Companies can learn how to prioritise strategic planning to get to the next level

Built upon decades of experience of working with many successful exporting companies, Enterprise Ireland’s Strategic Marketing Review is a transformative programme that enables entrepreneurs to develop a market-driven business strategy.

This programme supports companies to build a high-performance sales and marketing team, equipping them to think critically in order to address challenges and maximise opportunities within their chosen markets.

It is designed to involve every part of the senior management team across an organisation, to ensure they share a common vision and are aligned on direction.

To date, hundreds of Irish companies have benefitted from Enterprise Ireland’s Strategic Marketing Review programme. A survey of a number of our client companies that have completed it found that 86pc of participants assessed the programme as being ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’.

Seven in ten found it had a positive impact upon their sales performance. And others also remarked that it gave them a welcome opportunity to work “on” the business as opposed to working “in” the business.

Ethos Engineering is one of the many companies who experienced a tangible positive impact on their business after completing the programme.

“Having gone through the process, we’ve become more customer focused and now have sales and marketing teams. Our sales have grown and our business capability continues to expand to meet this growth. In hindsight, the task was in mapping our six operational groups to a common goal,” said John Coroner of Ethos Engineering.

Colm McMahon from GGL Security added: “The group sessions with our consultant fostered amazing teamwork and empowered us to create a strong action plan for growth which is already delivering for us.”

The Strategic Marketing Review framework is customised to each company that engages in the programme and is tailored to suit their needs.

It consists of four workshops for the senior management team with a specialist consultant.

As part of this process, the consultant conducts one-to-one interviews with members of the senior management team in order to ascertain how aligned the team is in terms of business priorities.

This is then followed with four workshops that includes participation from personnel from all areas of the business, such as sales and marketing, finance and engineering.

The workshops examine the business from three perspectives: insights – continuous intelligence gathering and customer value proposition; resources – people and financial resources; and action – sales process, route to market, communications and intercultural awareness.

During the process, the team is asked a series of questions which are carefully designed to pinpoint any issues, underlying or otherwise.

For instance, it could be something as simple as asking the team to describe their ideal customer, to being asked what drives their decision making, or if they carry out regular customer profitability and win/loss analysis.

Ultimately, the output of this process is an action plan, which details the company’s key priorities for the short to medium term time frame. Additional mentoring will help with implementing the action plan and ensuring there is no return to ‘business as usual’.

A final session, what is referred to as the ‘Checkback Workshop’, is then held later to check-in on team progress and to take account of any changing business parameters.

This programme ultimately supports companies to drive revenue, build high performance sales and marketing teams, address sales challenges and maximise market opportunities, and helps them to identify how they can stand out in a competitive market landscape.

The Strategic Marketing Review programme is ideal for companies with revenues of approximately €500,000.

For companies in the earlier stages of their export journey, a five-day Strategic Market Review is now available to address short-term tactical issues. For more information on Enterprise Ireland’s Strategic Marketing Review talk to your Development Advisor.

Naghmeh Reilly is Senior Sales & Marketing Specialist at Enterprise Ireland. Further information is available from enterprise-ireland.com/en/Management/Leadership-and-Management-Development/Strategic-Marketing-Review