It is a well-known fact among financial modelling training companies that certain sectors of financial training benefit from economic slow-downs. The main reason for this counter-intuitive fact is that people are looking to polish their CV in case they would be made redundant.
Corporate financial modelling training is taking the biggest hit
Not surprisingly the upswing in individual training is offset by corporates and institutions reducing training budgets to cope with the threats of recession. With many of the banks on a zero training budget for 08/09 this will keep causing a lot of pain in the financial modelling training sector. The net effect for most financial training companies is a reduction in total participants, and the hardest hit are almost always companies catering for corporate clients with high fees and costly overheads.
How do you get a good deal on financial modelling training?
If you want to use the current environment as an excuse to get a better deal on financial modelling training then you should read this. There are a number of ways of getting more attractive pricing when organising financial modelling training and in combination they can be quite effective
- Have an open discussion with your training provider and ask them how you could bring the training fees down
- Register multiple participants
- Bundle up several training courses in one registration
- Use early-bird discounts where applicable
- Organise an in-house course (and provide catering, venue, printing, etc)
- Offer to work exclusively with one training course provider
- Ask for a last minute discount in the days before a course (just keep in mind that the best courses are often full due to the small group sizes)
- Find a smaller operator who can be more flexible on price
- Offer to provide testimonials or ‘success stories’ for marketing
- Wrap the training fees up with other consulting work (say you are using F1F9 for model builds, why not ask if they can give you a good deal on the training too?)
- Promise to recommend the course on LinkedIn, Facebook, your own website, etc (could be a tough one, but it’s worth a shot)
Universities market short courses in financial modelling
Many post-graduate universities offer short courses on financial modelling as part of their alumni and continuous learning programs. In Australia we have seen UTS Financial Modeling Certificate advertise frequently in the Australian Financial Review, and recently Macquarie Applied Finance have joined in.
Specialist modelling firms targeting individuals
Some of the smaller, niche training companies are now directly targeting individuals who are looking to prepare for a tougher job market. On the more aggressive end of the scale we have Financial Mechanics and Navigator Project Finance (including financial modelling in London) who both offer courses to individuals at 50% of the corporate rate. Fi-mech even made a big announcement about it, but Navigator seems to be quieter about this arrangement but they have also been reducing the fees for financial modelling training courses in London and Singapore.
Extract from Financial Mechanics newsletter, ‘The Swamp Fox’
Course discounts for ‘private citizens’Making our training more accessible to students and between-jobbers For students and those between jobs, we will be offering course tuition at a 50% discount to our commercial prices effective 1 April 2009 - no, not an April Fool’s joke. With financial modeling as a marketable skill in these times, we believe our hands-on teaching will provide practical techniques for those looking to hone their skills a bit further. Who qualifies?
Rickard,
All good stuff, no argument from me — we of course stand by what we’ve announced and in general the ideas you’ve noted will have an impact on pricing discussions — far more effective ideas than simply running with what I’d call the General Motors Plan, i.e. large firms simply jamming suppliers down on price without offering much value back.
The testimonial one is tricky, and we’ve resisted this, as it weakens the sincerity of testimonials in general - pre-agreeing on a discount ahead of knowing that someone actually would honestly recommend it is tough.
Last minute discounts definitely in the game, but in general, we offer discounts for firms / individuals willing to fly ’standby’, i.e. no promise of a seat. We often do not offer last minute discounts, even if their is space on the course.
One further thought — as an idea. The ‘bulk bookings’ together with ’standby flexibility’ are effective, as all training providers are ‘load managing’ their courses. For example:
“What discount would you provide if we underwrote x individuals to be trained on y topics, fit on your courses anywhere in the next z months as long as you advise of us spaces at least one week before course starts.”
Food for thought,
John Richter
Financial Mechanics
http://fi-mech.com
[EDIT] Rickard Wärnelid corrected the hyperlink to Financial Mechanics [/EDIT]
John Richter | 24/04/2009 11:06am