Tips for your investment pitch

About the workshop

Life is a Pitch, especially as you strive to grow your business. Seeking the form of words, the compelling message, and the confident delivery to drive your sales offer is sometimes a challenge.

The Pitching to Win New Business Workshop will give you hands-on experience on how to successfully pitch your company’s product or service to achieve increased sales. You will learn to fine tune your sales pitch and presentation with the support of expert trainers, in the company of similar businesses..

Training Provider

Pitching experts and follow up mentoring veterans Gavin Duffy (Dragons’ Den) and Orlaith Carmody, from Mediatraining.ie will deliver this training programme. As communications and management consultants for many of Ireland’s leading entrepreneurs, professionals, business leaders and exporters for over 20 years, Gavin and Orlaith bring a wealth of experience, from many corners of the world, spanning all sectors of business and trade.. You can be assured your pitch will be positively disected and reassembled to clarify your position and offering, giving you the confidence and edge needed to deliver a successful sales pitch.

Objectives

This workshop gives a real understanding of effective communication when under pressure. The workshop will support you to:

• Plan and prepare an effective sales pitch
• Tailor your message to your audience
• Deliver your message in a way that really connects
• Deal with challenging behaviours or questions
• Be memorable
• Influence outcomes
• Win new business

Delivery Format

• Please make yourself available for a pre-programme telephone conversation and survey, to determine your professional needs and company expectations from the workshop.
• You will attend a one day intensive and interactive workshop. Limited places available with a maximum of twelve companies attending.
• You will receive a private follow up two-hour mentoring sesion to hone the pitch further, or develop new angles. (Location Dublin).

Outcomes

Following this programme you will have a real understanding of the dynamics of good pitching, including -

• Pitching with confidence and conviction
• Adapting the pitch for a customer or an investor
• Pitching individually or as part of a team
• Handling Difficult Questions and Answers
• Negotiating successfully
• Following up post presentation

Who should attend?

This workshop is aimed at Senior Management Executives with responsibility for delivering key sales pitches.  Up to three participants per company may attend.

Workshop Cost

Enterprise Ireland will significantly support each participating company.  The full cost of participation on this workshop is €1000.  The cost to Enterprise Ireland’s client companies is €300.  This allows participation of up to three delegates per company.

Workshop date and venue

This workshop will be held on 13 June 2013 at Enterprise Ireland’s offices in East Point Business Park, Dublin 3.   Delegates should arrive for registration at 8:30am for a 9am start.  The workshop is scheduled to finish at 5pm.

Contact

For enquiries with regard to this workshop, please contact:

Bridgin Durnin
Enterprise Ireland
Tel: +353 1 727 2734

This workshop will help companies to be more effective at managing key business opportunities, develop an understanding of buyers’ needs at each stage of the buying cycle and using this insight to implement the right influencing strategy.

Delegates will be provided with the tools, techniques and templates necessary to manage key business opportunities and convert more of these opportunities into contracts.

Why spend time on getting this right?

How many times have you pursued business opportunities only to be frustrated when the buyer doesn’t purchase from you? You believe you did everything right. You invested considerable time and developed what you considered to be a strong proposal or bid. There can be many reasons why buyers don’t purchase and developing a comprehensive understanding of buyers’ needs and behaviours – whether in the private or public sector, is central to winning more business opportunities.

Workshop Objectives

The aim of the workshop is to help companies with high value products and services to win more international business. This will be achieved by:

• Developing an understanding of organisational buying behaviour – by breaking down the buying cycle into key stages, identifying how needs are developed and purchase decisions are made across multiple roles and levels of seniority in organisations.
• Focusing on identifying and developing buyers’ needs – by providing a structured approach to identifying/developing buyers’ needs supported by proven tools and methodologies that have been successfully applied in complex sales environments.
• Building a compelling business case – by providing techniques that engage the buyer in identifying the internal value of specific solutions and enabling the seller to tailor the value proposition to each business opportunity.
• Developing a structured and coherent Opportunity Management Plan – by providing participants with tools and a template to enable them to plan their approach to strategically important International opportunities
• Building confidence and motivation – by using trusted techniques to enable participants to stay motivated and meet the challenges of ‘rejection’ at various stages of the buying cycle.

Workshop Delivery

This workshop will be delivered by Ray Clarke and Ivor Stevenson, Shaping Business Ltd. Shaping Business is a marketing and business development consultancy, based in the UK. We have helped clients in Ireland, the UK and North America to build their sales revenues in export markets in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Our clients include manufacturers, high-technology businesses, consultancy firms, software service providers and support service businesses. We provide strategic advice, operational support and training to enable our clients to develop and implement marketing programmes that increase revenues. We have also delivered bespoke training workshops in marketing and business development for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, The Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Manufacturing Institute.

The structure and content of the workshop draws on our practical experience working with businesses in high value, complex sales environments and our in depth knowledge of buyer decision making behaviours and processes.

