Business Ideas For Smes And Start Ups

I won't lie to you on this one but there are 100 + resources online that could help you write better sales content. My perspective is a bit more basic than that - if you don't write a lot with your work, if you write mainly with acronyms and text-speak, if you didn't pass your English O'Level, GCSE, then you need to get a handle on the very basics of writing. The short cut to great sales copy doesn't exist. Having a great conversational sales style is of no benefit to you if you cannot write in a way so that you can be understood. I have mentioned it before in other episodes - storytelling - maybe that should be story writing, ultimately you need to be able to write emails, letters (YES letters), direct marketing copy, presentations, etc... To do that you need to understand the basic principles of grammar, format, etc... I hope this episode helps underline that and point you towards some good books to help - STEPHEN KING & STRUNK and WHITE are 2 great places to start.

Some thoughts on account management that I wanted to share with you. I often see the roles as being under-developed within organisations and can be a number of reasons for that which I highlight briefly in this episode. Do you have the right people looking after the right accounts? Are you ignoring some potential accounts based on their current value to you rather than their lifetime value? Do your account managers understand the true value that you bring to those relationships? Portfolio selling? Partnerships and collaborations - real and meaningful ones... Have you created a strategic plan for those high value accounts? And finally the sales pitch - do you think your people could do with some more sales training?

Curious to see how the return to work or the continued working from home is impacting your sales culture and how you are able to inject the spark into the weekly sales meeting/huddle/symposium or whatever you are calling it. For me there are some core issues that need to be discussed - as a broad framework - and everything else is built around that. What you want to come from the sales meeting is energy, focus and clarity. There needs to be a little fun and craic but its all about the big picture - revenue, sales and performance improvement. 1. Statistics that measure the productivity and performance of everyone in the team. 2. What happened since the last meeting 3. A preview of the week ahead 4. Problems + solutions 5. Performance against target / year on year / etc... 6. Something curious or lighthearted...but sincere!

Sales cadence is structured rhymthic ale

45% of everything we do is habitual. That's around 6 hours a day that you're leaving in the incapable hands of your subconscious / unconscious mind. It made me think this morning of the challenge sales coaching presents to everyone involved - the business owner, the sales person AND me. Who wants to be told that what they have been doing for the last X years isn't as good as it good be? Lets face it - not everyone is coachable even though they say that they are. Business owners want the coaching done - they want it to be effective but they usually want it done quickly...GOOD, FAST, CHEAP...pick 2, remember? This podcast is all about being careful what you wish for - managing expectations and committing to the process.

I could sound hypocritical here but everything I talk about here I struggle with from time to time - the biggest challenge I have is working rom home and having that consistent discipline to grind it out for 7 and 1/2 hours a day. Working from home will be a challenge for sales execs and fro business owners alike - how it fixes itself remains to be seen. But it's not the only challenge - poor diary management, elongated and meaningless conversations, selling to the wrong person and a few others...

There are myriad resources telling you all about the art of asking questions in sales - if you've not come across any, it's worth googling. Everyone knows about open and closed questioning techniques - high impact questions, directional, and and and... Sales effectiveness isn't about asking questions - IMHO - it's about curiosity...having an interest that goes beyond superficially asking a list of questions. Sales isn't about police-style interrogation...it's about curiously getting underneath the skin of your prospect in a meaningful and sincere way. struggling with the concept - think PINT OF GUINNESS...the white stuff is you talking and the black stuff is you listening. Build your questions around that, if you like

Most businesses will admit to following a strategic model for business development activities yet when things go wrong or a challenge appears from the competition or the marketplace, occasionally they head straight for tactics. In his biography Alastair Campbell talked in depth about OST - objectives, strategy, tactics - I have interviewed PR Smith on this podcast in the past - where he talks about his business model SOSTAC. It's important to always have a clear objective that you can refer to - in good times or in bad. I use PR Smith's model for all my business development work simply because it's intuitive and makes planning really easy for both sales and marketing functions.

Some time ago I received a letter from a company who were representing a number of media companies and photography agencies. 2 letters actually, in and around the same time. Both asking for a serious amount of money to pay for a license for misuse of 2 images...otherwise court and a big fine and costs. Google the company...PicRights...not something that you want to get caught up in because the hassle and cost is far far greater than any cool use of an image - in my case Lionel Messi and Russian soldiers marching in Red Square on May Day parade.

Having worked in marketing for a car manufacturer and a car retailer, having coached a number of sales teams within the automotive sector, I still fall back on my role as a customer when it comes to critiquing the sector. Too often it's easy to criticise - for me, way too often and so it is always good to be able to give credit where it is due. I was buying a car for a friend coming over to Ireland from France - simple requirements, buy an automatic costing less than £10,000. This is a brief story of that journey and how a tangible lack of interest by 2 car dealers made me buy a more expensive car with 10,000 more miles on the other side of the country,

Richy Donnelly is an entrepreneur and elite athlete, running the very excellent Natur&Co in Co Tyrone and playing Tyrone club Football with Trillick and inter county with Tyrone. WE had been in conversation way back before COVID about his desire and vision to set up a coffee shop with a focus on natural ingredients and wholesome foods, wellbeing and fitness - today his coffee shop, Natur&Co just outside Omagh is the embodiment of his vision. In the podcast we talk about the challenges of being an entrepreneur, following the vision, setting up a business in the current climate and trying to fit in life around the demands of inter county football.

