This 2-day workshop will take place on 20 & 27 October, followed by one-to-one mentoring and has been developed specifically to help you on your First Steps to Export.

*******  reserved for Tipperary based business only    *********

The purpose of the workshops/consultancy:

• Up-skill domestic focused business owners who are interested in learning more about whether or not exporting is for them
• Consideration of the challenges and opportunities for commencing an export journey
• Domestic business and product capability
• Export opportunity – customer – competition – culture
• Export opportunity – products - sales – logistics – entry modes
• Export opportunity – potential sales and costs - pricing funding

Following on from the workshops, a mentor will be appointed to participants, who will assist in the development of an export plan template. The business can use this as a strategic tool for implementation of a potential export opportunity. There may also be the opportunity to attend suitable trade shows, trade missions or meet the buyer events.

Programme Outline  

Day 1 - Wednesday 20 October

10:00am

• Introduction to the workshop  
• Setting the agenda for the day  
• Participant introductions  

10:30am   

• Assessing your readiness to export

Not every business is ready to start exporting – it takes time, money, effort and perseverance…. and there is no guarantee of exporting success!

This section of the workshop will challenge participants to reflect on the real exporting challenges that they will have to overcome and the extent to which they are  geared up to rise to these challenges.  

11:30pm

• Understanding the export market that you are targeting

One of the most common reasons for exporting failure is the business either selects the ‘wrong’ export market or does not do the necessary ‘homework’ to find out 

about the market environment in its selected target export market.

This section of the workshop will therefore explore:  

• The dangers of not ‘looking before you leap’  
• What export market information you realistically need.  
• Where you can typically find this export market information.  

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Day 2 - Wednesday 27 October   

10:00am

• Gearing up to meet with potential export  customers

Any business that is serious about exporting must be prepared to ‘put feet on the ground’ in order to meet with potential customers. Having said that, many

owner-managers struggle to position themselves and their businesses as credible new suppliers, and fail to articulate what their USPs (unique selling points) / differentiators are.

During this part of the workshop, we will focus on:-

• The key selling skills that are required when meeting with potential customers.
• These will include; having clearing objectives for the meeting & controlling the agenda
• Asking the right questions
• Articulating why the customer should buy
• Dealing with objections etc.  

11:30am    

• Planning for sustained export success

The most successful exporters are those who take a long term view on the exporting challenge and commit resources accordingly.

Here, we will focus on:

• Providing participants with the skills and the confidence to develop a practical export sales plan
• Setting export sales objectives
• Developing realistic costings, e.g.: export market visits, new promotional collateral etc.