Good morning. As we have our people, attendees, logging in just go ahead and pop into the chat-- a quick hi or hello. I want to make sure that you can hear our presenters today. If you have any problems, my name is Mandilee Comstock with CAEP-TAP and you can send me a quick chat and I can help walk you through that. We're going to go ahead and get started in just a second.

I'm going to go over some quick housekeeping. Attendees, as you start to join the session, you will be able to hear. You'll be able to communicate with your panelists via the Q&A at the bottom of your webinar panel. You should see a quick Q&A, or you can chat. So just note that if you can hear me, you are doing great, but you will not be able to engage audibly.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and start the housekeeping, as our attendees start to filter in this early morning. So good morning, everyone. Again, my name is Mandilee Comstock with CAEP Technical Assistance Project. I want to go over a few quick things.

The meeting today is being recorded, so all attendees are muted for the webinar platform. Your volume can be adjusted. And to turn your volume up or down in your system settings, you can also use the volume at the bottom where you see the little speaker icon.

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Fantastic. Thank you so much. And I just want to commend CAEP for all the wonderful things and the technical assistance providers you all are doing for the conference. It's just a big job, and we really appreciate the opportunity to present today.

So hi everybody, I'm Celina Shands. I'm the CEO and founder of Full Capacity Marketing. I'm very excited because I'm one of your four presenters today where we're going to be talking about a super important topic, especially during COVID.

And that is how to build employer relationships amid the new COVID-19 environment. And with that, two of our power presenters from SkillsUSA and COABE have joined us to talk about what they're doing in their respective worlds and what initiatives that we can leverage to actually help build those relationships. And one of them is a national campaign called Behind Every Employer. And it really focuses on elevating adult education and career technical education to showcase the high impact education in industry partnerships. And we really need that elevation.

Now, one of the things I want to share is-- I just put it in the chat box. We updated the PowerPoint and also BusinessU has worked on two handouts that we thought would be very important to hammer home some of the key points we want to share with you around building relationships.

So make sure you check out that link in the chat box and download the presentation and the handouts. And with that, I'd like to turn it over and have our presenters introduce themselves. So, Sharon.

Wonderful. Hello, everybody. It's such a pleasure to be with you. My name is Sharon Bonney.

I'm the chief executive officer at the Coalition on Adult Basic Education. And I'm delighted to turn this over to Kelly Horton. Kelly.

Thanks, Sharon. I'm Kelly Horton, the director of education at SkillsUSA. And my pleasure to turn it over to Dr. Bosworth.

Well hello, everyone. And thank you, Kelly, and the rest of the panelists. I'm honored really to be presenting today with all of you at the CAEP Summit especially since I was once an adult educator.

But mostly, I was also an adult learner. And as a result of my family being immigrants to the United States, when we came here we didn't know the language and the school was really honestly very uncomfortable for me, like many of your students when they went through the primary and secondary levels. And so I basically fell through the cracks. And you can see why I'm so thrilled today to be here with all of you because it was adult educators, such as yourself as well as some of you community college folks that are on this call, that inspired me to move forward with my educational goals. So I want to thank you for all of that.

I'm the co-founder and CEO of BusinessU. And we are an institution accredited national organization with a sole focus on helping educators and workforce development professionals to maximize their business engagement. What does that result in? Expanded opportunities for your adult learners and your students. All right, Selena, back to you.

I never get tired of this story Dr. B, and I love that you bring in all the facets to that. So I just am excited about the team presenting. And I had the honor to work with everybody on the panel today, as well as many of you in the field-- the community colleges as well as a lot of the adult education organizations across the state.

In Full Capacity Marketing, we are communications experts in workforce and education, and we have a national footprint and very well known for our successful campaigns. Worked with Sharon on her fantastic Educate and Elevate campaign. And again, really just focused on building and elevating all of our roles in the field in terms of what we do and having that awareness about our mission.

