Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / From Curious to Committed: Building Your Winning Sales Process

Transcript

From Curious to Committed: Building Your Winning Sales Process · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Before we begin I'd like to give
• 0:04
  a shout out to Adiba and Nos. She is involved in sales and
• 0:11
  marketing at a company at the company called Hashim Limited.
• 0:16
  Now the reason why I'm giving her a shout out is because today
• 0:19
  I received an invite or a connection request rather on
• 0:23
  LinkedIn. I accepted.
• 0:25
  I sent a message out. It turns out that she discovered
• 0:28
  the podcast on Spotify. She listened to the previous
• 0:31
  episode and then that's why she sent me an invite.
• 0:34
  So I've put out an open invitation to her because she's
• 0:38
  in charge of sales and marketing for the organization.
• 0:41
  I've told her that she discusses with her team and they have any
• 0:45
  questions based on the previous episode that I would spend some
• 0:49
  time with them, answer the questions and then also make a
• 0:51
  podcast episode about it. So shout out to Adiba and Nos
• 0:57
  hope I'm pronouncing the name properly.
• 0:59
  Thank you very much for listening to the show and for
• 1:01
  reaching out. Now today we're going to look at
• 1:04
  how to create a winning sales process from lead generation to
• 1:09
  closing deals. This is not a listener question,
• 1:12
  but it's something I made a note of in one of my sheets of paper.
• 1:15
  So I can't remember what the inspiration was, but I think but
• 1:18
  I figured it's it's a good enough question to tackle, so we
• 1:22
  might as well go ahead with it. Now for those of you who are
• 1:27
  newbies listening to the podcast, you might be hearing
• 1:30
  some terms in this episode that you know that sound kind of
• 1:34
  technical. So I'll do my best to try and
• 1:35
  define things as we go along. So the first foreign term is
• 1:41
  lead generation. Now, what does lead generation
• 1:45
  mean in my own opinion? Remember, I like to give
• 1:50
  everyday simple definitions, so it might not be technically
• 1:53
  correct or it not might not be all-encompassing, but I give the
• 1:57
  kind of definition that I want people to remember so that it's
• 2:00
  always at the back of their pocket and they can work with it
• 2:03
  and you don't have to. My thing is, if you can remember
• 2:07
  it, you can do it. And if you can do it, and you
• 2:09
  can do it repeatedly and sustainably over time, then the
• 2:13
  chances of making progress increases.
• 2:15
  So lead generation. Now, my own opinion, a lead is
• 2:20
  someone that you can approach or someone that you can call on
• 2:25
  reliably. And putting that asterisk to
• 2:28
  this whole thing, you know, reliably.
• 2:30
  Because theoretically speaking, you can go out into the whole
• 2:34
  wide world and approach anybody and approach everybody.
• 2:39
  But that does not mean that everybody is a lead.
• 2:43
  OK, so people that you can approach or call on reliably.
• 2:47
  Now what's the reliable part? The reliable part is that people
• 2:50
  must have indicated something about what they did, where they
• 2:55
  went, what they said. They must have done something
• 2:58
  objectively that you can point to.
• 3:00
  That indicates that there might be a possible interest here.
• 3:05
  Now when somebody takes, when somebody goes through the pains
• 3:09
  of indicating that they might be interested, you are taking the
• 3:13
  initiative to reach out and to call.
• 3:16
  So the person that has indicated interest somehow, whether online
• 3:23
  or offline, is what we call a lead.
• 3:26
  So anybody who meets his, I'm sorry, who meets that
• 3:28
  definition, we can call a lead. So remember, the lead is someone
• 3:33
  that you can approach or that you can call on, or that you can
• 3:36
  e-mail or SMS or WhatsApp or whatever, but that you can do so
• 3:41
  reliably. You need to have some sort of
• 3:45
  reason to call them. And the reason that I would
• 3:48
  recommend is that these people have done something, whether
• 3:52
  online or offline, that shows that they might be interested.
