When I was asked to join the WebTrends blog, I was excited but also a little nervous.  The level of expertise within this particular author-crowd is extensive and while I’ve been in the industry for a decade, I’ve only been with the company since June!  What could I possibly have to add to their insights and their knowledge? Fear not – I got my answer this past week.

I was teaching an Understanding Reports class to a group of people who had not had any WebTrends training, even though the company had implemented our analytics product more than three years ago.  As I walked them through some of their reports, explaining how the data was collected and what it could be used to do, I heard “Oh, Wow!” from people on the phone many times.  The one comment that stood out above all others:  “I’ve wanted that information for over a year, and it’s been here all along. I never knew what to ask for!”

I hear these kinds of comments all the time in my classes for marketing and business professionals.  The people in my classes are marketing and/or web experts with a wealth of experience and knowledge in their respective fields.  However, their companies don’t get the full value of that expertise until they know where to find the analytics data they need or simply how to ask for the data they need (sometimes it’s even who to ask!).  That’s what training can do for them, and what hopefully I can do here – add value by helping them put their knowledge and experience to use with the tools we provide.

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