Business Italian training
Italian that builds the relationship the deal depends on.
Corporate Italian training for teams working with Italian clients, suppliers and manufacturers — luxury, design, fashion, food, engineering and finance. Italian commerce is relationship-led and register-sensitive, so we train both: the warmth that opens the door and the formal Italian that keeps it open.
Why companies buy this
The relationship is not a preliminary to the business. It is the business.
Italian is where a great meeting and a stalled decision are the same sentence. Learn to hear the difference.
Teams working with Italian partners often report the same pattern: warm meetings, real enthusiasm, and then a decision that takes months and travels through people who were never in the room.
That is not evasion. It is a commercial culture where trust is personal, hierarchy is real, and the person you must convince is frequently not the person you are talking to. Reading it requires the language, because it is signalled in tone, in titles and in what is left unsaid.
Meanwhile the written side is unforgiving: Italian business correspondence is more formal than English, and an email in the wrong register makes a serious supplier wonder how serious you are.
Our tutor selection and matching is reviewed by The Good Schools Guide, and Learn&Co is a member of The Tutors' Association.
Who the programme is for
Who inside the organisation needs Italian?
Buyers and teams working with Italian suppliers
Fashion, furniture, food, automotive and industrial supply chains. Specifications, lead times, quality conversations and the escalation that keeps a delivery date without damaging the relationship.
Luxury, design and creative businesses
Teams whose brand credibility depends on speaking the language of the ateliers, manufacturers and press they work with in Milan, Florence and the north.
Executives with an Italian office or client base
Leaders who need to chair the Milan meeting, understand the informal conversation around it, and be credible with clients who value the effort visibly.
Finance, legal and advisory teams
Advisers on Italian mandates: contract and corporate vocabulary, formal correspondence, and calls where the interpreter is slowing the relationship down.
What we actually train
The business Italian that decides outcomes.
Lei, titles and professional courtesy
The formal Lei, the use of Dottore, Ingegnere and Avvocato, and how and when the register softens as a relationship develops.
Relationship language that is not small talk
Openings, hospitality, food and the conversation before the agenda — trained as commercial competence, because in Italy it is exactly that.
Reading the real decision
Hierarchy, indirect answers, the polite deferral and the signals that a decision has actually moved.
Formal written Italian
Correspondence, offers and follow-ups in a register that is markedly more formal than the English equivalent, including openings and closings that matter.
Negotiation and supply-chain precision
Price, quantity, tolerance, delay and penalty said unambiguously — the vocabulary where a friendly relationship still needs exact language.
Sector Italian
The specific terminology of your industry, from manufacturing and materials to finance and property, taken from your own documents.
What the training looks like
Rehearsal for the meeting you have next week.
Selected network first, matching within it second. The tutors were interviewed and accepted into our network long before your enquiry arrived; what happens after the brief is design, selection and oversight — not recruitment.
Your suppliers, your clients, your material
Sessions are built on the accounts your team actually manages: the supplier call, the factory visit, the client dinner and the follow-up email that has to land correctly the next morning.
Rehearsal, not lecture
Most of the hour is the learner speaking Italian under realistic pressure — a simulated negotiation, a hostile question, a two-minute update — with the tutor correcting what actually undermines them.
Mixed levels handled honestly
Where a team spans several levels, we assess individually and stream the group. Nobody is held back and nobody is drowning; the syllabus and vocabulary stay shared so the team still speaks a common professional language.
Scheduling that survives the diary
Early mornings, evenings, split sessions, remote weeks. Programmes are bought in monthly blocks rather than fixed slots so business travel does not break the rhythm.
How it is run
From scoping call to week-six review.
Scoping call
Twenty minutes with Maria: who is learning, what they have to be able to do in Italian, by when, and who signs the training off.
Level assessment
Every learner is assessed individually — speaking as well as grammar — so a mixed-ability team is grouped honestly rather than averaged into one useless class.
Written objectives and proposal
You receive objectives written as tasks, a recommended format, a schedule and a price. Nothing starts until the business has signed that off.
Specialist selection
We select from tutors already interviewed into our Italian network — by sector as much as by language — and you meet them before anything is committed.
Delivery around the working week
Weekly sessions online, at your offices or at ours in London, early mornings and evenings included, with a rescheduling policy that assumes business travel exists.
Reporting and the week-six review
Monthly written progress reports against the agreed objectives, attendance visible, and a founder-led review at week six to adjust pace, objectives or tutor.
Formats and investment
Three ways to structure your programme.
Companies buy corporate training in three different shapes, so we price it in three different ways. Executive programmes start at £120/hr per learner, bought in hours; open business terms start at £950 per person for ten weeks; a closed team programme is quoted in full after the scoping call, once the number of learners, the spread of levels and the frequency are clear. All figures include VAT.
Executive one-to-one
One person, one objective, complete flexibility.
A bespoke Italian programme for a single executive or specialist, built around the meetings, documents and clients that person actually deals with.
- Objectives agreed in writing before the first session
- Material drawn from your own documents and meetings
- Online, at your offices or at ours in London
- Monthly written reporting to the budget holder
From £120/hr
Bought in hours, per learner, VAT included: 4 hours at £120/hr (£480) month to month, down to £102/hr on 48 hours used within up to 12 months (£4,896).
Closed in-company group
One team, one syllabus, one invoice.
