Below are some of frequently asked questions about the NetSpeed Leadership Consultant Partnership Program (CPP) for Consultants, Trainers and Distributors.

Why should I consider partnering my business with NetSpeed Leadership?
What sort of partnership options does NetSpeed Leadership have?
What makes NetSpeed Leadership different from other management and leadership training programs on the market?
How does the Consultant Partnership Program work?
What kinds of consultants would most likely be successful in this program?
What are you looking for in terms of Distributor qualifications?
How would I be compensated?
How much income can I realistically expect to generate for my business?
How does the referral incentive program work?
Are my expenses covered?
Do I have to cover the cost of training materials?
Are there any costs to get started?
What if I just want to sell the program and not deliver the training? Why do I still have to be certified?
How often do you conduct certification workshops?
Do I have to be certified annually?
Do I need to be certified before I can begin marketing and promoting NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service as part of my product offering?
I understand you have a new customer service training program called Blazing Service. Can I market and/or deliver that program too with my NetSpeed  Leadership certification?
Can I represent other vendors' training or management development programs?
What if I have developed my own programs that overlap with some of the NetSpeed Leadership curriculum? Am I restricted from marketing my own competing programs?
Are there "geographic territory" restrictions over where I can promote NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service?
Would I be the only Consultant Partner or Distributor in my geographic region?
How big a Consulting Partner Network are you looking to grow?
How do you avoid two consultants talking to the same client about your training programs?
What sort of marketing or sales support is provided?
Who bills the client, me or NetSpeed Leadership?

Why should I consider partnering my business with NetSpeed Leadership?

If you are a consultant whose focus is on management training or leadership development, supervisory or customer service skills development, or if you are an independent sales & marketing reseller who has experience selling vendor packaged training programs, then partnering with NetSpeed Leadership can be a strategic way to grow your business without the intense time commitment or expense outlay associated with developing an entirely new product offering all on your own. NetSpeed Leadership provides a comprehensive three-day certification program that provides you with all the tools and training required to effectively market and/or present either of our training programs, NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service, to your clients.

For OD/HR consultants and independent trainers, by being certified in NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service, you will be able to provide your current clients with the same top-flight leadership and customer service training programs utilized by companies like Washington Mutual Bank, Eddie Bauer, Microsoft, REI, and many other organizations which have all made NetSpeed Leadership a cornerstone of their professional skills and leadership training curriculum. And having NetSpeed Leadership certification provides you with a way to introduce your business to a new universe of clients, who may be looking for the latest in leadership, supervisory or customer service skills training for their organizations.

For independent sales professionals and resellers, being a NetSpeed Leadership/Blazing Service distributor provides you with two innovative, top quality training solutions and a wealth of quality sales and marketing support materials so you have everything you need to get started quickly.

To learn more about how you can incorporate NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service into your consulting practice or independent rep business, click here . And don't forget to include your resume, electronic marketing brochure or other information about your credentials and experience.

What sort of partnership options does NetSpeed Leadership have?

NetSpeed Leadership provides three different affiliation options:

• Certified Trainer – if you are interested in being able to deliver NetSpeed Leadership programs to your clients, but have no interest in actively marketing our program offering to prospective customers. Your interest is strictly on the training delivery side, not sales.

• Distributor – if your focus is primarily on the sales side rather than delivery, and you’re interested in marketing NetSpeed Leadership to prospective customers but have no interest in doing training delivery.

• Consultant Partner – if you are interested in both the marketing/sales side AND the delivery side.  

You can choose which affiliation makes sense for you or your firm. And the compensation offers differ as well. To learn more about how these different affiliations are compensated, scroll to the section labeled How would I be compensated?

What makes NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service different from other management/leadership and customer service training programs on the market?

NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service take the best of classroom instruction and e-learning to provide a fast-paced, economical, and highly interactive, blended learning experience. We provide leadership training in three-hour classroom modules, covering 23 different subjects. For a complete listing of our modules, click here. Blazing Service provides a program of six two-hour modules for front line customer service providers. For both programs, we provide an extremely comprehensive trainer/facilitator guide that makes it much easier - and quicker - for the facilitator to prepare for a training session. And our emphasis on discovery learning and practical skills application make it easier for participants to immediately apply their classroom learning to their work situation.

We follow the classroom experience with a series of electronic reinforcement, tracking and measurement tools: our Electronic Magazine, along with web-based tools for NetSpeed Leadership called NetSpeed Coach© and NetSpeed On The Job^TM, (or Blazing Coach^TM and Blazing Service at Work^TM for our Blazing Service training program) to help increase retention of the classroom content, maximize long-term behavior change and increase the ability to apply the learning to actual work challenges. And our post-classroom tracking and measurement tool called NetSpeed  Administrator© provides a very easy and effective way to track the learning outcomes from the classroom and measure learning retention and behavior change.
The response to NetSpeed Leadership has extremely positive, so much so that we now have consultant partners, trainers and distributors in over twenty states, Canada, and Europe.

How does the Consultant Partnership Program (CPP) work?

We want to partner with training industry professionals who either have their own consulting/training delivery practice and would like to incorporate the NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service training program series into their firm's product line, or marketing & sales professionals who have experience as independent marketing representatives or resellers in the training space. In either situation, we want individuals who would like to affiliate with NetSpeed Leadership (part-time or full-time) and have a familiarity with vendor packages associated with management, supervisory and/or professional skills training and development.

If you have experience selling or training with products like Zenger-Miller, DDI, Wilson Learning, Vital Learning or other classroom training programs, then you would likely be very comfortable with the NetSpeed Leadership approach, as we utilize many of the best design methodologies of these programs. Whether your interest is to connect your clients to NetSpeed Leadership and to deliver the training yourself, or to act as a distributor of our programs and leave the training to someone else, we can work with you either way. It is not necessary that you actually provide the training yourself, if you would rather have a certified NetSpeed Leadership trainer handle this, but we certify every consultant partner to be able to deliver the training, so they can train if they wish to.

If you meet our requirements (and we meet yours) and you become a member of the NetSpeed Leadership CPP, we would train you through our three-day certification program and provide you with all the training delivery materials, sales, marketing and product support materials to get you started. You would learn the methodology behind the NetSpeed Leadership approach to training, be given a complete set of facilitation materials for all 23 modules.

Those who choose either the Consultant Partner or Distributor affiliation option would also receive access to a comprehensive online "Sales Tool Kit" with everything you need to begin marketing NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service as part of your service offering, including such things are marketing brochures and media packets, fully scripted PowerPoint presentations, case studies of successful NetSpeed clients, white papers and even a series of email templates you can personalize to introduce NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service. We've been told by our consultant partners and distributors that our sales support literature is some of the most comprehensive in the industry.

As a certified NetSpeed Leadership Consultant Partner, Certified Trainer or Distributor, you would be authorized to represent all of our programs to any client. We would include your clients or prospects (at your option) in a regular bi-monthly email newsletter we send out to clients and prospective clients about NetSpeed Leadership -- or you could personalize our email newsletter and send it out with your photo and contact information. And we continually keep you updated with the latest developments, product updates, and new marketing and sales support tools. We even have a monthly (optional) Consultant Partner Web Conference Call and a monthly Consultant Partner internal email newsletter to keep everyone updated about the latest developments.

What kinds of consultants and trainers would most likely be successful in this program?

Consultants and trainers who are most likely to be successful in the NetSpeed Leadership CPP are those that have some familiarity with vendor-packaged leadership or customer service training programs, either from previous sales or training experience with those products, or perhaps from having experienced them as a training participant. If you are familiar with programs like Zenger-Miller, Achieve Global or DDI, then your ramp-up time learning the NetSpeed Leadership would most likely be very brief. If you are a consultant or distributor who has business relationships with organizations which have a history of working with vendor-based training programs, and might be looking for a new and dynamic training alternative, then you could be extremely successful with NetSpeed Leadership. If you have a passion about providing clients with top-quality training programs to help develop the skills of their managers and supervisors, then you could be very successful partnering your business with NetSpeed Leadership.

