Help! We all need it...

It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a business from a container in the garden or working for a multinational selling billions around the world. At some point, we all need help.

I’ve spent around 30 years in retail and buying, and the last ten years helping businesses develop their commercial skills. One thing I’ve learned along the way is that the problems don’t necessarily disappear as businesses get bigger.

Sometimes the problems just get bigger too.

My career started with Stewarts Supermarkets, where I worked as a trainee manager and eventually an assistant manager, before moving into buying. I spent 14 years with the Henderson Group and then joined Asda in 2007.

And I have to say, that’s where my real education began.

I loved being a Buyer. I enjoyed the day-to-day interaction with suppliers, the negotiations and the commercial side of the job. But what I really enjoyed was helping suppliers and their products develop into new stores and new markets, and seeing their businesses grow.

That was a huge buzz for me.

During my time at Asda, I was the Trading lead on the Supplier Development Programme. The idea was to help existing suppliers think bigger and potentially develop into other regions or even national supply.

That’s where I really found my feet.

I was bitten by the bug when I started taking part in the training sessions. I loved seeing how strongly producers reacted to the content and, more importantly, what they did with it afterwards.

Somewhere along the way, I realised that while I enjoyed buying, I got an even bigger buzz from helping suppliers become better.

An idea started forming.

What about all those businesses that weren’t supplying supermarkets yet? The producers who had a great product and plenty of ambition but perhaps didn’t know how to make a commercial approach to a buyer?

That was where the idea for Mervyn Jones and Associates was born.

Over the years that followed, I continued to build experience through Savage and Whitten and Nisa before eventually moving into consultancy and training.

A chance introduction to Drew McIvor and Jen Guiney in the Food Trading Team at Invest NI helped move that idea forward. Eventually, I was asked to run a session for producers preparing to supply Foodservice.

I teamed up with Andy Maclachlan to deliver it. We hit it off, and we’ve been working together ever since.

That eventually developed into the Invest NI Capability Programme, initially delivered through Food NI and, for the last four years, under our own steam.

And it has reinforced something I first discovered all those years ago.

I really enjoy helping people.

Since then, I’ve worked with start-ups and established businesses across Northern Ireland, ROI and Scotland. More recently, that work has taken me virtually into the US and Canada and face to face with European sales teams in Copenhagen.

And that brings me back to where I started.

We all need help.

I’ve worked with owner-operated businesses employing one person, companies producing from makeshift facilities in the garden, established businesses turning over millions and multinationals with sales in the billions.

And guess what?

They often have exactly the same problems.

How do we get the buyer’s attention?

How do we put together a better pitch?

How do we give a better presentation?

How do we communicate our value?

How do we manage the account more effectively?

How do we deal with those difficult conversations?

The scale changes.

The fundamentals often don’t.

That’s where we come in.

I’m fortunate to work with some amazing consultants who are absolute experts in their fields. What I think makes our approach different is that we’ve actually been there.

We didn’t learn everything from a book or from a course.

We’ve sat across the table. We’ve negotiated the deals. We’ve had the difficult conversations. We’ve made mistakes. And we’ve learned from them.

As Andy describes it, we teach from the scars on our backs.

And that, really, is what this blog is going to be about.

Not grand theories or dramatic transformations, but the little things we can all do better, even just one degree at a time.

Better conversations.

Better pitches.

Better preparation.

Better questions.

Better decisions.

Better by Degrees.

I’ll try to post regularly about what I’m seeing in the market, what I’m learning and occasionally something that has simply caught my attention.

Some of it will be about buyers, selling, negotiation and account management.

Some of it probably won’t.

But hopefully there’ll always be something that makes you stop and think, even if it’s only for a minute.

Because none of us has it completely figured out.

And there’s nearly always something we can do a little better.

So, let me start with a question.

What’s one piece of help you’ve received during your career or business life that genuinely changed something for you?