Format for Delivery

1-day interactive workshop with a mix of individual and group exercises, best practice guidelines, worksheets and tools to engage and convince buyers on a key business opportunity that you have already identified. Participants will be helped to:

• Develop an initial Opportunity Management Plan for an identified International business opportunity
• Plan the types of questions needed, relevant to their business and their buyers, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the buyers needs
• Identify the approach needed to position the business at each stage of the buying cycle to convince the buyer
• Maintain confidence and motivation while implementing these approaches with buyers.
• A two hour follow-up coaching programme will support delegates to apply the learnings from the workshop in their business, within four weeks of the workshop. Each participating company will be required to implement key actions identified within the workshop before the coaching sessions.

Who should attend?

This workshop is aimed at Senior Management Executives with responsibility for selling high value products and services into business-to-business (B2B) markets   Up to three participants per company may attend.

Ideally you will already be developing your business internationally and would value additional support and guidance to enable you to be more successful in securing business opportunities.

Please note that delegates will be required to undertake preparation work in advance of the workshop and between the workshop and follow-on coaching session. Details will be provided to delegates both on registration and at the workshop.

Workshop Cost

Enterprise Ireland will significantly support each participating company.  The full cost of participation on this workshop is €1000.  The cost to Enterprise Ireland’s client companies is €300.  This allows participation of up to three delegates per company.

Workshop date and venue

This workshop will be held on 18 June 2013 at Enterprise Ireland’s offices in East Point Business Park, Dublin 3. Delegates should arrive for registration at 8:30am for a 9am start.  The workshop is scheduled to finish at 5pm.

How do I apply?

Go to http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/EI_Corporate/en/Events/OurEvents/Excel-at-Export-Selling-Series-/Winning-B2B-Business-Internationally-18-June-2013.html to book your place

Contact

For enquiries with regard to this workshop, please contact:

Bridgin Durnin
Enterprise Ireland
Tel: +353 1 727 2734

This highly practical 1 day workshop and follow-up coaching programme will enable businesses to plan and implement more effective lead generation programmes in their business to drive revenue growth. It is aimed at companies operating in business-to-business (B2B) markets that are developing their businesses internationally and need to generate leads in markets which they have recently entered, or reinvigorate lead generation in export markets where they are already established.

This workshop will help companies to adopt a more targeted approach to lead generation, to identify key enablers for building credibility with buyers/influencers and to establish the optimum mix of tactics and channels to engage new prospects.

Delegates will be provided with the tools and templates necessary to plan, implement and manage a lead generation programme tailored to their business.

Why spend time on getting this right?

Lead generation is a key enabler for Irish businesses to succeed in the new global economy. The current market has created challenging conditions for many businesses. Now more than ever before, businesses need to stand out from their competitors nationally and internationally to survive and prosper. Those businesses that invest the time and effort in building internal capability, processes and systems to improve the effectiveness of lead generation will emerge from this recession stronger than their peers.

To be successful businesses operating internationally need to build brand awareness and contact networks in their target markets to generate new opportunities. In addition, companies have to implement lead generation programmes which are highly targeted and build trust with the target prospects.

Furthermore, even in established export markets there inevitably reaches a point in every business where the existing contact network does not generate enough opportunities to feed the delivery team. This is the point where firms need an effective lead generation engine within the business to continuously feed the top end of the sales pipeline with new contacts and new opportunities.

Workshop Objectives

The aim of the workshop is to help your business plan and implement an effective lead generation programme to feed the sales pipeline with new opportunities and new clients. This will be achieved by:

• Better quality targeting – enabling the business to focus lead generation by applying meaningful filters to their addressable market to produce a target prospect list.
• Increasing access to target prospects – exploiting the optimum combination of marketing tactics and channels to access prospects.
• Dealing with the lack of trust – identifying the key enablers that can build awareness and trust in new markets.
• Improving prospect engagement – ensuring that the lead generation programme is supported with the right content and tools to generate interest with the prospect.
• Building and maintaining momentum – establishing responsibilities and processes to ensure that lead generation is implemented and managed effectively.

Workshop Delivery

This workshop will be delivered by Ray Clarke and Ivor Stevenson, Shaping Business Ltd. Shaping Business is a marketing and business development consultancy, based in the UK. We have helped clients in Ireland, the UK and North America to build their sales revenues in export markets in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Our clients include manufacturers, high-technology businesses, consultancy firms, software service providers and support service businesses. We provide strategic advice, operational support and training to enable our clients to develop and implement marketing programmes that increase revenues. We have also delivered bespoke training workshops in marketing and business development for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, The Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Manufacturing Institute.

The structure and content of the workshop draws on our practical experience of planning and delivering successful lead generation programmes for businesses.

Format for Delivery

• 1-day interactive workshop with a mix of individual and group exercises, best practice guidelines, worksheets and tools to plan and deliver a more effective lead generation programme.
• Participants will be helped to:
  - build an initial target prospect list for a lead generation programme;
  - identify the optimum combination of marketing tactics to target prospects;
  - develop the key enabling tools and processes for lead generation within their business;
  - create a lead generation plan to action within their business.
• A two hour follow-up coaching programme will support delegates to apply the learnings from the workshop in their business, within four weeks of the workshop. Each participating company will be required to implement key actions identified within the workshop before the coaching sessions.

