Selling to corporates can be hugely rewarding. But it can also be incredibly slow and painful. Especially when you're selling something they've never bought before – like online courses.

Covid-19 has changed things somewhat and brought online courses up the priority list. But by and large, people in corporates don't like to take risks on new things, because those risks tend to be one-sided.

If things go well, the company gets the benefit rather than them personally. But if things go badly, it's often career-ending for them.

So if a large organisation hasn't bought online courses before it can be a long and painful process for them to make that first purchase.

Unless…the online course comes bundled with something they're already used to buying.

That's why the easiest way to sell online courses to corporates is often to add them on to existing work you're already doing for them or proposing to them.

Doing live training? Add an online version of the course as an option to help reinforce the learning after the course is over. Or for new joiners or others who weren't able to attend the live sessions.

Doing a live workshop? Add an online training option before the workshop so that workshop itself can make real progress fast rather than having to spend half the time getting everyone up to speed.

Doing a consulting project? Add an online training option to ensure that new processes and methods introduced in the project are implemented effectively and that the improvements stick.

Proposing a training project to a client with a strict budget, or where travelling to each of their offices is going to be prohibitively expensive? Use a blend of live and online training to make the project more affordable while still getting the benefits of live sessions where they're really needed.

There are all sorts of ways you can integrate online courses into live work. And they're all much, much easier to sell to clients than a standalone online course because they don't seem anywhere near as new and risky.

But the reality is that most people just don't offer them.

They propose the same old type of live sessions they've always proposed, rather than spending just a little bit of time to figure out how they can add online courses into the mix.

And in doing so, they miss out on potentially a huge opportunity to start selling online courses.

Because even if an online course add-on is only a small amount of revenue initially, it opens the door for more online courses in future – including standalone options.

Once you've delivered and your online courses are a known and trusted quantity, it's much, much easier to sell more of them.

But only if you can get that initial foot in the door.

Of course, this only works in situations where you're already selling other services to them. In upcoming posts we'll see how you can break in to brand new corporate clients using the same principle of decreasing perceived risk.