What are you looking for in terms of Distributor qualifications?

All of the qualifications indicated above for Consultant Partners would certainly apply equally to a potential Distributor. In addition, in order to be considered to be a NetSpeed Leadership distributor, we would want to know that you have had a track record of success representing other training, HR or related products or services and have a willingness to make a serious time commitment to NetSpeed Leadership. While we are open to working with Certified Trainers who might only sporadically be engaged with NetSpeed Leadership for an occasional delivery, our expectations for the level of involvement to qualify for our Distributor program are much higher. In return for a significant focus on NetSpeed Leadership, we offer Distributors our highest earnings potential.

How would I be compensated?

How we compensate you depends on whether your relationship with NetSpeed Leadership is that of a Consultant Partner, Certified Trainer or Distributors. In all three cases, the nature of your status is an independent contractor, not an employment, relationship. As such, there is no base salary, since we presume you have your own business and would want to maintain your own autonomy as a business owner. Let’s take the three affiliation relationships one at a time.
Certified Trainers: If your interest in working with NetSpeed is simply to deliver NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service workshops to your clients and prospective customers, and not to market either of our training programs, then there are two possible scenarios:

Scenario One – Delivering training to Your Client:
If the NetSpeed Leadership delivery is to your own pre-existing client, then you would have full autonomy to determine your facilitation fee, based on your experience level and what you feel the client can afford. And you would simply purchase your participant materials from NetSpeed Leadership for whatever quantity you needed for your workshop event.

Scenario Two – Delivering training to a NetSpeed Leadership client:
If the opportunity is one that NetSpeed Leadership originally identified and brought you in to provide the delivery, our trainer facilitation rates are $500 per half-day module or $1,000 per day (for a morning and afternoon delivery of two modules). We do not offer the option for you to set your own facilitation rates if we brought you in for delivery to a pre-existing NetSpeed Leadership customer.

Distributors: If you are only interested in the sales side of the ledger and have no plans to deliver NetSpeed Leadership training – and you meet our requirements to qualify as a NetSpeed Leadership Distributor - then your compensation  works as follows:

• Sales of $0 - $200,000: 25% of all NSL fees received based on business closed in that calendar year
• Sales of $200,000+: 30% on all revenues from $200,000 and above on business closed in that calendar year.

Consultant Partners: If you are interested in both sides of the ledger, marketing NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service to your customers and prospects as well as doing the delivery, we provide you with two options:

Facilitation Fee Option:
Under this option, you are not commissioned on the sale of materials or licenses. Instead, you receive 100% of the facilitation fee. And you have full autonomy to determine your facilitation fee, based on your experience level and what you feel the client can afford.  NetSpeed Leadership invoices you for the participant materials, and you bill the client directly for your facilitation services and participant materials.

When this option makes sense: For Consultant Partners who prefer to set their own facilitation fee schedule and bill directly for their services or for when you are delivering a small 1X or 2X workshop, this plan is the optimal one for you. 

Commission Option:
Under this option, you receive a commission of 25% on all sales of NetSpeed Leadership programs – that’s 25 % of all program library fees, participant materials, trainer certification costs, and facilitation fees (whether you handle the facilitation or not).  In addition, if you also handle the NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service facilitation , you will receive a facilitation fee of $500 for every module you deliver – or $1,000 per day for a morning and afternoon facilitation. Under this option, NetSpeed Leadership invoices the client and remits payment to you.  This commission percentage can elevate to 30% for sales in excess of $200,000 per calendar year.
When this option makes sense: When the client utilizes its own internal trainers/facilitators, or you prefer to have NetSpeed Leadership handle all the client invoicing, this plan is the optimal one for you.

You don’t have to choose. You can shift between either compensation plan from sale to sale, and apply whichever compensation plan makes the most financial sense for the given situation. So you maintain maximum flexibility on how you are compensated by NetSpeed Leadership.