Delegate feedback

Previous delegates of this workshop and coaching programme rated the format, content and delivery very highly and provided the following feedback:

• “The advice we received has driven us to make specific changes in our approach which has enabled us to win new business.” Commercial Manager, Meghen Group.
• “The trainers have a structure and methodology to help guide you through the development of a Lead Generation plan, which I found really valuable.” Commercial Director, Interaction.
• “A tool presented in the workshop helped to classify leads and track progress. The fact that I put the tools into use after the workshop means I got value from this.” Commercial Director, Branded Payment Solutions.
• “This workshop really helped our company and moved us away from using a generic approach to all prospects, to a much more targeted approach for each of our key market segments. I would definitely recommend this workshop.” Marketing Assistant, Trinity Fund Administration.
• “This was a really valuable experience. The workshop helped me develop a more systematic approach by putting a good structure in place to plan lead generation that will get better results.” Business Development Manager, Certification Europe.
• View a video of delegate feedback

Who should attend?

This workshop is aimed at Senior Management Executives with responsibility for Marketing and Business Development, ideally two people per company should attend.

Delegates will be required to undertake preparation work in advance of the workshop. Details will be provided to delegates on registration.

Workshop date and venue

This workshop will be held on Tuesday 28th May, 2013 at Enterprise Ireland, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3. Delegates should arrive for registration at 08:30 for an 09:00 start. The workshop is scheduled to finish at 17:00.

Workshop Cost

Enterprise Ireland will significantly support each participating company.  The full cost of participation on this workshop is €1,000. The cost to Enterprise Ireland’s client companies is €300.

Contact

For further information, please contact:

Bridgin Durnin
Event Co-ordinator
Enterprise Ireland
Tel: +353 1 7272734

http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/EI_Corporate/en/Events/OurEvents/Excel-at-Export-Selling-Series-/International-Lead-Generation-Shaping-Business-28-May-2013.html

In Ireland, as in most European countries, the banking system is the most important conduit for channelling money from savers to investors. If the most important part of the financial system is impaired, under-investment follows, leading in turn to sub-par economic growth. That is most certainly the case in the Irish economy today.

Investment spending in Ireland since the crash has collapsed, falling far more than any other component of GDP.

In 2007, more than €37 billion was spent on plant, planes, buildings and bridges. Last year, less than €17 billion was invested (the figures are adjusted for inflation). While the size of the decline overstates the economic damage (the biggest single reason for the €20 billion contraction is that most investment spending at peak was over-investment in unneeded buildings), it is beyond doubt that some companies have not invested because they cannot obtain loans and some would-be entrepreneurs have not started businesses for want of borrowings.

A paper published by the Economic and Social Research Institute on Tuesday* is the latest effort to measure the extent to which companies are not getting the funding they need because the banking system is broken (as with all other such studies, it did not take a stab at estimating the number of new businesses that never started up bec- ause they could not raise finance). Predictably, it found that credit constraints are a big and growing problem for companies.

The failings of the banking system have led to a ramping-up of the State provision of funding to businesses, with a large and growing number of schemes. Most are tiny, but some are large. Together these schemes are likely to be more important as a source of corporate financing than non-bank private sector sources, such as venture capital or corporate bonds.

While there may be concerns about the potential for politicised lending practices and the efficacy of such schemes (as is so often the case when it comes to how government spends taxpayers’ money, no rigorous value-for-money evaluation has even been conducted on the schemes), intervention is warranted given the importance of the credit provision function to economic growth.

It is all the more warranted since the evidence internationally has pointed increasingly to employment growth being driven by young firms, exactly the businesses that usually have most difficulty accessing finance, a point stressed by the ESRI.

If new companies are constrained from growing and the number of business start- ups stagnates or falls, the prospects of generating the sort of rates of employment growth needed to solve the jobs crisis will not materialise. Some historical perspective provides context. From the mid-1950s to the early-1990s, Ireland had the worst job-creation record in the developed world. Uniquely among industrialised economies, there was no growth in the numbers at work over that period.

There is no historical data on corporate demographics for the period, but if figures on company start-ups and early growth did exist, my strong hunch is that Ireland would have been on the wrong end of that international league table, too.

This raises the issue of whether there is an insufficient supply of good business ideas today, along with an insufficiency of appropriately priced credit.

While there is little doubt that attitudes to business have improved and the sort of Yeatsian snobbery of viewing commerce as a money-grubbing, greasy-till endeavour has waned, there is scant evidence to support the view that we are a highly enterprising nation, as is often claimed.

If there are now many fine Irish companies and inspiring entrepreneurs, there are not enough of either. If attitudes towards business and entrepreneurship have become more positive, it is by no means certain that they have changed as much as they need to.

At a recent event in Trinity College on the effects of the crisis on young people, salaried jobs at home or emigration were the career options that dominated discussion. Not a single participant or audience member raised the possibility of starting a business.

Source: Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/too-little-credit-or-too-few-entrepreneurs-1.1396260