So anyway, to start with, we're going to use the chat box a lot, and all of the panelists today are going to be monitoring the chat. So if you have specific questions for one of us, feel free. The chat box is where all the action is going to happen here. And the first thing we'd like for you to do is just introduce yourselves, like where you're from, and give us the number one challenge you are facing in terms of engaging employers.

We're going to put the COVID face on this, and it's been a big one. And here in California not only with COVID, but with the fires and the winds and everything, we've really had a challenging time. And as Dr. B was saying earlier, if we don't have that relationships with employers, then we don't have the opportunity for our students and adult learners. So check in with us and let us know about that.

How we're going to run the session today is we're going to answer a lot of questions for you. One is how has the business engagement landscape changed given COVID-19. Educators and workforce professionals need to understand that in order to go and build relationships with businesses and employers, to engage them with your mission. How do we or you as educators need to change the approach to business engagement, given this fluid pandemic environment?

A lot has changed. We can no longer really go and meet one on one with businesses. They have a host of things going on in their minds. So how do we break through that and build those relationships on behalf of our students and adult learners?

What is Behind Every Employer? What's that campaign all about? And I'm so excited that, Sharon and Kelly, you're here.

And I want to just shout out to them and thank them for their leadership on seeing this vision. And we have the bones of the campaign developed, and we're going to be building it on the next iteration. So we'll share that with you.

And then, again, what current business engagement initiatives can you leverage from our campaign partners? We're going to give you that as well as some tools from BusinessU today. So I want to jump in here.

And when we think about employee engagement, we really have two sides. We really focused you as educators on the student side, and they have their set of challenges. And then the employers as well-- and they have their needs.

So we know from different studies-- and Strada has been doing a great job on their Center for Consumer Insights. If you haven't tapped into that resource, I highly recommend that you take a look and see what they are doing. Strada's got a lot of studies going out in terms of the minds of the consumers.

And what they've stated is that we know that nearly half of Americans indicate they've already lost income as a result of COVID. 2/3 are worried about losing their jobs, no matter their education level. And just think about the repercussions for adult learners in that situation where they're also fighting even more barriers. And then also additionally, one third believe they need more training or education to weather the storm. So in a lot of senses, it's a good opportunity to position adult education and career technical education around being a solution for what is happening during COVID.

Well, to do that, we need to build relationships with businesses. And if you take a look at the data here from McKinsey, it says it can take more than five years-- five-- for most effective sectors to get back to the level of 2019 contributions to GDP. And so we threw this chart in here for you to take a look at on a global scale what is happening within your different industry sectors.

To me, what this slide says is, well, where are the opportunities for our students? And that's what we have to really think through. And in order to do that, we have to expand our reach to business and industry.

And it's interesting. When BusinessU does its studies and they go in and teach their bootcamps and certify people, they'll do like a baseline of where people are at in terms of engaging business and industry. And what we find is that it runs anywhere between 1% and 3%. That's it. 1% to 3% of businesses who are engaged with the mission of adult education or with their community colleges, et cetera.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for that, which we're going to get into today. But this is a challenge. How do we break through that and expand reach for our students? So one of the key aha moments we want you all to take away is that, especially in this fluid environment, educators must have their pulse on the sector needs in order to prepare the talent pipeline.

Do they? Do you? Do we? And are we poised as strategic partners to help businesses recover?

I don't know if you all were in our session yesterday, but we had a panel of three different consortia who had talked about your outreach campaigns from a regional perspective. Dr. Ka'ryn Holder-Jackson, who is with ACCEL in San Mateo, she was talking about how she really felt the need to reposition her organization as a major community solution in what they are doing around adult ed and career education. And she said, and the way we do that-- and by the way, she's a graduate of BusinessU, so she was speaking the language here.

She says, you know what? As an executive director of one of the consortium, I know that it's our job to build relationships with employers and get them aware of what we are doing and to be able to track those relationships. So this slide is really important, and that's what we want you to think about today. Is your organization poised as a strategic partner to help businesses recover?

