TAYA workshop vs. TAYA Mastery: which fits your business best?

You're excited about Endless Customers (formerly They Ask, You Answer) and would like to invest in a next step.

You've seen that we offer both an Endless Customers workshop and a marketing and sales program where you get to work with Endless Customers, and you're wondering what's best for you: do a one-time workshop (first) or go straight for the comprehensive program?

As an Endless Customers coach at Buzzlytics, I conduct workshops and guide companies through the marketing and sales program. In my experience, the choice between a workshop and a long-term program depends mainly on how much you and your team are already convinced about Endless Customers and how much you can and want to invest in an intensive program.

In this article, I discuss the main differences between the workshop and the extended course. I explain what each option entails and help you determine which variant is the best next step for your business. This will allow you to make an informed decision by the end of this article.

An Endless Customers workshop is a one-time investment, with a facilitator from Buzzlytics coming to your business for a half-day session (usually three to four hours).

This workshop is specific to your company and aims to align your team around the Endless Customers method. It is an intensive workshop that will lay a solid foundation for implementing the Endless Customers principles within your company.

An Endless Customers workshop is not a standard talk. The content is partly determined by the interaction with your employees and we always address the specific situation of your company and the specific questions, comments, challenges and resistance of your employees.

The workshop aims to align your team around Endless Customers.

You may be thinking now: if I've read the book, surely I can tell my team about the method myself? Why do I need a workshop for that?

In our experience, the message comes across better when someone from the outside brings it. My fellow coaches and I did our training at IMPACT, the company of the author and founder of Endless Customers. We know exactly how to bring your team into the story, what resistance to expect and how best to respond.

Our marketing and sales program, on the other hand, is a comprehensive coaching and training program in which you learn to do your marketing and sales yourself in (at least) eighteen months.

This process starts with a kick-off session, where we make sure your entire team knows what we're going to do and has access to all the necessary resources, such as our online learning environment.

In addition, you'll have quarterly planning sessions to set appropriate goals and priorities and bi-weekly training sessions. The training sessions help your employees improve their knowledge and skills in areas such as written content, video content and HubSpot.

An Endless Customers workshop is also a regular part of the marketing and sales program. If you take the workshop first and then decide you want to continue with the program, you don't have to take the workshop again and get a discount on the program.

Some companies ask us if a workshop is enough if they want to get started with Endless Customers.

Above, I explained that our marketing and sales program consists of three components:

• The kick-off session where we get all the noses in the same direction.
• A quarterly planning session, in which we set goals and priorities for the coming quarter.
• Training and coaching sessions completed based on the goals and priorities determined in the quarterly planning sessions.

We repeat this cycle every quarter until the eighteen months are over.

If you only do the workshop, you will have aligned your team in terms of Endless Customers, but you won't have set goals and priorities that you will work on in the next quarter.

So you have to facilitate quarterly planning sessions yourself and ensure yourself that the action items from those planning sessions are followed up.

In the marketing and sales program, we facilitate the planning sessions for you, set priorities together and help you avoid the pitfalls we see in many companies implementing Endless Customers without a coach.

In addition, there are coaching and training sessions.

During the coaching we pay particular attention to the team dynamics, whether you are all still on the same page and whether you are still on track with your priorities.

In the trainings, we go deeper into the content and address questions like: how do you recruit a content manager? How do you write a good Endless Customers article? How do you apply assignment selling within your company? And so on.

All of these topics will be touched on in the workshop, but we won't get into them.

At Buzzlytics, we see time and again that implementing Endless Customers without a coach turns out to be much harder than many companies think. A coach plays a crucial role in a successful implementation. He ensures that you remain continuously focused on what you want to achieve and what it takes to get there.

In our experience, companies who join our marketing and sales program achieve their goals faster and more effectively than those who try to implement Endless Customers on their own.

Also read: Is a coach necessary to implement Endless Customers?

Implementing Endless Customers without a coach turns out to be much harder than many companies think.

How do you decide whether it's best to start the marketing and sales program right away or better to do a workshop first?

The answer is everyone's favorite answer: it depends.

The financial investment required for it can be an important reason not to start our marketing and sales program (yet). After all, for best results, you need to invest not only in the coaching program itself, but also in staff (at least the content manager), video equipment, IMPACT+ and software like HubSpot.

If you're serious about getting started with Endless Customers and want to see results quickly, the program is worthwhile, but all in all it's quite a big investment that you should be able to make.

Are you still in doubt whether Endless Customers suits your company or do you want to introduce your team to the method before you decide? Then it's best to do a workshop first. After the workshop you can still choose to continue with the program. As mentioned, you get a discount on the program if you have already done the workshop.

Also read: What is the right time to start working with Endless Customers?

Whether you choose a workshop or our marketing and sales program: at Buzzlytics, we have extensive experience with both workshops and the comprehensive program, and we can also help your company successfully implement Endless Customers.

Interested in sparring with one of our advisors about the best move for your business? Then schedule an appointment. We would love to think with you!