Calculating the ROI of PMP Exam Prep for Corporations

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, CAC, PMI-ACP, CCPM, RYT

Below are two companies. Both the same relative size, both serving the same sector (IT contracted services for Federal Government Agencies). These charts show the companies’ stock performance over ten years – the one ROI performance metric corporate shareholders easily agree upon. The red dots represent the companies’ respective investment in the number of staff they send to take Cheetah Exam Prep. The left vertical axis shows the cumulative number of staff who participated in Cheetah Exam Prep to quickly pass the PMP exam over the ten year period

Company one made a consistent investment over ten years with their staff becoming PMP certified by having them go through Cheetah Exam Prep‘s four day program where their staff took and passed the PMP exam on the day after their class ended.

The first company made a consistent investment in their staff becoming PMP certified. Several times over a ten year period, they selected other vendors for their PMP exam prep – but you’ll see they had less than stellar results with that approach, and consistently came back to Cheetah. They in fact ended up paying more when they did this as most of their staff who took another company’s PMP program, were not successful and came back and took the accelerated four day Cheetah PMP Exam Prep course. It’s no surprise this company saw its biggest stock price increase with the increasing number of staff who went through Cheetah’s PMP Exam Prep program from 2017 to 2019.

This company is in the same sector and the same size as the first company. But they send someone to one of Cheetah’s classes periodically to update their own internal PMP course (this is not only unethical, it is also illegal). They obviously do not achieve the same results as the company who sends their staff to Cheetah’s PMP Exam Prep program.

The second company over ten years ago, took all of Cheetah’s material and felt they could offer the same program in-house. (One of their internal trainers who later quit reached out to us and let us know they were doing  this). You can see their dismal  stock performance over ten years.

The first company recognized prepping staff to pass the PMP exam requires specialists known for their consistent track record. This is not something easily replicated with an internal staff, using Cheetah’s material acquired by sending one person to take Cheetah’s PMP Exam Prep Program every year or two. Cheetah’s course material is obsolete within months of when its acquired. Cheetah updates their PMP exam prep program throughout the year so whenever a student takes the program, they have the best chance of passing the exam they are taking at that time.

Sending someone into one of Cheetah’s classes to acquire our new material once a year, obviously does not provide the same results as sending staff to the actual Cheetah Exam Prep classes. Challenging this illegal activity is time consuming and Cheetah Learning’s professional course developers prefer to invest their energy into keeping their PMP Exam Prep program delivering fantastic results for the high performing companies who recognize the value of Cheetah’s PMP Exam Prep program – as delivered by qualified Cheetah Exam Prep PMP coaches. The poor business performance from this unethical, illegal behavior is punishment enough.

Additionally, an internal team does not have the motivation that an outside company who lives or dies by its pass rate does. If an employee does not pass after taking the internal PMP program – the internal trainer does not have to give up part of their pay check to their colleague who failed. Besides letting down someone they may never see again, they don’t have much other skin in the game.  They may not even know if the student in their internal class even ever actually took the PMP exam (we hear this often as well from students who take Cheetah after taking a different PMP exam prep program first). But with Cheetah, if a student does not pass the PMP exam, we definitely know as we have to refund what they paid us to take the class. It hurts us just like the student not passing the PMP exam hurts them.

What results would you prefer – improving the overall performance of your company, or saving a couple of bucks and tanking your business?  The choice is an obvious one for the highest performing companies – have your staff pass the PMP exam quickly by taking Cheetah Exam Prep from the people who have been designing and updating the original four day accelerated PMP Exam Prep program for the past twenty years. There are some very good reasons Cheetah Learning has remained the gold standard in PMP exam prep for two decades in a market that sees tremendous turnover in companies offering PMP Exam Prep .