Now, recent data, even before the pandemic, shows that employers have lost confidence in workforce and education systems. There's a study by Inside Higher Ed, an article that reported on several studies, that concluded that business leaders are generally-- they're confident in higher ed, but their faith diminishes around skills students learn in college. So there's that whole skills issues going on. And while a majority of employers believe students have the knowledge, few of them think they can really advance in the workplace. So it's all about skills, and there is a critical need to raise awareness among business and industry about how adult ed and CTE build the necessary skill sets.

I'm going to take a breath here and share, and I wonder if you can come on and just chat with me for a second. I know this is not your section, but you and I were talking yesterday and you've been on a lot of calls with employers lately. Can you share a little bit? Just summarize what they're saying about trying to tap into adult and career education and even partnering with us. They want to, but they don't know where to start, right?

That's exactly what they're saying, Celina. And what I'm hearing from many, many employers is that it's just very difficult. They feel like there's so many barriers to working with adult education.

And what's specifically difficult about that is that you hear the same from the other side, from adult education. They don't know how to work with employers. And so I think this is where we're really trying to come up with a way to break down those barriers and to make it easy.

One of the issues that we run into quite often is that at the state level, I feel like there's not a really great system in place at the state level. So let's say an Amazon comes in or UniFirst or Dollar General, some of these big organizations and companies-- there's not a really fluid way for them to know how to work with adult education.

Right. And that's one of the things you and Kelly are really focused on with Behind Every Employer, and we'll get to that. But, boy, if they don't know how to do it, we need to take the bull by the horns as we say in the South and be more proactive around that. And it's hard because we're juggling so many multiple priorities.

But again, I go back to that 1% to 3%. If we're only penetrating the market 1% to 3% of that opportunity for adult learners, and it's just the left on the table. Yeah, thanks for that, Sharon.

I know you've been immersed in that employer world. Kelly, how about you? Can you pop on and have you had any kind of conversations with businesses that you'd like to share at this point that aligns with what Sharon saying?

Absolutely. Celina, we're hearing those same concerns. And certainly were before, but now just not knowing-- are folks on site? Are they in virtual settings? How would we even connect to them?

And frankly, just the overwhelmingness on the educator side of trying to navigate all those waters. In particular, in career and technical education, where they may not have access to their labs if they're working virtually. So it's just it's a time where if folks have a clear path or solutions, people are very eager because they obviously want to build those relationships but just are very unsure. And then obviously, the pandemic is adding to that stress and anxiety for sure.

Right. Thanks for your insight, both of you, because I know you've really got a big picture of what's going on nationally. So thank you for those insights and BusinessU you found that same thing. I'm going to go into their study.

But the other thing-- there was a lot of disconnects reported by different states in the need to coordinate employer engagement strategies-- just piggybacking on what Sharon and Kelly are saying. And that can range from policy, programmatic, and even sharing resources. You all in education are not alone because Dr. B will tell you this. In those organizations that are funded by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, all the American job centers, and their workforce force, they have staff assigned to go out in proactively engage with business and industry.

Now, many of those staff also wear dual hats as case managers and also they'll job development on behalf of the student. But oftentimes, what BusinessU will find is that they work in silos, even within that organization. Community colleges-- we definitely see that with a career center staff contacting employers, faculty, sometimes your economic workforce divisions. And then adult ed itself, in the district schools and all that, they're so understaffed so they are having to work really overtime.

So what all these trends means is that it's even more important to have a very strategic approach when you're building relationships with business and industry. And BusinessU actually funded a national study. And they found the top three challenges with education organizations around this building relationships was getting businesses to partner, coordinating outreach efforts, and measuring business engagement. And Dr. B you can probably speak a lot more eloquently to the study than I can. That wreaks havoc, does it not?

