearnDash or your own product) • Pick a single project to develop and teach through that • Could be real or fictional. For clients, make it their site & use their content! • Some ideas: Restaurant, NPO, anything from your portfolio, a real live case study
10. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Develop an Outline • What should students get out of course? • Define your objectives & your assumptions • “Ordered Brain Dump” • Very rough!
12. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Iterate on Outline • Refine the Outline • Fill in the sections some more • Best Case: This translates into your modules • Worst Case: It’s your “to do list” for creating the site
13. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Before You Do… • Decide the medium for your course • In person or online? • Videos or text-based tutorials? • Create all the content • Write all the Words and choose all the images
14. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona How will you Build the Course?
15. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona DO & Document • Take each point in your outline, one-by-one, and do it. • As you do, write down what you do & take screenshots • If you’re using video, record the whole process; you can always edit later.
16. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Do & Document • You may start reworking or even adding content at this point • Make sure what you’re doing make sense and adheres to your objectives • Always work towards your final product
17. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Why Do First? • There are lots of reasons to do as you go • What if a process changed or works differently than how you remember? • You’re forced to explain what you’re doing as you do it • You can quickly change direction as needed
18. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Final Product Up and Running with Beaver Builder Introduction The WordPress Editor What is Beaver Builder? Primer & Terminology Configure Settings Beaver Builder Theme Content & Finding a Good Theme Choosing Colors & Fonts Customizer: Content Areas Customizer: Color Scheme Customizer: Fonts Creating Your Pages Setting up the Pages Intro to the Page Builder Home Page About Page Trips Page Contact Page Other Functions Modules Kitchen Sink Importing & Exporting Resources
19. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Training Tools
20. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona What I Use • Pen & Paper (and lately, iPad Pro 10.5”) • LearnDash to Organize my Courses - WordPress LMS • Screenflow for Videos • rev.com for transcriptions & scripts • Microsoft Word for Written Documentation
21. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona What I Use • Zoom for Webinars • Photoshop for Custom Graphics • Mac for Screenshots - single browser, 1 tab, no bookmarks.
22. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Creating Screencasts
23. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona What You Need • How to Create Screencasts People will Actually Watch - Shawn Hesketh • A Decent Mic • A Reasonably quite room
24. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Process • Record Everything! • Narrate as you work - explain what you’re doing • Speak slowly and pause between points • If needed, re-narrate later
25. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona What to Cover
26. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Define Your Objective • In most cases, teaching everything is impractical - unless you’re training a client on a site you built. More on that later • Instead, define your objective for your training and choose the topics that will help your students achieve that • Make it specific - “Learn how to use Beaver Builder” is too general. “Build a basic informational website with Beaver Builder” is better
27. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Training Clients • When you build something, it’s a bit different. You need to train them on all custom functionality and plugins they need to interact work. • For basic WordPress functionality, the WP101 plugin is perfect. • Use what’s available to you! • Gauge Skill Level
28. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Determining Skill Level
29. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona This is Tough! • For courses, you can state assumptions - definitely do this! • For training clients, you can ask what they know and then set a base • Some may over- or under-estimate what they know so watch for that • For live sessions, it can be a wild card
30. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Tips: • Pause often and ask questions to your audience. • Do a simple show of hands at the beginning of live sessions. • Watch their faces (in a classroom or talk) - if they look confused, back up
31. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona This Comes Down to Empathy
32. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona I give a whole talk on this but: • Remember they don’t know what you know. That’s why they hired you. • Remember Your First Time • Make them feel comfortable.
33. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Comfort Makes for Better Learning!
34. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Help Them Do • In video, ask a question then tell them to pause to answer the question. • In one-on-one training, show clients how to do something, then have them do the next one. • Ask questions and expect answers.
35. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona What’s that about giving a man a fish?
36. Teach Your Students to Fish by making them Fish* *Or whatever it is you teach. You can take them fishing too.
37. wp1mo.in/wps-training @jcasabona Front End Developer 
 Teacher Joe Casabona casabona.org