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Introduction to Sales - A Beginners Guide · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to Introduction to Sales, a
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  beginner's Guide. I am your instructor, Tavishima
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  Aidi. I'm a sales coach, business
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  development consultant, a business growth podcaster, and
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  I'm also a public speaker. Today we're going to be going
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  straight to Module 1, which is on sales fundamentals.
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  And the first question we're going to tackle is what is
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  sales? For most people, when they hear
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  sales, they think it means the ability to persuade someone to
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  do something. But can we indeed persuade
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  someone to do something? The answer is a big no.
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  We can't make people to do things that they didn't already
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  plan to do in the 1st place. And this is whether you're a
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  parent or whether you're someone who is in a commercial context,
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  you cannot persuade someone to do something that they didn't
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  already intend to do in the first place.
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  So the job of a sales person or the job of a business person who
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  is in the commercial context, whether you're a founder looking
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  for fundraising or whether you're trying to sell a product
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  or a service, your first role is you're trying to figure out
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  people's pre-existing motivations and then aligning
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  them with yours. Let me repeat, your first job is
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  to try and figure out what are people already interested in in
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  the 1st place? What are people already
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  motivated by in the first place? Then you apply some creativity
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  and see how those motivations are aligned, the other person's
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  motivation and your own motivation.
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  So your job as a salesperson, as a business person, is to make
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  sure that you align both motivations.
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  And that is the easiest way to quote, persuade someone to do
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  something. But let us forget this myth that
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  you can persuade someone to do something that they didn't
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  already intend to do in the first place.
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  Now there are however some people that can get people to do
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  something despite how they feel or what their existing
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  motivations are. If you notice, those people are
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  normally called frauds or fraudulent people.
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  So they are scam artists that can get you to do something you
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  didn't intend to do in the 1st place.
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  And there are people who, whether through psychosomatic
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  drugs or whether through juju or jazz or whatever, can get you to
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  do something that you didn't intend to do before.
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  But if you notice from the examples that I've given, once
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  we start talking about these sorts of things, we have gone
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  beyond the purview of sales and business.
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  And people rightfully think of those people as frauds.
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  So as a business person, as a salesperson, your number one
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  job, try and figure out what is that person already interested
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  in? What are they motivated by?
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  What are the visions, the goals, the that they're heading
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  towards, the challenges that they're trying to solve.
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  And then you've figured out how your product or your service
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  aligns with that. That is the best way to make a
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  persuasive pitch, a persuasive presentation, and to be
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  convincing. That way the person sees that
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  the current trajectory of heading from A to B, your
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  product or service, makes their life a whole lot easier.
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  And it makes it easier for the person to say yes, they are
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  going to buy, and if they say no, they're not going to buy.
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  If you have established rapport and done a good job with trying
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  to figure out what their motivations are and if you've
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  listened to them, it should be a whole lot easier to ask a few
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  more questions and figure out where you went wrong.
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  And that will help you rescue your next selling conversations.
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  So is sales the ability to persuade?
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  The answer is no. Is sales something that is only
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  done in the commercial context? And I'm going to say mostly for
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  most people when we're talking about sales.
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  You remember when I started off this segment, I spoke about how
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  parents, we have to persuade our children to do something and
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  persuade people within the same organization, our colleagues,
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  people in similar departments or church group to do something.
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  Sales skills will come in handy, but for the purpose of this
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  course, the introduction to sales, we're going to be
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  focusing on things in a mostly commercial context.
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  When I say commercial context, I mean that there's a business
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  person or there's a product, or there's a service and there's a
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  potential buyer. Now, can anyone learn how to
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  sell? The answer is yes.
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  It is not an innate skill that people are born with.
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  Sales is made-up of a bunch of learnable skills.
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  Each of them can be learned. Let's go back to the ability to
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  persuade. The discussion that we had a few
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  minutes ago and I said it's not about persuading anyone, but
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  trying to figure out what their motivations are, figure out what
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  their goals are, figure out what their challenges are.
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  These are things that you can learn by using simple
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  conversational skills, tips, strategies and tactics.
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  It is a learnable skill. Anyone can do this.
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  An extrovert can do this, an introvert can do this, an
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  ambivert can do this, and anagram 5 can do this and
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  anagram one can do this. A phlegmatic, a choleric native
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  person, a Yoruba person, an English person, a Buddhist, an
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  Australian person, anybody can do it.
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  It's a learnable skill. The next question how we're
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  going to consider in what is sales is do you have to be a
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  good talker? And the answer is maybe not
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  listening skills are more important when it comes to sales
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  because remember I said it is about trying to figure out what
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  are these person's motivations? What are they interested in?
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  Where are they heading? What problems do they have in
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  their personal life and in their business life?
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  You know how you're part of your service can solve these
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  problems, and then you try to align those motivations.
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  So talking is half of the battle.
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  But the most important thing is listening, because listening
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  skills are what are going to provide you all the ammunition
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  and all the data that you need to make a convincing case.
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  Until you know for sure what the person is interested in and
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  where the person is heading, you're just making a guess, no
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  matter how good, and giving yourself a 5050 chance that you
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  think This is why the person might be interested or not.