Well, more than it's havoc, it's not understanding. It's being tactical and strategic about engagement. And Celina, as you'll see when I take on now the next slide, in the chat there are some really solid challenges and barriers that these individuals are having that's on this call today about engaging business. So if we can just put that aside for just a moment so Celina can go into the slide and discuss it because we're going to go into strategic concepts. So then tactical things that we are having a difficult with, we can try to address outside of this.

That'd be great, Christine. And while you're perusing the chat, I'm going to go over these three and then maybe we can align that with what we're seeing. Because I know in your study what was found is that the end result of all of that, all the things we just said, was that basically employers do not know about your organization. They do not know that you can help them strategically with workforce development strategies that help them compete.

And because of that, there's a lack of value from their perception. And again, that leads to this low engagement rate that I was talking about, 1% to 5%. So it makes it even more important than to think strategically around business engagement. And Christine, did you see in the chat the similar challenges? What are folks saying in the chat around anything?

Making connections. Making connections. It's really difficult. Staff time-- it's very hard for staff time to do that. Limited staff, limited time to engage with business as well.

And what Erica said from Corona-Norco Adult School is that identifying good value relationships. Good value relationships. And while it's outside the scope of this particular webinar, that goes into researching, needs assessment, aggregating data, looking at that, being sector based. There's a variety of ways of going about that, but I don't want to take the time now away from you, Celina, to discuss that.

I want to jump in. I want you to jump in, Dr. B, because this is really the heart, then, of-- and I know BusinessU goes really deep in certifying folks in business engagement. But what you've really pulled together here is really stuff that people can take away, grasping these concepts. So please, we'd love to hear from you.

OK. Well, thank you for that. And let's just take those challenges aside for a moment. And Celina will probably be typing in some things in the chat box, but let's put those aside. And let's try to put on the employer hat, the business hat.

As you know, an employer is different from a business, and you'll see that on the next slide. And what those differences are and how we engage with them is really, really important. But building relationships is what we need to focus on-- not about how to get in the door or crossing something off of our agenda, but really thinking about the start of building a relationship. And we know that if you work with people, you're in the business of building relationships.

And the most successful salespeople on Earth will tell you-- even though none of us are salespeople here, I don't assume, on this call-- but it's about building relationships. They don't say I'm in sales. I'm in about building a relationship.

So the key to building a relationship, just like in our personal lives, it takes time. We know this. It takes time. I remember-- like I was mentioning, I was an immigrant. I came to this country, and I learned English through watching a lot of cartoons and watching TV. And I'm sure a lot of your students, adult learners, have probably told you the same thing.

But one of them was a cartoon called Pepé Le Pew. And every time Pepé Le Pew found something desirous, he turned into this steaming lambchop, this person, and his eyes would roll around. And that, I see, happens to us when we meet an employer and we're very much agenda driven.

Well, think about it in your personal life. When you meet someone for the very first time or the second time and they're agenda driven, it's a turnoff. It's a turnoff to us personally. It's a turnoff to us professionally.

And that doesn't stop when we're meeting with employers. So when we come in with our agenda, asking them, do you have any openings, internships, externships, learning opportunities? Even though we have all the support that wraps around that student, all the hard work that's doing adult learner has gone to and the sacrifices they have made, it's very much agenda driven. So how do we turn our mindset and thinking more about the employer and who they are and the business? So we can then expand those opportunities for our adult learners and students.

One of the key things in building a relationship is increasing our interactions. And living in Los Angeles and we're in California here, when you're at the grocery store, especially now, and there's these long lines-- I'm always reading those tabloids. And the 101 theory of relationship building and how it comes apart is that there was no interaction.

So these Hollywood stars-- she's on the West Coast, he's on the West Coast and so they have the relationship. It just didn't work out. That's what their publicists always go to. That's what broke it up, the lack of interaction.

And because it's true-- a lack of interaction. So how do you build interaction with a business? Now, knowing just like in our personal lives and professional lives with employers, it doesn't have to be a monetary thing of value as long as it is something of value to them, to that business.

