How to Find Apprenticeship Training Providers for Your Business

As a business leader, it’s common to field questions from your apprentices and early-career staff around learning and development. It can be a challenge to find apprenticeship training to develop your employees’ skills and enable them to carry out their duties effectively. However, with the support of expert apprenticeship providers, and the assistance offered by the apprenticeship levy and additional government funding, you can carry out this training for a low cost, enhancing your employees’ satisfaction levels and driving profitability.

Despite this, it can be difficult to find apprenticeship providers that cater to your specific business needs and skill gaps, not to mention the needs of your team. It’s important to make sure your chosen provider offers you a high level of dedicated support, leveraging the latest theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience to provide your staff with the in-demand skills to remain competitive.

This article explores how to find apprenticeship and training providers, discussing the ways in which a tech sales apprenticeship can unlock your employees’ potential before offering our top five tips for ensuring that your staff receive the highest quality of learning and development. We’ll also briefly discuss how the provision of up-to-date tech sales apprenticeship courses has evolved over the last five years, driven by consumer demand and emerging technologies.

Sales Apprenticeship Training Unlocks the Potential of Your Team

By providing practical, hands-on training to your team, sales apprenticeship training can help your business to gain the crucial skills needed to remain competitive within the dynamic and consumer-driven marketplace. 

Apprenticeship training programmes typically cover a wide range of topics, including sales fundamentals such as negotiation, objection handling, and closing. With the development of tech sales apprenticeship courses, learners are also getting to access the latest information on lead generation and customer relationship management, giving your employees the skills they need to enhance their productivity and achieve their career ambitions. 

When you find apprenticeship training, you can be confident that your staff will be paired with experienced professionals for one-on-one mentorship and guidance—an invaluable experience to learn from the best in the business. This can be crucial to reducing the risk of employee turnover, with 91% of workers who have a mentor noting that they’re satisfied with their jobs, whilst 73% of Generation Z candidates are motivated to give their tasks their all when they feel a supervisor cares about their learning and development.

Modern sales apprenticeship training offers your team the ability to hone a robust work ethic and professional attitude with eLearning solutions designed to work around their current day-to-day responsibilities. Micro-learning is increasingly crucial to the skills development process, with bite-sized information delivered via videos and podcasts able to improve retention by 50%.

Tech sales apprenticeship courses offer you an excellent way to demonstrate your commitment to the learning and professional development of your employees, giving them the opportunity to earn a recognised qualification and even university-accredited degrees. With the cost of a bad hire so high, it makes sense to invest in the talent you already have, especially if you’re looking to produce a robust succession plan to ensure your business remains in safe hands as you focus on other duties. 

According to a study by LinkedIn Learning, 94% of employees would stay with a business for longer if it focused on developing their career-specific skills, so it’s important to ensure you find apprenticeship training that offers them the practical expertise they need to achieve their goals.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to find apprenticeship training or seeking more information on how you can drive a digital skills transformation within your business, see our guide to how you can drive innovation with digital apprenticeships after you’ve read this article.

Five Tips to Find Apprenticeship Providers for Your Business

The sales apprenticeship training market is booming thanks to the quality of the standards imposed by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. These standards give employers the confidence to know that their staff will receive professional training and in-demand skills from approved, regulated apprenticeship providers. 

Despite this, however, it’s still important to discuss your needs thoroughly with a provider to evaluate whether they’ll be able to tailor their course to your unique business challenges.

So, how can you find great, relevant apprenticeships for your team? Luckily, we’ve compiled five rapid-fire, no-nonsense tips to help you find apprenticeship training providers that can support the learning and development of your staff at all levels of seniority: 

1. Utilise an online platform to discover certified, expert apprenticeship providers. The UK Government provides a comprehensive service to find apprenticeship training as an employer, giving you the ability to research a training provider and the apprenticeship standards they’re working towards, giving you the confidence that your staff are receiving the highest-quality education. 

2. Network with your clients and vendors. Reach out to your colleagues and contacts within the industry to gather first-hand accounts of reputable apprenticeship training providers. These can be valuable recommendations when you’re evaluating which provider to use. 

3. Consider reaching out to local vocational training centres. Many training centres will collaborate with providers to offer hands-on and in-demand skills to trainees, covering everything from technical sales to data analysis. Seeking out the providers that these training centres partner with can uncover a wide range of bespoke apprenticeship training opportunities for your team.

4. Connect with apprenticeship training providers directly through career expos and job fairs. If you’re already utilising these events to acquire talent, they can be a great way to connect with providers in-person and get a better understanding of their commitment to learning and development.

5. Contact industry bodies within your sector. Organisations such as the Society for Human Resource Management or the Institute of Sales Professionals often maintain lists of registered sales apprenticeship training providers. Get in touch with them to access valuable resources and guidance on how to find apprenticeships and training for your employees.

With different tech sales apprenticeship standards at all levels, it’s important that businesses research and evaluate all the providers available to them. 

The right provider will work closely with your business to ensure that all skills and knowledge gained are relevant to your employees and their daily responsibilities—and that learning and development activities are conducted according to a schedule that works for you and your sales team.

The Evolution of the Tech Sales Apprenticeship

In response to the increase in demand for workplace-ready skillsets, the provision of tech sales apprenticeship courses has grown exponentially over the last five years. With emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence making headline news with some regularity, there is a growing need for skilled salespeople across the software development, SaaS, and wider tech industries. 

The tech sales industry is constantly evolving as it adapts to these technologies, meaning that professionals need to keep up with the latest developments to ensure they can provide a valuable, consultative experience for customers and key accounts. 

When you find apprenticeship training that’s relevant to your employees and engaging, you’ll be able to offer them the ability to gain hands-on experience in a real-world setting, preparing them for the dynamic pace of the modern tech industry, where knowing how to communicate new product developments can make the difference between losing and closing a deal. 

Alongside this, tech sales apprenticeship courses have also enabled organisations to attract individuals from a variety of backgrounds to enter the tech industry, with 50% of apprentices being women and almost half of all apprentices aged over 25, showing that these programmes are an excellent way for businesses to attract mature staff that are looking to improve their career prospects.

Final Remarks

Tech sales apprenticeship courses are an excellent way to invest in your employees and ensure they have the skills they need to succeed in the dynamic, modern workplace. By following the tips in this article, you can find apprenticeship training providers that will work in close partnership with you to design a tailored course of study and practical experience that meets the specific needs of your business and your team. 

Sales apprenticeship courses can help your employees gain the expertise they need to provide an exceptional experience for key accounts, offering a toolkit of techniques and methodologies to develop and maintain strong relationships with all customers. 

These courses have evolved in response to the increase in demand for workplace-ready skillsets amongst candidates, particularly with the growth and media recognition of emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence. 

By researching and evaluating apprenticeship providers, you’ll be able to find training that allows your apprentices to keep up with the fast-paced tech industry, helping them to communicate product developments and provide consultation to their clients. 

Find Apprenticeship Training with Pareto’s Bespoke Courses

At Pareto, we’ve been providing bespoke sales apprenticeship training to learners at all levels of seniority for over 25 years. Our consultants have the industry expertise you require to find a course that suits the needs of your business and your salespeople, ensuring that they’re gaining the most up-to-date skills demanded by customers across the industry.

To learn more about our courses and find apprenticeship training, contact us today.