And creation of several new jobs in recent years
MONTREAL – Dec. 12, 2024 – RDÉE Prince Edward Island expects its fall sales mission to Quebec to generate, in the medium term, combined sales of approximately $1 million for the eight participating companies, which is the norm for recent years.
In addition, mission coordinator Robert Maddix reports that a survey of a sampling of 15 (non-targeted) participants from the five missions held between spring 2022 and spring 2024 shows that, as a result of the sales increases, these companies have created 17 new jobs.
“If the more than 100 companies that participated in the 16 missions we organized have similar statistics, we could extrapolate that several dozen jobs were created and that the overall spin-offs are in the multi-millions,” says the coordinator.
2024 FALL MISSION
Solutions eurêka experts-conseils (Jacinthe Lemire) of Nine Mile Creek and Pursskin – Tumeric (Claudia Charles) of Summerside took part in their virtual mission from Oct. 28 to Nov. 1, selling strategic planning and other consulting services and beauty products respectively. Deker Hockey (Linda Lowther) of Cavendish completed its in-person mission at the end of September to sell hockey clothing, equipment and trophies/medals.
Then, from Nove. 11-15, the other five companies and institutions travelled in person to Montreal and surrounding areas to meet with an average of a dozen potential buyers, distributors or partners. They were :
• Collège de l’Île (Sylvain Gagné and Jean-Marc Sinnasse) of Wellington and Charlottetown, looking to recruit students and form partnerships;
• Double Hill Cidery (Sebastian Manago) of Caledonia, seeking to distribute its alcoholic cider in Quebec;
• TrackTile (Corey Lund and Shaman Ferraro) of Cornwall, which was selling industrial production and inventory tracking software;
• Audio Media Canada (Ghislaine Cormier) of West Royalty, which was recruiting members for a new organization of music recording studios;
• and DataLogik (Pierre and Pierre-Martin Dion) of Pleasant View, selling a technology information management service.
Previously, the participants had all benefited from individualized training to ensure that they could present their products or services effectively and concisely. In addition, one of the participants benefited from a further 10 hours of advanced training to maximize her chances of landing sales. Quebec-based Clientis delivered all the training and arranged all the sales appointments.
“All our fall mission participants are very satisfied with their meetings,” says Maddix. “It’s still too early to measure the final results of their appointments, but all have made important contacts, some have already made sales, and all are preparing two to five sales proposals for high-potential customers. So it’s really positive, and everything seems to indicate that they’ll be as successful as the participants from our previous missions.”
THE SURVEY
RDÉE PEI and the missions’ funders – Innovation PEI and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency – already knew that the sales missions generate very interesting results almost immediately for the participants. But they all wanted to see if the missions also produced longer-term results. Once again, Clientis was retained to conduct a random sampling of former participants to determine the results after one or two years.
The survey revealed that the participating businesses who continued to pursue their interprovincial sales efforts and who participated in a second (and sometimes third) mission obviously achieved better results.
In the short term, the sales of the 15 participants increased at different levels, often depending on the effort invested, from 5% to as much as 100%. In the longer term (between one and two years), sales continued to increase by between 5% and 30% a year for the vast majority of participants.
Among the 17 new hires mentioned were production workers, contracted workers, outside market developers, administration staff, salespeople and engineering staff (mostly aged between 20 and 40).
Some 80 percent of the 15 respondents indicated that their sales mission had been beneficial or very beneficial. Almost as many respondents noted that they would encourage other companies to participate in future missions.
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PHOTO 1: Linda Lowther, right, of Deker Hockey in Cavendish had great meetings with several potential buyers and made important contacts, including Kathy Tremblay, tournament manager for the Joliette Minor Hockey Association.
PHOTO 2: The Collège de l’Île, represented by Jean-Marc Sinnasse, director of support services, right, was pleased to meet several potential partners, including Jean-Philippe Gauthier, director of pedagogical services at Collège Saint-Sacrement in Terrebonne.
PHOTO 3: Jacinthe Lemire of Solutions eurêka experts-conseils met virtually with several potential Quebec customers, including Nadia-Mohamed Aziz of Réseau Accorderie.
For further information, please contact
Robert Maddix
Coordinator
Sales missions to Quebec
RDÉE Prince Edward Island
(902) 314-1714
robert@rdeeipe.org