Now, remember everyone thinks about value differently. Everyone has their own way of thinking about value. So what we have to do then is-- how do you connect with them without your agenda, reducing your expectation, not expecting anything in return, just so they can start knowing about you and your organization?

Are you on their social media platforms? Do you participate in any of their sectors? Do you link in with them and in their association sectors? Get their newsletters, so you can send them a quick email or social post.

Or do you, when you see them in the local newspaper, do you congratulate them? Always thinking about ways to increase their interaction. When you invite them to one of your job fairs or events, do you make it sector based or do you just throw out the invitation to all the sectors, to all the employers, that you know? All you have to do is really change the top subject line.

And I know it's outside the scope of this course. The strategy is to increase your interaction. The tactic is all these things I'm talking about, all these tactical things are going about it. So Celina, before we go on to the other slide, is there anything else that you want to add on this one?

I think it's just-- I've been talking to some folks in the chat room, Dr. B. So some of their issues are-- my students now are competing with a larger employee pool. I'm having challenges breaking down the corporate barriers. And I know you're going to get into this, but we really have to check our language and what we're saying to businesses. Are we building value?

And I think that's what you're saying because it can be very fatiguing to-- I know as a CEO, I get calls all the time. Can you do this? Can you do this? Without really showing the value. And our focus is really different in business. I know you're going to go into this, but that's what we're saying in the chat.

Right. Thank you for that. So let's get on to that next slide, so we can talk about value for a moment. The language of business-- well, you know the mother tongue of business is a return on investment.

Again, I'll be teaching that later today, monetizing what you do. But it is a return on investment. So articulating what is of value to business, that's how you connect with them.

It's not about learning the language of business, so you can get in the door. It's not about learning about profit and loss statements and balance sheet. It's understanding what is valuable to them.

And you'll see as we go on here this morning, it will be about features and benefits. And we tend to talk about all the features, all of our program, all of the art, what our students have and adult learners have gone through in the program and the sacrifices they have made and how they succeeded through all of that and why they would be such a great fit. And that's where we stop. We stop right there why they would be such a great fit instead of adding those benefits.

So let's talk about the psyche of business. And many of you on this call are aware that for decades and decades, there's been studies done on corporations. And the reason that is is because they are recognized legally as a person.

Corporations are people now. They are born without a soul or heart. And in time, you hope that they grow into that but they really would be deviant against their own charter and what makes them successful if they do not focus on why they exist.

And they exist to be competitive, to make money, to be profitable, to bring out new products and new services. Understanding that, knowing that that it is not bad for them to behave this way-- remember, we hope that in time they grow the heart and the soul. But putting that aside, just understanding their psyche.

So when psychologists took corporations through their profile, they've come up-- and this has not changed in decades and decades, and I'm sure many of you could put this in the chat-- they came out as being psychotic. They are known as a psychotic psychological profile. So understand that it's all about them and it's me, me, me.

And here we come in with our mission, our education mission, and not coming in with what is of value to them-- increased productivity, increased customer service level, increased sales, increased revenue, decreased attrition, increased retention. When we don't speak those types of metrics to them, then we've lost the connection. And we don't want to waste that opportunity that we've finally connected with a business or an employer.

And all of a sudden, we've lost them because we're talking about all the features about our program, and all that it entails, and what the student or learner has gone through. And we say, well, that's a perfect fit. They're highly skilled. They come out.

Now they have a skill. They have a skill that this business through our research has shown that they need. Sure, that's great. But we again cut it off right there.

What's the benefit to them in that? What will they do for the benefit? Are you going to tell me that you're going to increase my productivity because of that? It's going to increase my retention?

You can take all your data points and all the reports that you receive from your different agencies, state agencies, even your various associations, and if you would just let the lens on it, if you would just look at it through the employer lens, could you take all of that and write a benefit statement to it? So businesses-- this is what keeps them up at night. They're more than an employer.