One more way to earn income with NetSpeed Leadership: Consultant Partnership or Distributor Referrals
If you refer other Consultant Partners or Distributors into this program, you will earn 5% of any NetSpeed Leadership revenues (exclusive of facilitation fees) collected as a result of their efforts in their first 18 months in the program (certain restrictions and conditions apply).
For more information, contact us at 206-517-5271, Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 5pm Pacific Time.

How much income can I realistically expect to generate for my business?

This depends on how much time and effort you choose to apply to marketing NetSpeed Leadership as a part of your business and/or doing NetSpeed Leadership training delivery. Depending on the amount of time you might devote to NetSpeed Leadership, you could realistically expect to generate between $20,000 and $75,000 a year (or more) for your business. A factor, in addition to the amount of time you would be willing to devote to delivering or marketing NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service, would be the size of the market where you are located and the nature, extent and decision-making level of the client contacts to which you have access. Someone working fulltime in say, New York City realistically could expect to earn more than someone say in Boise, ID, just due to the size of the markets and number of companies based in each region.

How does the referral incentive program work?

In a nutshell, if you became a Consultant Partner or a Distributor and then referred other consultant partners or distributors to join the CPP, you would earn 5% of the NetSpeed Leadership revenues that each referred partner generated in their first 18 months. So if you referred three Consultant Partners and they each generated $100,000 in NetSpeed revenues in their first 18 months, you would earn 5% of $300,000 or $15,000.

Certain restrictions apply (for example, you become eligible once you yourself have generated $25,000 in NetSpeed Leadership business), but the incentive is retroactive, even if the Consultant Partner or Distributor you referred closed business before you reached your $25,000 "activation threshold." Also, this referral incentive only applies if you yourself become a certified NetSpeed Leadership Consultant Partner or Distributor and have a current Partnership Agreement with NetSpeed Leadership in force at the time. For more details, contact us at 206-517-5271.

Are my expenses covered?

Since the nature of this business partnership is that of an independent contractor rather than employee, we do not normally cover business expenses. In most cases our Consulting Partners or Distributors may be representing other non-competing products or services and it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate out and adequately document which expenses a Consulting Partner or Distributor incurred in promoting NetSpeed Leadership as opposed to other products they might be representing, or their overall business. However, we are willing to look at special situations on a case-by-case basis, if the potential business that could result from your efforts might warrant special consideration.

Do I have to cover the cost of training materials that would be provided to one of my clients who purchased a NetSpeed Leadership training program?

No. All costs of production and shipping are handled by NetSpeed Leadership. We handle all production of training materials and bill the client directly for these materials. However, if you are doing the training facilitation, there may be a limited number of facilitator support materials that you would need to provide, or ensure that the client provides.

Are there any costs to get started?

Yes. For anyone interested in being certified to personally deliver or market NetSpeed Leadership training programs, there are only two costs for getting started:

• $1,000 to be certified in either NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service or $1,500 to be certified in both programs for your certification (Certification is one day per program, plus for Consultant Partners or Distributors, a third day for sales and marketing training)
• The costs of traveling to the certification class

Since we are headquartered in Seattle, WA, most of our certifications take place in Seattle. If there are enough people willing to travel to a particular region to be certified, we will attempt to accommodate this by conducting the certification in that region. We need at least five people in a region to move the certification workshop to that region.

What if I just want to sell the program and not deliver the training? Do I still have to be certified?

Even though Distributors would never actually deliver a NetSpeed Leadership training session, we still ask that they too participate in our three-day certification workshop. Why? Because it is our strongly held belief that in order to sell NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service effectively and with integrity, a Consultant Partner needs to truly understand the product. And to truly understand the methodology and design concepts behind NetSpeed Leadership, it requires participating in the certification process.

How often do you conduct certification workshops?

This varies, but generally, certification workshops take place every other month, more frequently if there are enough Consultant Partners, Certified Trainers or Distributors that need to become certified.