• 3:56
  And then you take the initiative to call, you take the initiative
• 4:00
  and reach out. An example is once I was coming
• 4:05
  out of school, young man handed me a flyer.
• 4:07
  The flyer was about shoes, bags, school books, things like that.
• 4:13
  Now I did what most Nigerians do.
• 4:16
  I took the flag, I said thanks and then I left.
• 4:20
  Now if I send an SMS or to the number or I send Adm to the
• 4:28
  Instagram handle, now I would have become a lead for that
• 4:33
  business because I have done something objective that you can
• 4:37
  point to that shows I might be interested.
• 4:40
  So then I'm a lead at the point at which the young man handed me
• 4:44
  the flyer. I was not a lead because even
• 4:48
  though I'm standing with kids, I might not be interested in these
• 4:51
  sorts of things because maybe Wifey has sorted out everything
• 4:55
  or we have a store that we like using.
• 4:57
  So I might not be a lead at that point.
• 5:00
  So not everybody that you give you a flyer to is a lead.
• 5:03
  If you hand out 5000 Flyers, it doesn't mean that you have 5000
• 5:09
  leads. If you hand out 5000 Flyers and
• 5:13
  out of those 5000 Flyers, you get 20 DMS, one WhatsApp
• 5:18
  message, one SMS, and maybe one phone call.
• 5:22
  Add that all. Add that all up together.
• 5:25
  Those are the leads that you have for the month.
• 5:28
  OK, now let's try and define what closing deals is, what that
• 5:33
  means. Now closing deals is getting
• 5:36
  people who are interested to take the next step.
• 5:41
  Let me repeat again, most people think closing deals is
• 5:43
  collecting the money. And yes, that is the more
• 5:46
  popular meaning of the word closing deals.
• 5:49
  So yes, closing deals is getting people to collect the money.
• 5:51
  But The thing is before you collect the money from someone,
• 5:55
  before they pay, people usually go through any smaller number of
• 5:59
  steps. If you get them to move from one
• 6:02
  step to another, then you have executed a close.
• 6:07
  So back to the flyer thing. Coming out from school and with
• 6:10
  my kids, young man hands me a flyer.
• 6:12
  I said thanks and drive away. Tomorrow I send Adm.
• 6:17
  That means I might be interested.
• 6:18
  I'm a lead. There's something to follow up
• 6:20
  on. Now let us say that, OK, Since I
• 6:23
  don't sell these sorts of things, I'm not sure what the
• 6:26
  next step should be. Let's see.
• 6:29
  So I'm thinking on the flyer here.
• 6:31
  OK, so if I collect the DM, OK yes.
• 6:33
  So maybe the next step if you're in this business should be to
• 6:37
  try and get someone to narrow down to a particular item or a
• 6:41
  range of items. So if you're responding to the
• 6:44
  DM, the goal is not to collect 50K from me because I bought 2
• 6:50
  pair of shoes. The goal actually the next step
• 6:53
  actually should be can I get this fellow who is on the phone,
• 6:58
  on the DM? On the WhatsApp, can I get him
• 7:01
  to identify three or four things that he might be interested in?
• 7:04
  That's the next step. If you're able to get me to do
• 7:08
  that in the SMS, in the WhatsApp, in the e-mail or the
• 7:12
  phone call, you have closed, you have executed a close.
• 7:17
  You have taken me one step further.
• 7:20
  Somebody who resists taking this next step, possibly relatively
• 7:25
  speaking, is not going to buy from you.
• 7:27
  Well, the person who identifies a couple of options has moved
• 7:33
  one step closer. It doesn't mean that the person
• 7:35
  is going to buy. It just means that the person
• 7:37
  has moved one step closer. And that's the philosophy that I
• 7:40
  want you guys to have when it comes to talking to leads and
• 7:44
  closing deals. It's not about collecting the
• 7:46
  money. Now.
• 7:48
  There are some situations where you collect the money.