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  But if you listen and you get good data and you get good
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  clues, whether from verbal cues because of what they say, or
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  nonverbal cues like body language, how they smile or how
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  they frown or how they cross their arms, or how they seem to
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  be in agreement or disagreement. When you put together all these
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  clues and verbal and nonverbal cues, you stand a greater chance
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  of being able to make a convincing sales pitch or
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  presentation or proposal because you have a fair sense of what it
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  is that they might be interested in or not.
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  Now let's look at other conceptions of sales.
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  There's a conception of sales as service and that is one that I
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  would ask you guys to adopt since the conception that most
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  of you have of selling for now is sales is good talking, good
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  presentations. The conception of sales and
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  service has several advantages. One of them is if you think of
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  yourself as a service oriented person, as a business person or
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  as a sales person, you're going to easily build trust with
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  people. Trust is important because it
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  helps to get repeat business and referrals, and repeat business
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  and referrals are the golden goose when it comes to business
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  because the goal is to get business as easily as possible
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  for as long as possible. Going out every day to look for
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  new customers, to look for new clients takes time, takes money,
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  and takes a ton of rejection. If you have already built trust
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  with people and they have bought from you in the past, it's a lot
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  easier to get them to buy from you again and again and again.
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  And also to bring referrals, which are their friends, their
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  family members, their associates, maybe even their
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  enemies to buy from you. So other conception of sales,
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  sales as service, that is one that I would urge every single
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  person to adopt. There's another conception of
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  sales as problem solving. Now, this is also important
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  because your product or your service either solves a problem
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  that people have or it moves people closer to their vision.
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  I started off my business journey more than a decade and
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  1/2 as a wedding photographer. And So what I did, what I
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  provided to the couple was not just solving a problem, which
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  was that they had no wedding photographer, but it moved
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  people towards a certain vision that they had, a certain
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  idealized, stylized, sophisticated vision of how they
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  wanted their day to pan out. That is the reason why people,
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  brides and grooms, people in the wedding space.
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  That is the reason why they have wedding planners, caterers,
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  photographers and videographers. So that is one case where we
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  have a service that is moving people closer to a vision.
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  Now there are some other things that you buy like your mobile
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  phone for instance, which does both.
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  Your mobile phone solves a problem.
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  You need to communicate, but then your mobile phone also
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  provides different kinds of social signaling.
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  So those of you who are an iPhone crowd, your phone
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  provides a certain kind of signalling.
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  If you're a Samsung crowd, your phone provides a certain kind of
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  signalling. If you're an Android person,
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  your Android, your phone provides a certain kind of
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  signalling. And if you're a China phone
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  person, although now Chinese phones have become increasingly
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  good in quality and in function, it provides a different kind of
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  social signalling as well. So wedding photography, you're
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  helping people achieve a vision. Mobile phone, you are serving
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  both a problem and also helping people achieve a vision.
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  But we all have to adopt this conception of sales as service
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  because in sorry, we're trying to this conception of sales as a
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  problem solving. Because whatever it is that we
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  have, whether a product or a service, we are trying to solve
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  people's problems or move them closer to a solution.
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  Then there is sales as creativity.
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  Most people have a creative impulse.
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  You don't have to be a wedding photographer or a painter or a
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  movie director or a videographer to have a creative impulse.
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  An accountant can have a creative impulse, a lawyer can
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  have a creative impulse, and an engineer can have a creative
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  impulse because creativity is all about taking known variables
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  and trying to solve a problem or trying to achieve a certain kind
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  of vision. So this is something that
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  anybody can do, even a brain surgeon.
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  So brain surgery involves an element of creativity because
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  brain surgery is not just A + B + C or 1 + 2 + 3.
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  It's about these are the variables that we have.
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  This is what I have to do to get my patient back to optimum
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  health. And what are the best ways of
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  using my pharmacological skills in prescribing medicine or my
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  surgical skills in using the scalpel or whatever tool that I
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  have to try and get people back to better health.
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  So sales as creativity applies to every single person.
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  Don't assume that you have to be good with pictures and with
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  music and with images to be a creative person.
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  Even if you're the most boring accountant on the face of the
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  earth, you have a creative impulse and you can use that.
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  You can use that in sales, and you can exercise it in sales.
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  No matter who you are, whether you're a boring accountant or a
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  stuffy judge, we implore the creative impulse in starting
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  conversations with people, in building and nurturing
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  relationships with people, in putting together networking,
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  making connections among different class of people.
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  So it doesn't matter who you are or the skill set that you bring
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  to the table, you are going to be able to exercise your
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  creative impulse in many different ways.
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  So that brings to the end this first module which is on sales
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  fundamentals. And the question we tackled is
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  what is sales? We've gone through some
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  misconceptions that is not about persuading, but figuring out
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  people's pre-existing motivations.
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  And we have also gone through how as a business owner or as a
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  salesperson, we should realise that we're in the serving
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  business, that we're in the problem solving business, and
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  that we are creative individuals and we need creativity in every
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  single step of the process. The next recording is going to
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  be devoted to different kinds of sales roles in different
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  industries. Thank you very much for your
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  time and attention. I'll catch you guys in the next
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  recording.