Do I have to be certified annually?

No. Only once.
Exception:  If a Certified Trainer or Consultant Partner interested in doing delivery goes more than 18 months without personally conducting a NetSpeed Leadership delivery, we would require them to go through a re-certification workshop, but we would waive the standard certification fee.

Do I need to be certified before I can begin marketing and promoting NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service as part of my product offering?

No, you don't, although we strongly encourage that you go through certification as quickly as possible. You can begin marketing and promoting NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service before being certified -- although if your affiliation relationship with us is that of a Certified Trainer or Consultant Partner, then you can not deliver any NetSpeed Leadership training classes unless and until you have become certified. We will provide you with sales and marketing support materials upon signing the Consultant Partnership Representation Agreement. We do highly encourage, however, that you make every reasonable effort to go through certification within 90 days of joining up as a NetSpeed Leadership Consultant Partner, Certified Trainer or Distributor, in order to ensure your long-term success representing NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service.

I understand you have a new customer service training program called Blazing Service. Can I market and/or deliver that program too with my NetSpeed  Leadership certification?

If your interest is exclusively in delivering and/or marketing Blazing Service and you have not previously participated in a NetSpeed Leadership TTT certification event (or vice versa), the standard $1,000 certification fee to become certified to deliver and/or market Blazing Service would apply. If however, you have previously been certified in either program, and wish to become certified in the other program at a later date, the fee to get certified in the second program is $500 additional.

Can I represent other vendors' training or management development programs?

Yes, you can. Our only limitation is that we do not accept as Consultant Partners or Distributors people representing and promoting classroom-based modular vendor package leadership development, supervisory or customer service training programs that we would consider to be direct competitors of NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service. (And frankly, the other vendors probably would not want you selling NetSpeed or Blazing Service for the same reasons.) But if you are representing a vendor package which is not classroom-based (e.g. a strictly e-learning product), or if the nature of the product's content offering centers around issues other than management, supervisory, professional or customer service skills training, this should not be an issue. If you are not clear whether there might be a conflict, give us a call and we will discuss the details and let you know whether we feel it is a competitive conflict or not. We try to be as flexible as we can in working with our Consultant Partners and Distributors around this issue.

What if I have developed my own programs that overlap with some of the NetSpeed Leadership curriculum? Am I restricted from marketing my own competing programs?

No problem. Our goal is not to restrict your opportunity to generate revenue from programs you have developed in your practice. There is one exception to this rule: If you are a Consultant Partner or Certified Trainer, and the training delivery opportunity or sales lead came to you from NetSpeed Leadership - that is, if WE introduced you to the prospective client - then we require that you not do not compete with NetSpeed Leadership by promoting your own product offering to this prospect, as this would be a direct conflict of interest. But with that rather narrow exception, we try not to interfere with your ability to run your business and promote your own programs and services.

The only other issue is theft of intellectual property. While we try not to restrict our partners from marketing their own programs (other than the limited exception stated above), if we find out that a Consulting Partner, Certified Trainer or Distributor has taken our NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service training material and "private labeled" it as their own and attempted to market our content - our intellectual property - as their own, this would violate our copyright, and we would have to bring some nice people who wear pin-striped suits and like to use complex Latin phrases into the discussion. Please don't even think about going there, thank you.

Are there "geographic territory" restrictions governing where I can promote NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service?

No, there are not and there are no near term plans to do so either (unless this became something that a Consultant Partner or Distributor abused). We have made a conscious decision not to put unreasonable geographic restrictions on our Consultant Partners' and Distributors’ ability to grow their business by partnering with NetSpeed Leadership. If you have clients or prospects in other cities or regions beyond your own "backyard" we have no problem with your representing NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service to them so long as there isn't another Consulting Partner or Distributor already working with that client on behalf of NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service.

Would I be the only Consultant Partner or Distributor in my geographic region?

