Studies by Stanford Research Institute and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation among Fortune 500 CEOs found that 75% of long-term job success depended on people skills and only 25% on technical skills. This is true at other employee levels as well.

To achieve superior performance in the workplace, companies need their employees to have not only technical knowledge and analytical thinking skills; they also need to have soft skills to be effective in dealing with clients, employees, strategic partners, vendors, and public.

The annual rankings of MBA colleges often place communication and interpersonal skills as the most critical skills needed for success in the corporate world. Noted academic Professor Henry Mintzberg while speaking on the importance of soft skills for MBAs, refers to the crucial soft skills and the ability to think “outside the box” of a discipline - that separate the best from the rest in the management world.

Our market analysis at TreeLine Training supports the above studies:

• There is a large pent-up demand for high quality soft skills programs if they can be sold at dramatically reduced prices.
  
• The concept of owning courses vs. renting courses (and paying for them year after year) is very appealling.
  
• Courses need to be shorter, actionable, and accountable.
  
• The training investments must be designed using adult learning principles to deliver behavioral and business improvements.
  
• Courses need to be created so that line managers, trainers and other generalists can easily customize and facilitate the training interventions, since a larger percent of the training is being done by line managers who are investing time with on-the-job training and coaching.
  
• Services must be provided to supplement what training departments need to outsource to save money and meet tight deadlines.
  
• Services such as contract instructional designers, contract trainers and coaches will be key.
  
• Most training vendors have inflexible licensing, business and delivery models that cannot address the large, pent-up demand for soft skills programs.