Trinity College Dublin MSc Entrepreneurship Reflective Essay

This reflective essay analyzes a seminar focused on forming, nurturing, and sustaining business relationships, and connecting with partners and customers to maximize mutual success. The workshop, presented by Mike Hensen, emphasized the importance of empathy, the sales funnel technique (Listen, Process, Create, Sell), and the strategic planning of business operations, particularly in the context of a vacation rental business. The essay highlights the practical application of workshop insights, including altering sales pitches, leveraging social media, and improving communication with stakeholders. The student found the workshop's hands-on approach and focus on customer understanding invaluable, leading to strategic changes in their business model and a deeper understanding of how to create lasting relationships.

Seminar Reflective Essay
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Seminar Reflective Essay
Student Name:
Institute Name:

Seminar Reflective Essay
Workshop Selected: How to form, nurture, and sustain relationships in business and how to
connect with partners and customers to achieve and maximize mutual success.
Presented by: Mike Hensen
Entrepreneurship is a big journey and to ace, it smoothly requires a lot of effort and
strategic planning. In this module, we studied a lot of things pertaining to starting our
business and how to sustain it till it starts running. However, my favourite was the workshop
taken by Mike Hansen. The workshop focused on "How to form, nurture, and sustain
relationships in business and how to connect with partners and customers to achieve and
maximize mutual success” the most intriguing and the important aspect of starting a
business. Relationships are an extremely important part of any business venture and it is
important for all the budding entrepreneurs to know and understand the need to foster
good and long lasting relationships with various stakeholders of the business such as the
vendors, customers and the suppliers. Mike’s material for the workshop was really nice, and
he opened up by suggesting a book by his friend “Sell Little Red Hen Book” by Jefferey
Hansler. This book gave us some very good insights on how Sales can be managed in real
time, with the use of innovative approaches by thinking like the customer.
The workshop provided me with a chance to understand people in detail and how to handle
them under various situations that arise during the business cycle. The workshop put the
right emphasis on empathy by excursing various theories in a more practical manner. For
example, the Sales Funnel technique. This was one of the most important techniques which
focused more on an approach based selling technique which included: Listen, Process,
Create, Sell. This approach helped me a lot for my business model where I was able to listen
to the clients and understand their needs as well.
The best part about the workshop was the focus that it put in implementing the relationship
trick in the business and how it is important to ensure that the business has the right
amount of need creation as well.
The workshop had helped me understand my business in a new way. While my business
focuses on vacation rentals, I understood that even this market can be expanded a lot. The

Seminar Reflective Essay
vacation rental in Manhattan is a booming business since a lot of people visit Manhattan
frequently and look for cheap rental accommodations. I have been working hard on this
business for a long time now and the success rate is almost more than 90% now. Mike
further gave insights on how it is difficult to excel in Products, Price and Service, and
suggested us, therefore, to focus on two of them and make it define ourselves. In my case, it
would be product and service. It gave me direction on improving these two areas so that the
third one falls into place by itself.
The various aspects of this workshop helped me connect my business with several
unconventional tools such as empathy, listening, building a relationship and relationship
management as well. To further enhance this relationship, the several tools mentioned in
the workshop further helped me understand my customers and all other stakeholders in the
rental business and how I could improve my communication with them. This was the first
major takeaway from the workshop which is felt, is also the most important one. The
workshop was an interactive experience which redefined several age-old concepts for me by
giving them a new and relevant twist. Furthermore, the main focus on the workshop was
selling, and it eventually got out several strategies to defines our sales pitch and strategies
to sell our products in a way that ensures that the solution is out of the box, innovative,
traditional and sustainable. This mix of requirements is contrasting, but achievable at the
same time. Mike focused on simple approaches towards understanding the loopholes and
how the situation can be controlled for various business practices as well. having said this,
the workshop was free-flowing, interactive and relevant for most of the part of it.
While the instructor and the content of such workshops can be all good, the actual test is
about how relevant it is in reality. This workshop with Mike Hansen helped me improve my
business connections and networks a lot. The workshop gave me enough insights into the
minds of the consumer and to understand how it functions under various circumstances.
The best way I implemented the methods and the tools of this course were by strategically
planning my next step. Rentals can be extremely clumsy if not managed properly. Hence, I
chalked out an entire plan to manage all the stakeholders; caretakers, cleaners, authorities
and the consumers. Once this was done, I implemented the plan and ensured that
communication is always clear and nothing is out off track in any way whatsoever. I also
altered my sales pitch according to the tips given in this workshop. This too was a significant

Seminar Reflective Essay
change for my business. I am yet to observe the results, however, there are high chances of
success. Furthermore, the workshop also helped me go digital and bring my business to
social media. This helped me in taking my business to another level of efficiency and also
improved the connectivity with the customers as well. The workshop gave me insights into
new tools and management ways to improve my practices and understand how I can better
manage everything using social media, cutting on my advertisement costs and saving. The
workshop kept everything simple and did not really focus on celebrating much of fancy
terms or approaches, and this is the key to it as well. Hence, I believe that the reason this
workshop was appealing so much was the fact that it was really hands-on and practical and
did not deviate much from the topic.
Conclusively, Mike was a good instructor overall who understood sales and nuances of
business well. His focus on sales and how to understand the customer viewpoint and hit the
right target has helped me immensely. The empathy factor and the sales funnel are two
important tools for my business which I shall now implement.