Not necessarily. It depends on the size of your market. If your business were located in a small city, then we probably would not see a value to having more than one Consulting Partner or Distributor in your region (unless you were minimally active with NetSpeed Leadership). But if your business was in a large metropolitan market like, say, New York, Houston, Minneapolis, Denver, etc., then there could be more than one Consultant Partner or Distributor in any given larger market.

We have no interest in flooding the market, so in most cases, we are generally not looking to have more than a small number of active Consultant Partners or Distributor in any one major market. But there is no hard and fast rule about this. A deciding factor for us is how much time and attention a particular Consultant Partner or Distributor is devoting to promoting NetSpeed Leadership and/or Blazing Service in their market area – and how successful they are in their efforts. We would much rather have one or two highly committed Consultant Partners or Distributors in a market than six or seven partners all of whom were marginally involved in marketing NetSpeed Leadership or Blazing Service.

How big a Consulting Partner/Distributor Community are you planning to grow?

We honestly have no set number of Consultant Partners or Distributors as a goal. Part of the answer to this question depends on the level of activity and involvement these Consulting Partners and Distributors provide. The more active and successful they are in any given geographic region, the fewer we will allow to become affiliated with us in that region.

How do you avoid two consultants (or Distributors) talking to the same client about your training programs?

We invite each Consultant Partner or Distributor to give us a list of clients or prospective clients with whom they have current or past working relationships that they would like to "protect." Generally speaking (with some case-by-case exceptions), we handle these protection requests on a first-come-first-served basis. We then share this "Protected Accounts" list with our entire Consultant Partnership Community so every Consultant Partner and Distributor has access to a list of clients that have been previously protected by another Consultant Partner or Distributor. Of course, if a Consultant Partner or Distributor is not actively working with a client they have previously protected, this protected status is not guaranteed indefinitely, and prospects can be shifted to other Consultant Partners or Distributors if the other person is willing to aggressively work a client and have an influential contact within the organization.

What sort of marketing or sales support is provided?

The best! In addition to the in-depth three-day initial certification workshop, we provide a comprehensive Sales Tool Kit, which includes:

• Commonly asked questions and objections and how to respond to them with integrity
• Price Plan information
• Sample Sales Presentation PowerPoint slides
• NetSpeed Leadership Client Success Stories
• Detailed Module Summaries for all 23 NetSpeed Leadership Modules
• Sample Proposal Templates
• Sample Email Templates
• White Papers
• Case Studies
  

And much more. We continually update our online Sales Tool Kit and enhance it with new support materials. Consultant Partners and Distributors can enter their password to access the most up-to-date version of all marketing and sales support materials at our web site.

We provide you with your own NetSpeed Leadership business cards (at your request) as well as other marketing support materials. We also produce a periodic NetSpeed Leadership HTML email newsletter that we send out to over 5,000 newsletter subscribers who represent prospective customers, providing them with articles,insights and ideas around leadership training.  In addition, each month we conduct webinars in which we feature a different NSL module each session – a great way to get NetSpeed Leadership in front of your prospects in a low-threat way.

We also feature you on our web site in our “Meet Our Team” section, with your head shot photo, your bio and contact information (phone and email).
For Consultant Partners and Distributors, we provide you with a wealth of additional marketing and sales collateral at no charge (or in some cases, depending on the item, at our cost). We are committed to your success.

In addition, we are willing to work closely with our Consultant Partners and Distributors to help craft email campaigns and personalized proposals that make the most sense for their clients. We email every Consultant Partner and Distributor a monthly Partner newsletter with new product information, pricing updates, new sales tools or any other information that we think may assist you in your efforts to represent NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service.

Who bills the client, me or NetSpeed Leadership?

It depends. We bill the client for all program library fees, participant materials and trainer certification costs. For Consultant Partners and Distributors, typically we handle all client billing. If you are a Certified Trainer delivering your own workshop to your client (and the opportunity did not come to you from NetSpeed Leadership originally), the Certified Trainer typically invoices the client directly for their facilitation services and the cost of materials. 

A blended learning program for customer service providers