A group from the same organisation taught together in Italian, streamed by level so nobody is held back or left behind.
- Levels assessed individually, then grouped honestly
- Sector vocabulary shared across the whole team
- Consolidated reporting across locations
- Suits teams of three and upwards
Quoted
Calculated on group size, the spread of levels, frequency and whether you want us on site — quoted in full after the scoping call.
Open business group term
A ten-week term at a shared price.
Live small-group business Italian, for companies sending one or two people, or professionals who prefer to learn alongside others.
- Ten-week terms, maximum six people
- Professional syllabus, not a general course
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, London and online
- Invoiced to the company on request
From £950
Per person for a ten-week term, including VAT. A1–A2 £950, B1–B2 £1,050, C1–C2 £1,150. Maximum six people.
All figures include VAT. We invoice companies directly, work to purchase orders, and can provide the documentation, insurance and safeguarding information procurement teams ask for.
The evidence
Delivered inside law firms, hedge funds, publishing houses and global groups.
From our corporate clients
Our corporate training record.
A filmed client testimonial from our corporate training work, alongside verified reviews from professionals and companies across our languages — evidence of how we work, not all of it specific to business Italian.
“As English isn’t my native language, I’ve always tried to improve my skills by taking different courses, whether group sessions or one-to-one. Working with Marianne and Learn&Co has been, without a doubt, my best experience. Marianne is an…”
“I started taking lessons with Maria about six months ago in order to try and get my rusty French to a good enough level that I could use it professionally in my work as a lawyer. I cannot recommend her highly enough. Her enthusiasm and…”
“We came across Learn&Co thanks to a recommendation from a friend at Hyperion Insurance Group. He was so happy with their corporate language training that we decided to contact them and set up a trial lesson. It’s now been over 6 months…”
“I have been taking classes to improve my French and Spanish with Learn&Co for the past year and I have to say I’m loving it. I’m impressed with the quality and structure of the lessons. I feel like I’m making great progress. A few months…”
“Could not recommend more highly — a wonderful tutor. I have been tutored by Maria through work for a year and it has been a fantastic experience. The lessons are well structured (split between grammar, presentation, conversation, question…”
“I started French tutoring with Maria about 4 months ago and it has been incredibly beneficial. I work for a large financial corporation and I wanted to increase our business presence in the French speaking countries in North Africa. Maria…”
“I was looking for a mix of help with social chat in french, developing my professional french and rebooting my grammar and written french that had suffered from years of underuse. Maria is funny, engaging and highly skilful as a teacher.…”
Questions
Before you brief us.
- Our Italian partners speak English. Why train in Italian?
- Because the relationship is conducted in Italian, and in Italy the relationship carries the commercial weight. Teams that make the effort visibly get earlier access to the real conversation, and hear what is being decided around the meeting rather than in it.
- Do you cover regional differences?
- Where it is commercially relevant. Business Italian is standard, but the working culture of Milan, the north-eastern manufacturing districts and the south differ, and we train comprehension of the accents your team actually deals with.
- Can you prepare staff for CILS or CELI?
- Yes. Where a formal level is required for a role, a registration or a relocation, we prepare for CILS and CELI against the examination date.
- What does Business Italian training cost?
- Bespoke Business Italian programmes are bought in hours: 4 hours at £120/hr (£480) month to month, down to £102/hr on 48 hours used within up to 12 months (£4,896), VAT included, and are quoted in full after the scoping call, once learners, objectives and frequency are agreed. Open business group terms start at £950 per person for a ten-week term (A1–A2 £950, B1–B2 £1,050, C1–C2 £1,150). We invoice companies directly and work to purchase orders.
- Our team is at very different levels. Does that ruin a group programme?
- No, provided it is handled at the start. Every learner is assessed individually before the programme is designed, and a mixed team is streamed into two or three groups with a shared syllabus and shared vocabulary. We will tell you honestly when a group is the wrong purchase.
- Do you deliver in person, or only online?
- Both. We teach at your offices in London, at ours, and online for teams split across offices or time zones. Most corporate programmes end up mixed, and the format can change mid-programme without renegotiating anything.
- How do we prove it is working?
- Objectives are written as tasks at the start — run the weekly call unaided, answer client correspondence without help, present the quarterly update on site. You receive monthly written reports and a founder-led review at week six, with CEFR benchmarking where a formal level is required.
- Who are the tutors?
- Italian specialists already interviewed and accepted into our network long before your enquiry arrives, with genuine professional and sector experience. The match is made within that network against your brief and your sector, with Maria overseeing it, and you meet the tutor before anything is committed.
- Can you run programmes in several languages at once?
- Yes. We deliver in nine languages with a single point of contact and consolidated reporting, so a company training three teams manages one relationship rather than three suppliers.
- What if the tutor is not right for the learner?
- We rematch, at no cost. The chemistry call before the programme starts and the week-six review exist precisely so that is a small correction rather than a wasted budget.
Other ways to learn Italian
Not a corporate programme? There is another route.
Ready to brief us?
Twenty minutes with Maria.
Tell Maria who is learning, what they must be able to do in Italian and by when. She will tell you how we would approach it, which specialist she would match them with, and what it would cost.
Maria Toubbe
- 20 minutes
- A conversation, not a sales call.
- With Maria
- Our founder, every time — not a call centre.
- No obligation
- Advice you can use even if you never book.
20 min · video call · free
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