It's fashionable to talk about 'brand storytelling' but how many businesses actually succeed at communicating their business/brand narrative either through websites, marketing collateral or sales pitches? Jonny Willox is a student of English Language, professional story teller, dramatist and actor. He recently launched his first book into the children's book market with The Hairy Fairy. No tenuous link to business here - far from it. Jonny discusses the journey he has taken to get to a point where he is a published author with another 4 works on the cusp of publication. He discusses the challenges he faces writing to 2 audiences - parent and child, writing structure, knowing and respecting your audience, pace of writing and so much more but all of it relevant to your work as a business owner or sales lead. One takeaway is the importance of consistency - writing all the time, embracing mistakes and failures but having the resilience to keep moving. SOUND FAMILIAR???

Brand story telling has its origins in a post advertising world but much of what it is can be traced back to story telling and songwriting. Success leaves clues and Steve Earle leaves plenty across a body of work that spans half a century. How can your brand story be influenced by the work of one of country-musics most iconic, controversial and durable songwriters? Referenced in the podcast: - Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey - Park Howell www.businessofstory.com - Dave Linton www.madlug.com - Randy Olsen, Houston We have a narrative - Donald Millar, Building A Story Brand - Steve Earle and The Del McCory Band, The Mountain,

The Irish playwright, Marie Jones has a strong body of work - most notably for me, Stones in His Pockets and the Blind Fiddler. My introduction to hurling followed the path of the Blind Fiddler - an introduction to one of the worlds sporting masterpieces, The All-Ireland hurling final. The weekend past, Tyrone and Ireland lost a sporting legend - Damian Casey, reminiscent of the death of Cormac McAnallen who died in 2004. A sad day for his family, friends, for those that played for and against him and for those that looked one rom the sidelines.

Over the course of this and the last series of podcasts, I had tried to uncover some of what it takes to build high performing teams in sales - more often than not, talking about improving performance in a way that is both relevant and meaningful to business owners and sales management in the SME sector. In this episode I talk with Noel Slane from Irish start up, Food Guard. Noel has experience and an excellent track record when it comes to high performance sales and building high performance sales teams. From his recent experience with US based Cyber Security Company, #OPSWAT and in his latest start up FoodGuard, Noel talks about building teams from the bottom up - recruiting for values over academia, achieving stellar sales performance and building an SDR team in Carrickmore, Co Tyrone who sell into some of the toughest markets in the world - Defence, Public Sector, Bio-pharma, Finance.... Noel shares some valuable insights that would benefit business owners, sales directors, C-suite leaders as well as

The Law of The Instrument is a cognitive bias based on - "if you only have a hammer, then everything is a nail." For years in sales all I had was features, benefits and questions - and not always the right kind of questions either. Today organisations and customers expect more from their sales contacts - much more. Features and benefits, whilst having some importance are irrelevant if the seller is unable to build rapport with the buyer. Asking questions brings 'interrogation' to mind. And by all accounts that type of thing is unpleasant. In this podcast I talk about the importance of 'curiosity' and understanding "the picture in the other persons head." And an entry discussion to emotional intelligence... Thanks for reading and for listening.

Excuse the rant about Johnny Depp, Heard, The Jubilee and the rising cost of living as the lead into a discussion on the effective use of technology in a sales environment and the basics requirements for effective sales. Many businesses that we work with use technology sparingly across their business development efforts - others try anything once, retaining what's effective. We try and get sales teams to think about getting the customer offline as soon as possible and into a 1-2-1 engagement. For business to business sales the human interaction is as important now as it ever was. Foolish to predict the future but if technology has a place in your sales operation it needs to be imbedded into a foundation that includes the very basic sales principles and processes.

Kevin Young is a practitioner and counsellor in Compassionate Inquiry. Based in Northern Ireland, Kevin works closely with Dr Gabor Maté and works with teams and individuals throughout the world. He has a lifetime experience working in sales and sales management, working for corporates as well as being self-employed - he now coaches, offers counselling and mentoring as well as undertaking the important roles of husband and father as well as being a musician. We talk about the major challenge facing business of any size - recruitment and retention, which predictably takes us into the world of cultural transformation and perhaps unpredictably the world of emotional wellbeing. Days off work due to emotional stress and mental health causes the Uk economy £70 Billion a year - its an unavoidable discussion. Kevin can be found art www.in-mynd.com. He's also hosting a retreat at the end of June in Strangford - amazing location, incredible venue and just the kind of content your mind and body needs, even if you do

I first spotted Callum on Linkedin where he publishes recorded content of his sales calls. I know some people that will not listen to their calls in private. Callum publishes them warts and all etc...critiquing the good and the bad. He generates business for companies across a variety of industry sectors and types and the way he talks about his work you can see where the value is and why he is successful at what he does. A great example of Blue Ocean business strategy - operating in a space where there is less clutter and if you are good and are prepared to put the work in then the rewards are great. Callum gives some brilliant tips for people whose job it is to sell on the phone but he also endorses the channel to those people who think that telephone sales / marketing has lost its place in business development

This is the first Shift Control podcast of 2022 - also available on YouTube, featuring Gregory Bradley from BLK BOX, the Belfast based fitness equipment manufacturer. Celebrating 10 years in business, the company has grown into a genuine market leader and is considered to be one of the exemplar Irish manufacturing companies. In the week that the podcast was recorded they had just finished an install for Manchester United and whilst they work alongside many of the global sporting brands in GAA, Rugby, soccer and myriad other sports, they are fast becoming the provider of choice for individuals, gyms and amateur sports teams. Gregory talks about how the company transitioned into an e-commerce business at the beginning of the pandemic and how they work towards delivering the very highest standards of customer service. As the business as grown they have moved premises and at their North Belfast facility, they have taken much of the production process internally, giving them much greater control one how they ru