When we approach a business as an employer, it's only one thing that they do. When we come in with that, we're very much agenda driven. When we look at them as a holistic business that have a lot of things that they do, a lot of things that keep them up at night, and probably workforce development or placing someone or an internship or work based on the opportunity is not even at the top of their mind right now.

That's OK because you're there to build a relationship, and you carry on. But then you're saying, I have metrics to meet. Absolutely. But we have to be strategic. We have to break in somehow, and the way we have to move the needle is understanding that--

For example some of you put in the chat, it's hard to break in to some of these employers. And that's because their behavior has not changed. They do not perceive what you are offering of value to them.

Because we know that perception goggles behavior. If we want something to change, we have to perceive it first. We have to make that connection of how it could benefit us before we can change our behavior.

Personally, professionally, if somebody came to me tomorrow and said, Christine, we need to start putting all of your papers. I know you keep them on the right side of the desk, but we're going through this whole transformation-- that famous word, transformation-- and we're making a lot of changes. And we're going to now put all your papers-- they've got to be on the left side. That's what you're going to be doing now.

And I'm like, no way. I've been keeping my papers for 20 years on the right side, and that's what I like it. Because I didn't perceive, it wasn't explained to me what is of that a value to me. What benefit do I get from that, so I can change my behavior.

Perception follows behavior. Many times we expect behavior to change just because we talk about something or bring up something that we are excited about. Celina, anything you want to add here?

Yeah. I was just so intent on what you were saying, Dr. B. The other thing-- maybe speak to this a little bit because Tim had a great point in the chat. He said, what's worked for me is to build an advisory and listen to the businesses in terms of what they want. And I think advisories are fantastic.

And they're a small group of employers, a small group that can benefit our students and learners. And so how do we basically-- how do I say this-- expand our reach? Isn't that the goal is to build more and more employers so that we have those opportunities for our students? Can you talk just a little bit about that? It probably fits in with what you're going to talk about with value propositions next. I just want to throw that out.

Right. I think that's a good point-- advisories, meetings, board meetings, meetings with your board members, anything that you are convening. Where we tend to fall short is that we don't provide them with the results of that meeting. What happened during that meeting?

Well, we listen to them. Well, we listen to them, and we don't feel that nothing really was accomplished. I mean, we got some good information, but we already-- they were validating what we were saying, which is really what you want all these meetings to be about.

You already are coming in with your research. You already have your data points. You already know what's going on. When you have advisory meeting, it's to validate and to improve on that information.

Because as an employer when I'm asked to join all these meetings or join a board, it's always, what do you think or what should we do? Well, what is it are you doing? What have you found in your research? And then using our expertise as board members or advisory board to validate or tweak or improve upon-- that's being more strategic.

So when you have these types of meetings, everyone that's attended those meetings-- your employers, or your board members, or what have you-- everyone wants to feel a sense of efficacy. We need to give them the feedback-- not just the minutes of that meeting, but a highlight. Remember, increase your interaction.

A highlight of what came out of that and what the next step of that one point was. That makes me feel that my time was valuable. That's an incredible resource for employers and board members and others that you work with.

And also, it's proof of concept. So now you have this concept. Are you putting this advisory meeting that you have-- are you creating brand awareness? Remember value for business.

Is there brand awareness for them? Are you putting in your newsletters that you've had this advisory meeting and all of these employers came together? Are you letting your local newspapers or radio stations know? They're looking for information.

This is brand awareness. And yes, it increases the interaction and really brings in more employers so they can be part of that. Because now, you have this proof of concept that you can convene, you can put employers together. And you might not think it was a big deal.

But it is a big deal that you are able to accomplish that. So don't take what you do lightly. Speak to it to the world.

Again, and go and use your partners-- economic development, chambers, workforce development, your associations-- and have them put that on their website and share links together. That expands your reach as well. So Celina, if you want we can move on, or you can add more to that.