• 7:50
  Now, I'm not good at that. I wouldn't recommend that for a
• 7:55
  couple of reasons. But if you look at closing the
• 8:00
  deal as walking people through small steps, everything becomes
• 8:03
  manageable. So you hand out the flyer.
• 8:07
  You know that people are going to reach out.
• 8:09
  When people reach out, you don't have to be nervous about how how
• 8:12
  many deals will I close now? The first thing is going to be
• 8:16
  how many people am I going to get to take the next step?
• 8:19
  And the next step is that they look at something on Instagram
• 8:23
  or they look at the catalogue and they tell me I might be
• 8:25
  interested in 1-2 and three, how much could they be?
• 8:30
  So that's just one step. So if you take things step by
• 8:32
  step, it's a whole lot easier. Now what we have discussed,
• 8:38
  technically speaking have names. One of them is called the One
• 8:42
  Call close. That is where you take the
• 8:44
  person to the next step. Every deal is broken up into
• 8:48
  small steps. You're trying to take somebody
• 8:50
  to take one small step. So one small step leading up to
• 8:54
  the big step, which is they pay the money and you guys have a
• 8:56
  business relationship. Say one call close is what I
• 8:59
  want you guys to practice on every single call.
• 9:02
  Move one step the person calls you move one step you go to the
• 9:07
  person's house. Move one step the person sends
• 9:10
  you Adm move one step. The goal is not always collect
• 9:14
  the money. Now now the thing about
• 9:17
  collecting money that is called a one time close.
• 9:20
  What that means is one time you've met this person.
• 9:23
  Today you've met this person. First time you've met this
• 9:26
  person, you're feeling like a bad guy, or you're feeling like
• 9:28
  a correct girl. You collect the money.
• 9:30
  Now, now, now, now, now, the very first time you meet them,
• 9:33
  now we can be done. There are people who show up.
• 9:36
  You were a total stranger before.
• 9:38
  We liars. We talk, and then they collect
• 9:41
  1.5 M today as deposits. There are people who can do
• 9:44
  that, but I don't have that skill set.
• 9:47
  It's not something that I've studied and so it's not
• 9:49
  something I'm going to teach. But the reason why I don't
• 9:52
  recommend it is because it is really high pressure, because
• 9:55
  it's hard every day to go out thinking this week I'm going to
• 10:01
  jam somebody who is a prospect and I'm going to collect my
• 10:03
  money complete, I'm going to collect the money one time, as
• 10:07
  in I'm a bad guy like that. It is hard to put you under a
• 10:10
  lot of high pressure and this is the kind of pressure that breaks
• 10:15
  sales people easily over time. So it can be done.
• 10:18
  I don't know how to do that. If you're interested in that
• 10:21
  sort of thing and maybe you found someone think you can that
• 10:24
  can teach those sorts of things, hit me up in the inbox.
• 10:28
  Let me know, at least I'll make sure that you're not going to be
• 10:31
  taken advantage of by a hogster or a fraudulent person.
• 10:34
  So that's a one time close. I don't recommend that.
• 10:37
  I recommend one call close every single call, every single
• 10:40
  interaction. Take the next step.
• 10:44
  So another way of looking at this question, how do you create
• 10:48
  a winning sales process from lead generation to close?
• 10:51
  Another looking at this question is this, Let's paraphrase, how
• 10:56
  do we get people to show interest?
• 10:58
  So that's the main thing. How do we get people to show
• 11:00
  interest? How do we start chatting with
• 11:03
  them and how do we get them to take the next step?
• 11:07
  So behind all this fancy language, lead generation, sales
• 11:10
  process, closing deal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:12
  That is the simple thing we're trying to figure out here today.
• 11:15
  And we try to figure out all the time, how do we get people to
• 11:18
  show interest. The young man gives me a flyer.
• 11:22
  That's one way. How do we start chatting with
• 11:24
  them? I send Adm to them.
• 11:28
  We can take that as permission to start chatting.
