Business Ideas For Smes And Start Ups

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

A little while ago I had an interest in parts marketing, working with a couple of GAA teams. In the course of that work, I met with Enda Lynch who at the time was Head of Sponsorship at 02, when they were lead sponsor at IRFU as well as having naming rights at The Point / 02 music venue in Dublin. Shortly after, Enda moved to Thomond Park, home of Munster Rugby, working with one of the leading names in club rugby, nationally and internationally. In this podcast we get insights from both sides of the sponsorship wall - the brand investing big in sport and entertainment and as a leading sporting property in search for commercial partnerships. A consulate professional and a go-to on sports marketing, Enda makes for a very interesting guest and delivers some sound advice for those people interested in sport and sponsorship. Thanks for listening. Paul

Much is made of the comparison between high performance sport and high performance sales - way too many sports books to mention that offer some excellent examples of people performing at the highest levels and the lessons those teams and managers can offer business. It's an honour to have Enda McNulty guest on the show as someone who achieved sporting success at the highest level with Armagh winning the 2002 All Ireland and 7 Ulster titles in a career spanning 15 years or so. Following on from his on-field success, Enda created McNulty Performance a consultancy specialising in moulding and crafting high performance teams and individuals in both sport and business - working with the IRFU, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn to name but a few of a roster of clients the envy of any consultancy practice. In this episode he shares some valuable insights into the world of high performance - the importance of getting the right culture set up in your team. He's very smart, knowledgeable and has some particularly valuable in

Delighted to have Declan Coyle on this weeks podcast. Declan is a leadership, development and transformational coach who has worked with some of the most successful teams in GAA as well as helping out John Calipari of the University of Kentucky in 2012 on their way to a championship victory. This podcast moves from left to right, north to south and up and down - I was thinking about taking an edit to parts of it but that might take away from Declan's flow. The Green Platform methodology, was founded by Declan and is designed to help you identify and implement more positive choices in your personal, business or sporting life. I got to find out the difference between emotions and feelings and to recognise that there is a split second between that 'feeling' and your 'reaction' wherein you can make better life choices. It's not easy, but it works. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

I really enjoyed recording this podcast with Hugh Gilmore, a sports psychologist working with the British Weightlifting and athletic teams. I first crossed paths with Hugh 7-8 years ago whilst we were both offering different levels of support to the Queens University Sigerson team. On a recent podcast I heard Hugh talk about the comparisons with sport and business in terms of creating culture and a high performance environment. In this episode we cover a lot of territory - the difference in culture and traditions to the theory of motivational interviewing. Hugh talks about how he helped to create a thriving culture in British weightlifting and gives some first class insights into his area of expertise. He has his own podcast 'Eight % Mental' and runs workshops occasionally on these very subjects. He was incredibly generous with his time - we spent 4 hours chatting, most of which could have made it onto the podcast and definitely hope to get him back on before the year is out. I hope you enjoy listening

Changing culture in an organisation doesn’t happen over-night. Attitudes and behaviours within an organisation are deep rooted and change takes time. Being adaptive, flexible and innovative are ‘ticket to entry’ behaviours for most organisations these days – brand values need to be reflected in individual and collective behaviours. Sounds straight forward yet there is often a clash between the desire for innovation and change and the prevailing culture. Capacity for change varies from individual to individual yet everyone wants to feel that their work is at the very least valued. In this episode of the Shift Control Podcast, I talk to Kevin Young from Inmynd an organisation dedicated to personal and corporate transformational change. I have known Kevin for a few years and I am delighted to get him onto the podcast and this episode should make interesting listening for those business leaders who are considering or are on the cusp of cultural change within their organisation. It will also make great lis

This podcast is a reflection on why some people engage in sales training successfully and why others don't. It's as easy to be the accused as it is the victim but my question is what really motivates business and business owners to engage with sales coaches if they expect a short term result. Would be interested in thoughts on this - everyone should be looking from a sweet spot customer - coaches as well. Leaving the decision making process down to a search engine can also be a disappointment. Thanks for reading Paul

Can anything that's processed be all that good for us? I'm thinking food to start with - what makes food accessible and gives it greater shelflife also as the potential in the long term to kill us. What about processed media? Can it have the same long term impact?

This podcast is unashamedly a sales pitch - the last few months have shaped a changing landscape in sales communication...people working from home, Zoom, Teams, WebEx calls with clients. IN March 2020, everything changed in the world of sales training and sales coaching, for me at least. Clients were less willing to continue training programmes in such uncertain times nor try any new technologies but after a settling in period, virtual training has been given the green light by a number of my clients and it seems to be working well. So, how should virtual training differ from face-to-face? The podcast covers format, learning platform, session time and a host of other practical changes which will assist individual and team sales training. Enjoy. All feedback welcome. www.shift-control.co.uk

The latest Shift Control Podcast segues between current social and emotional anxieties and the importance of remembering that the default position for the human condition is one of calm, honesty, friendship and doing good. Not dissimilar to the behaviour required and the role of sales and business development. Trading anecdotes from the brilliant HumanKind, by Rutger Bregman and discussing the key behavioural characteristics of a good sales person, the podcast focuses on what we can control within ourselves and argues that despite some compelling evidence to the contrary with humanity, all is not lost.

Take 2. Institutional Trust. In light of recent events, I have thought long and hard about continuing the podcast series - sales and marketing isn't top of most peoples personal or professional agendas, and quite rightly. This episode focuses on institutional trust - or lack of - specifically within Media and Government, typified through the day to day activities of both, projected through social media and broadcast channels. The Edelman Trust barometer gets a bit of kicking deservedly so, in my opinion and I reference some brilliant works by Alan De Botton and Randy Olson amongst others. Any questions or if you would like to get in touch - email [email protected]