How to Ask Your Employer to Pay for Your Professional Course?

As kids, we’re used to asking for the things we like – writing a letter to Santa is a given.

But as time goes by, we lose this ability.

I don’t think we should – especially when it comes to your professional development. Asking for more is a way to build your skills and ultimately become more valuable to your company. And that’s in everyone’s best interest.

This post will give you some ideas on persuading your employer to invest in your education – even if there’s no set L&D (learning and development) budget or tuition reimbursement policy.

To Amsterdam and beyond

And to show that this isn’t based on some far-fetched best practice list nicked off the internet, here’s a personal story.

Some years back, I was working for a startup, and we were diving into growth hacking and experimentation. The trouble was we didn’t have anyone on the team versed in it, and the knowledge within our direct peer network was severely limited. It was time to skill up.

I found a great-looking program online. The trouble was that it was a live course in Amsterdam. This meant that I’d have to cover flights and accommodation and miss six days of work on top of the course fee. A tall order, right?

So I got down to it. I did some research, built my case, and presented it to my manager. At the time, we didn’t have an approved L&D budget or any semblance of a policy, really.

But my request got through.

The company covered the course fee, travel, and accommodation expenses. What’s more, a few months later, my manager mentioned this as a great win for the whole marketing team.

Looking back, I think I did a few things right. It was almost intuitive, but I can now structure it into a set of key steps that will help you get your company to fund your learning.

Know when is a good time to ask

There’s some seasonality baked into professional education. A few moments in the year are especially ripe for approvals. This includes:

• January and the beginning of new quarters: if your company’s financial planning follows the standard, the beginning of each quarter is when new budgets come in. It might be easier for a manager to approve an expense request when they have a disposable budget.
• Back-to-School: the end of August or the beginning of September is usually when new learning programs are announced, and there may be some back-to-school discounts available for your target course.
• Black Friday: over the past few years, many course creators joined the Black Friday Cyber Monday bandwagon and started offering discounts. However, there are usually available for a short time. If your company takes longer to reach a financial decision, it might be wise to start discussing your application earlier. Then you can jump on the discount straight away.
• December: sometimes, at the end of the year, there’s some budget left over. And even if it wasn’t designated for learning reimbursement, you can take advantage of it. A manager would sooner spend the money on something that wasn’t planned than risk getting their budget slashed in the coming year “because they didn’t even spend it all.”

You might also want to think about seasonality within your industry. The summer period might be a great moment to tell your manager you want to use the slower pace of work to build up your skills. But if you’re working in a travel agency, that may very well be your busiest season.

Or, even if there’s a great Black Friday discount for your course of choice, if you’re working for an e-commerce company, your manager won’t have the time to look into it right during the busiest shopping week of the year.

Do your research

In my experience, when requesting the approval of an education expense, you need to show your company you know what goes into it and that you’ve thought through the costs and benefits. It’s not just about the details – it’s about showing you’re not making this request lightly.

Think through the different questions your employer might have:

• What is the course fee, and what are the payment terms?
• Is there an invoice or another financial document to write off the expense?
• What the time investment will be on your side (and will it be happening during regular working hours)?
• Are there any other expenses to be taken into account?
• Is the course content applicable to your industry or business model?
• What other companies (similar to yours) have gone through the same education process?

You probably know better what your manager might ask – try to put yourself in their shoes and get the information in a concise, clear summary.

Ask for a discount – there’s value even if you don’t get one

One bonus tip here: check if there’s a discount you might use. Some courses offer discounts for non-profit organizations or companies based in less affluent regions of the world. And even if they don’t, you’ll be able to say, “I also checked if we can get a discount on that price.” That’s a strong signal that you’re doing everything in your power to maximize the ROI of this education investment for your company.

Show what you’ll learn and how it’ll help the organization

When preparing your case, give specific examples of the value you’ll generate for your company with your newfound skills.

To make it as specific as possible, use this framework:

• Mention a challenge your team is facing or a new initiative you’ve been thinking about.
• Explain the knowledge deficits that are stopping you from solving the challenge or maximizing the potential of your actions.
• Draw parallels between these deficits and the course content.