We're good, Dr. B. We're caught up.

We're caught up. We're good. OK. All right. So a way to communicate, to articulate, what is of value to business-- this might seem like a very easy concept, but I'll tell you and Celina will attest to this, it's one of the most difficult to put into practice because we have been trained in our work, through product knowledge, to what we do to build these scripts in our mind that are very features driven.

I'll describe the difference in a moment. For example, a car-- the features of a car are the tires and the steering wheel and it has four doors. Well, what are the benefits of that car?

Well, I didn't get any benefits of that. All cars have four wheels, et cetera. So what makes it different? What are the benefits?

If I'm a Volvo driver and I want to come in and I want to buy a new car, they don't know I want to be a Volvo driver. But what is my hot button? It's safety. So they would talk to me about safety and talk about those and how it would benefit me.

Now, we're going to talk about it in a different way here. But I want you to start thinking differently about program features, about even all the different elements that your students and adults learners have gone through. Those are all features in your programs.

Those are all features, and you need to think about that across all your touchpoints, websites, and your social media platforms, your handouts, your talking points. Can we now switch it up and talk about the benefits of it? Because no one wants to work hard at learning about or discovering benefits.

Just like when you go to the drugstore and you're looking for sunscreen. If you had to sit there and just go through all the features of that sunscreen, you would not buy that product. The benefits have to be right up front. Just like in commercials, the benefits are right up front.

So it's a different lens on how we see things, just like the lens of looking at things through the employer perspective. What is of value to them? And we're doing this so who benefits at the end of the day? This expanded opportunity for your learners and your job seekers.

It's just a different strategic way of going about it. It's just another way of approaching building your relationships. So Celina, if we can go on to that next slide. Or you can also add to that one slide that I just spoke about.

Well, I just want to give an example. And I know this is something you do during BusinessU. But if I was to come to you and say, hey, Dr. Bosworth-- I'm going back to inside while we're doing this before we go on here.

Dr. Bosworth, I'm with the adult education system here, and we have some amazing students that have really worked hard to get through some barriers. And they're really work ready. They're very deserving.

How would you like to respond to that? Is that a good-- because we get so passionate about our students and how we help them overcome barriers.

Don't shoot the messenger on this. It goes back to your study on the psyche of business. The business is thinking, how is this going to help my bottom line?

We're talking about the student because we're passionate about that student. And I think the hard part to get here is that your mission in education and preparing these students sometimes does not resonate with businesses. That is not a value proposition. It's, what's in it for me as a company?

For sure. And that passion-- my gosh, it is-- I'm a product of that passion that the adult educators and community college professors and administrators showed me and shared with me. I am definitely a product of that all the way through my entire academic career. So do not change that at all, but know when to turn it off and on and when to make connections.

Or you're just as passionate at building those relationships with businesses by putting on those lenses of what is of value to them. So those examples that Celina talked about-- that individual and all the things that they accomplish-- what does that translate at as a benefit? What are those metrics that matter? All those things that I talked about, all those measures-- increased productivity, skills.

So here's just a-- that's OK, Celina, we can go to the next. This just brings it home because most of us have seen these types of commercial. And the value proposition really explains the benefits. Again, we think this is so easy in words. When we put it in practice-- and we're going to have a handout for you, a couple of handouts for you that Celina sent you the link-- to test yourself on, to go through them. I think that's the last slide here after this one.

But let's look at this. A feature-- our battery offers a 40% increase in battery charge. OK, great. That's a feature, but what does that really mean to me? And the target customer here is a business person.

So what does that really mean to me? Well, I don't need to worry about running out of battery when I'm speaking to a customer. So I have additional time and worry-free communication to close the deal. That's what I worry about when I'm a business person. If you're just talking to me about this feature and not the benefit to what it's going to do, you lost me because closing the deal, closing a deal, is really important to me as a business person.

