[caption id="attachment_70837" align="alignright" width="600" caption="Niamh Bushnell is the CEO of MarketSprint."]
Niamh Bushnell believes in attention to detail.
It’s not that she mentions it much; she only used the actual phrase once in a recent interview. But her philosophy is clear from a three-minute demo video she has produced for TechResources.us, a new product she’ll launch with Enterprise Ireland at the end of the month.
In its three minutes, it describes how international technology companies and government agencies could use Tech Resources.us when entering the U.S. market. To search for resources, one can filter by resource type, location and vertical market. And one can also type in a keyword. So, the demo explains, an Irish executive planning to visit San Francisco with a new product might click on “funding” and “SF and Silicon Valley” and also type in the key word “seed.” Or someone planning to open an office in New York would click on that city and also “professional services” and type in the key word “immigration” to get a recommended lawyer in that field. It then gives an example about finding a specialist in tax laws.
The concept grew out of a guide MarketSprint CEO Bushnell wrote for a client, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Her company helps with advice in figuring out, she said, “what the market entry strategy is; who the early adopters for the technology are; what the pitch is; how to present it in the most compelling way; what to use your limited budget on in terms of marketing and profiling; what conferences or networking groups to go to; where to pitch, that kind of stuff.”
She is the person who can introduce a client not just to the decision makers in the market, but also to those who are influencing market trends. And she can act as the person who gets “those early deals closed for you in the market so that you can set up a beachhead here and expand from there.”
This applies not just to startups but also to big companies with no American experience. In the latter category, Bushnell cited the example of a French company she works with that has 35 international clients, but none here.
“Ultimately they'll grow out of me,” she said. “They'll set up their office here and they'll have their employees, but in the early stage they want someone who understands the market, who is able to really drive some early-stage sales for them and help them figure out what their message is.”
Bushnell added: “The core message is the same, but how you would position it, what you would highlight here would be different than in a European context.”
The Cork-born University of Limerick graduate greatly enjoys the American way of doing business – including the short attention span.
“You've got to know who they are before you go and meet them,” she said of making a presentation. “You've got to really understand their pain as much as possible before you meet them. You've got to throw out the key things in the five minutes of the conversation that will resonate and you've got to customize your follow-up with them.”
Bushnell lives in Jersey City with her husband Billy Donohue, a musician who runs his own independent label, and their son Seamus.
“I work close to my home. I'm the morning and evening person with Seamus [who will turn 3 in May]. And I see him at lunchtime if I can, but sometimes I have to go out in the evening for work, and you just do the best you can.
“It's not a balance; it's managed chaos,” she added with a laugh.
Bushnell, whose husband is a third-generation Irish American, travels home two or three times a year to see her parents, her siblings and their families.
"I want Seamus to see his cousins as much as possible," she said, adding that she would like such trips to be seen as a routine part of life rather than something special.
“It has to be calculated into the figures,” she said of a family’s travel budget.
Bushnell first moved to the United States in the late 1990s to take up a job as vice-president of software for Enterprise Ireland New York. In the years since, she has seen Irish businesses improve greatly in their international approach.
“They've become much more sophisticated from a marketing and sales perspective. That's for sure,” Bushnell said. “They're spending more time researching the market and they have the tools at hand to research. So they're better informed when they come. They know what they're talking about. They know who they compare themselves with. They know what their competitive advantage is.”
Sometimes she feels Irish business people aren’t aggressive enough and don’t have enough global ambition. And sometimes they are most comfortable networking in their own group and not the target market.
“It's not just an Irish thing,” Bushnell said. “I see the Kiwis do the same thing."
It’s understandable enough – the easy contacts will pick up the phone. “It's a good place to start,” she said.
“I think Irish companies are good at listening to and understanding their customers. I think in general they’re good at networking,” she continued. “That initial asking for a meeting, asking for a chance to pitch, that might be tough – but once we're given a chance, we do a good job.”
And getting companies that chance is one of the places where Niamh Bushnell steps in.
The TechResources demo can viewed on YouTube.