Here’s an example. When I was pitching my company to approve my growth hacking course, I could say the following:

1. We’re now going deeper into growth marketing to increase user acquisition and activation rates.
2. We don’t have anyone on the team with extensive knowledge of growth hacking, and we don’t know many people we can learn from. There are no local courses on the subject, and we’ve reached the limit of what we can learn from blogs and Reddit.
3. This course focuses on X, Y, and Z – all growth programs we know we want to test. The trainers come from companies similar to our size when they started and have grown substantially. This is why I think it’s a good fit. It will also create connections for us with startups of similar sizes across Europe.

Make some concessions to show you’re eager to learn

You’re asking your employer to pay for your education. It’s essential to show you’re also willing to give back. This might mean different things:

• If you need to dedicate time to learning within working hours, could you make up for that with extra work on the weekend?
• Would you dedicate time to distributing the new knowledge throughout your team, for example, by organizing sharing sessions?
• Could you create a knowledge base with your notes from the lessons that other team members can learn from?

Giving back to the company proves you appreciate the opportunity to learn and are ready to contribute.

Lay it all out in a course reimbursement request

You need to communicate all the information you’ve already uncovered clearly and concisely. And while you might first want to discuss it all in a personal conversation, you should have it all written down if your manager needs to forward the details to someone else in the leadership team.

Here’s a sample email template you can use and tailor to your case. I wrote it from the perspective of someone asking to get company-sponsored access to my Strategic Content and Messaging course:

Hey {manager},

There's a course called {Strategic Content and Messaging} that I'd love to enroll in. It's an online course with video on demand lessons, as well as a live group training tier. It was designed for marketers who are in similar roles to me, and it's run by Vassilena Valchanova, an expert with a proven track record of helping brands like ours succeed with attention-grabbing messaging and valuable content formats.

I think this course will help our team to:
{- Run customer development sessions to truly understand what drives people to choose us;
- Build messaging that resonates with our target audience and improves the efficiency of our landing pages;
- Create a more structured plan for content marketing across social, email, and our website.}

The best thing about this course is that it's focused on bringing practical value. It's full of templates and tools I can put to work straight away.

If you agree to sponsor this learning opportunity for me, I will make sure I dedicate time to go through the lessons in my spare time and I can share the learnings with the team so our entire team levels up.

The course costs {price}. Of course, the creators issue a tax compliant receipt for us to expense this easily. If you'd like, you can review the course details here, including more about the trainer.

Could we discuss this on {our next meeting or available time slot}?

Thanks,
{Your Name}

Demonstrate what you’re learning and how you’ll apply it

Once your request for course reimbursement is approved, your work is just starting. You need to show your managers this was a worthwhile investment, not one they’ll turn to regret.

The best marketing courses out there will help you put knowledge into practice, so if you’re paying attention, it shouldn’t be too hard to show you’re learning a ton of actionable things.

Keep a running log of ideas to test

As soon as a new idea comes to mind, make sure you record it. The next time your team discusses new activities to focus on, share the ones with the highest potential – and make sure you mention you got them from the course you attended.

Organize a learning session for your team

Some insightful concepts might be worth discussing with your teammates. This will give everyone a better idea of what you’re learning in this course of yours and improve the team’s know-how. You might already have a peer learning program in your organization, but even if you don’t, it’s OK to be the pioneer. Invite your team for a meeting on Friday afternoon and share some terrific insights with everyone.

Share notes and examples

If you have a team Wiki, you can add some of your course notes there (of course, make sure you structure them in a format that will make sense to an outsider). Or you might share some interesting examples on Slack and talk to teammates about how you can replicate or adapt the same things for your brand.

Go ahead and ask!

Now that you’re equipped with ideas for persuading your manager, it’s time to act. And I’ll be more than happy if you use these tactics to get a reimbursement for my Strategic Content and Messaging course. I may be biased, but I think it’s definitely worth the investment!