Same thing with this slicer and dicer. It cuts potatoes into French fries. Yeah, that's great. But who's the target customer here? Well, working people with families.

Tell me the benefit to this fancy gadget that cuts and slices potatoes. Well, it'll save me time in the kitchen, so I can spend more time with my family. So do you see the difference?

All we're saying is that speaking into benefits of what you do and what your students have accomplished and how that would translate into a benefit. And then, all those features, that's supporting evidence. That's the supporting evidence.

The benefits is what makes that connection happen. So go ahead. Tell Nancy that you popped on.

I'm top dog because I'm so excited about the handouts and what you did on this. I think this is where we get into nuances and maybe the attendees can play along with this here. And maybe explain that-- maybe we take the first one because it's got a lot of nuances-- but maybe explain these handouts, Dr. B, and how they can use them. And then let's practice this with the audience to make sure we've got that.

So these are just a little bit modified. We use them in our certification course at BusinessU. But you just look at and you can-- this is good for you guys to practice. Practice with your teams just so you can get into that language.

Would you think that work-based learning opportunities-- I'm here on the features, on my left side of the screen. I'm looking at that handout that says, "Work-based learning opportunities offer job seekers or students a way to start new careers with good wages." Now, that is a benefit, but to whom?

You got to know your audience, like we just talked about. That's the supply side. That's the adult learner. That's job seeker. That's the student.

Know your audience. It is a good-- it is a benefit for them. How then, Celina, could we turn that around and make that into a benefit statement for an employer?

I love this example because this is one where we can get really excited. And Erica put in here-- she actually uses features and benefits statement as part of her customer service class. And they offer students, which is good. So Erica in this example, we have to think, OK, we want to put on our hat for talking to a business.

And so if I go in and say, gosh, Dr. B, work-based learning opportunities are so good for our students. They can start a new career. They can offer good wage. Am I speaking the language of business?

Or am I speaking it more for that's great if I wanted to engage a student in work-based learning but not necessarily a company? So I may say something like gosh, work-based learning opportunity, Dr. B, has shown in our organization to be a great workforce development strategy, especially in times of COVID. Because as you're opening the doors up, what you're able to do is try out and look and get part-time help and really try the skillset out. And what most businesses have found is that 98% of them come back for more work-based learning opportunities because it's that great of a strategy to help you be competitive.

And you would add more benefits to that. Be specific to that research you've done on that organization. Is it manufacturing that they're in? So would it make them more efficient? Would it make them more productive?

And Celina through in a data point. That's an absolutely "confetti all around" because if you have a data point as well as a previous customer testimonial with what you're saying, that's proof of concept. Remember, value is important. Everybody, personally or professionally, we look at what is valuable differently and what it means to us and what it does for us.

So nobody wants to be the first. When you've gone to those restaurants and there's nobody inside, do you want to be the first person inside that restaurant to try that new restaurant? So you got to really look at that.

Use testimonials so you can show that they would not be the very first to try this. And sometimes they are, but you can turn that is a benefit because they then will have the top notch candidates. They will have first pick of the individuals. You can turn anything, any challenge around if you're strategic, into a benefit for customers. So you can practice that.

The other one, we've got to be really intellectually honest with our work. We got to look at our website. We got to look at our social media platforms, our handouts, our leave behinds, our brochures, our talking points. And just do it.

Just pick something on your website, and you're saying it's for employers. I don't know if you have a section on your website. I'm assuming there's some piece that's about employers. Are you listing just features or are their benefits there?

If it's a feature, jot it down and add the benefit to it. And then if you can, let the people who is in charge of the website to add benefits so the employer-- if they do go on your website and especially if you are asking them to fill out a form or you're trying to get employers and businesses on to your website but yet it only speaks in features about your program and everything else, you've lost them. What are the benefits? And all you have to do is jot it down and then the feature can follow it as supporting evidence-- how you demonstrate that increased productivity or anything else we've spoken about.