This article was co-authored by Corban Nichols, Vice President of Restaurant Excellence, Piada Italian Street Food
We’ve seen too many talented Learning & Development (L&D) leaders get their hearts broken when companies that say people are their most important asset consistently underfund the department responsible for developing those people. Meanwhile, Marketing appears to get all the good stuff: the budgets, the C-suite attention, the credit for success.
The mindset that L&D is a cost center needs to change. No other department impacts business success dollar for dollar more than L&D. So when CEOs want more profits, they should have L&D on speed dial.
The Mindset Revolution
Improving this all starts with three groups of people changing their mindset: you, your learners, and C-Suite, or whoever the budget gatekeeper is.
The first mindset that needs to change is yours. From this moment forward, when you’re driving to work and logging on for the day, think to yourself, “I’m going to make the company more money today.” The love you have for your job can still come from caring about people, the brand culture and values, a passion for teaching, but they can’t be in first place anymore. This is work, and your driving force should be monetizing L&D.
For your learners, it’s about “what’s in it for me.” You can’t send out emails with the subject line “New Course in the LMS.” Instead, reframe it as WIIFM for customer-facing roles: “Just dropped new content for building your social skills so you feel comfortable talking to people in any situation!”
And for the C-suite, we need to align learning initiatives with what the business needs and what will impact it positively. That takes data – both before campaigns to assess what the needs are and after campaigns to prove the ROI.
A Difference in Audiences
Why does Marketing get so much attention? It’s the perception that they bring in customers and L&D makes people take quizzes. The truth is that both departments serve key audiences: marketing’s audience is new and repeat customers, while L&D’s audience is employees. But Marketing can only get customers to the parking lot or the app. Everything that happens after that – the customer experience, the execution, the actual delivery of value – that’s all on the employees.
Learning from Marketing’s Playbook
Here’s our philosophy: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We’re going to run L&D like Marketing runs marketing. That means thinking in terms of learning campaigns, not learning rollouts.
Marketing teams create urgency with limited-time offers and FOMO elements. Why can’t we?
Some examples:
Try offering bonus modules only available for the first 100 completions, or early cohorts that close on Friday. Create that sense of exclusivity and urgency.
They use gamified loyalty programs – rewards, airline miles, unlock perks. If someone completes 10 leadership courses, why not give them $100? Is the return on that investment not worth it when a manager can boost their leadership skills?
Marketing also leverages social proof – “join a million satisfied customers.” We can do the same: “Over 1,000 people have already completed this week’s LTO sales skills training.” It works because it taps into our natural desire to be part of something bigger.
Specific Case Examples
- Buffalo Wild Wings “Blazin’ Games:” employs sponsor-funded monthly prizes (e.g., VR glasses, PS5) for completing training and short videos; top 100 sports bars saw ~3% higher alcoholic beverage sales; no direct L&D cost.
- Memphis Tourism “Pick Awards:” uses guest-nominated recognition program (quarterly and annual awards), which correlates positively with post-training nomination surges.
Improve Your Access to Data
Here’s a sobering statistic: less than 4% of companies design learning programs based on specific, defined metrics upfront. The remaining 96% base decisions on perceived needs or requests from other departments.
Use a data request form (reach out to Matt for the template) that will help you get the information you need from other departments while positioning yourself as a strategic partner. To make requests, you need to know who owns the data, be specific about what you want, explain why you need it (not “for a training project” but “to reduce turnover and improve consistency”), make it easy for them to provide it, and always offer to share results back.
The key is tracking operational metrics, not just learning metrics. Companies that track operational metrics see statistically significant budget increases, according to a CHART + Opus Training Hospitality Training 360 Report. Focus on the right side of the impact spectrum – not just course completions, but actual business outcomes like sales increases and customer experience improvements.
Anatomy of a Learning Campaign
Instead of the traditional one-and-done, develop-and-deploy cycle, we need to adopt a four-part learning campaign cycle: pre-launch, launch, sustain, and amplify.
Pre-launch means identifying the business problem first and tying it to revenue. Launch involves multi-channel and repeated communication – don’t just rely on the LMS. Sustain means keeping engagement alive throughout the campaign period. Amplify means sharing wins loudly to justify the next budget.
This approach creates the pause you need to stay sane while moving your organization into your flow, making you part of the conversation from the beginning rather than just the execution arm at the end.
Personas and Personalization
Marketing excels at identifying personas – different customer types who need different approaches. We can do the same. Consider these different personas among your learners:
- Corporate versus franchise managers
- Internal versus external hires
- Experienced versus inexperienced team members
- English as a second language learners
- Career-focused versus paycheck-focused employees
Each persona needs a different approach, different messaging, and potentially different content paths. This personalization makes the WIIFM message much more powerful.
Three Essential Tools
There are three tools that will transform how you approach learning campaigns:
- Data Request Form: A structured approach to getting the operational data you need while positioning yourself as a strategic partner.
- ROI Tracking Dashboard: You don’t need fancy software – even a simple Excel spreadsheet works. The key is having one place to track all your campaign data and results.
- Stakeholder Communication Matrix: This helps you personalize your messaging based on who you’re communicating with. What the CEO cares about is different from what operations leaders care about, which is different from what frontline team members care about.
Start Now
Start your first learning campaign now so you’ll have post-launch data to compare to your baseline. That gives you key data for budget season to make your case learning initiatives that you both care about and deliver high impact to the business.
We truly believe that if you start putting these principles into practice, you can double your budget within two years. And if you double your budget, imagine what you could accomplish. You could innovate with content and engagement. You could develop supervisors and assistant managers and build a leadership pipeline. You could build the kind of learning organization that actually drives business results.
The Bottom Line
The company has one pile of money. Marketing is just getting more of it than you are right now. I want you to be competitive and take some of it back – not because you deserve it, but because you can prove you’ll generate more value with it.
Remember: if your L&D output drives performance, customer experience, and profits, then when marketing brings in more customers, you’re amplifying their success. You’re not competing with them – you’re collaborating and making them more successful while proving your own value.
This article was inspired by our breakout session at the February 2026 CHART Hospitality Training Competencies Conference in New Orleans.
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