• 11:30
  How do we get them to move to the next step or to take the
• 11:33
  next stage? So we're trying to solve that
• 11:36
  process. We're going to have to look at a
• 11:37
  couple of other smaller questions.
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  And the first one is, first of all, we have to define our ICP.
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  The ICP is the ideal customer profile.
• 11:48
  Some people call it the target avatar, the target customer, the
• 11:54
  ideal customer. But you get the point.
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  These are people that we should be spending most of our time
• 12:00
  chasing, people who might be most likely to be interested in
• 12:03
  our products or our service, or that could be an example of the
• 12:08
  best class or category of kinds of people that usually buy from
• 12:14
  us. We need to figure that out.
• 12:16
  Step one, the person who sent me the flyer, if you notice, was
• 12:20
  hanging outside my children's school.
• 12:23
  The business sells children's bags and shoes and plates and
• 12:28
  cups and books. So part of their ICP was that
• 12:32
  people who buy from us are people who have children and
• 12:36
  people whose children are in school.
• 12:38
  You can see how now, if you ask yourself this question, your job
• 12:42
  of selling becomes a whole lot easier.
• 12:45
  You don't have to get out into the whole world and start
• 12:48
  handing your flag to anybody. Since you know, in this case
• 12:52
  that ICP are people who have children and the children are in
• 12:57
  school, I guess it only makes sense that you hang around
• 13:00
  schools. But what else?
• 13:02
  Maybe church? People coming out of church who
• 13:05
  have children, I don't know. Hospitals.
• 13:10
  OK, maybe hospitals. Women who have just given birth.
• 13:14
  OK, no, maybe that's too soon. Yeah, that might be too soon
• 13:18
  anyway. But you get my point.
• 13:19
  Once you define the ICP, what you should do next now becomes a
• 13:24
  whole lot clearer. Now, ways that you figure out
• 13:27
  your ICP are you can use demographics or psychographics.
• 13:32
  That is what determines where it is that you look.
• 13:36
  I'm going to repeat that. Demographics or psychographics.
• 13:39
  Now, for those of you who are newbies, I'm going to define
• 13:41
  what those terms mean. Demographics are the sorts of
• 13:44
  things that they taught us in primary school.
• 13:46
  That's for those of you who are Nigerians when we're talking
• 13:50
  about population characteristics, So we're
• 13:53
  talking about height, age, location, occupation, those
• 13:59
  sorts of things. So you should be thinking in
• 14:01
  clear demographic terms. So back to the person who handed
• 14:04
  me a flyer, Demographics, parents.
• 14:08
  So the guy is not concerned about people who are single, and
• 14:13
  he's not concerned about people who are dating.
• 14:16
  He might not even be concerned about people who are married or
• 14:18
  unmarried because you don't have to be married to have children
• 14:20
  together. But he's concerned about people
• 14:22
  who have children. That is demographics, OK, Adult
• 14:28
  with children. It was outside my children's
• 14:31
  school, so that's in Abuja. OK.
• 14:35
  So that's also part of demographics.
• 14:37
  Adults who have children and who live in ABCD, parts of Abuja,
• 14:43
  that's demographics, then psychographics.
• 14:46
  Those are the things that people are interested in.
• 14:49
  It also helps. So if the SO excuse me, so if
• 14:55
  the psychographic elements here are people who are interested in
• 14:59
  their children's education, then maybe you have an Instagram
• 15:02
  handle and you're always blogging on the Instagram
• 15:05
  handle. Yeah, things related to
• 15:07
  children's learning and you know, blah blah blah, things
• 15:09
  like that. So people who are engaging with
• 15:12
  those sorts of things, you know, might now fit the
• 15:14
  psychographics. So you can see that you have
• 15:16
  demographics to go off of. You're looking for adults who
• 15:20
  live in Abuja, certain parts of Abuja whose children go to
• 15:26
  school and then psychographics who might be interested in 1234.
• 15:31
  Now these are important because these are the things that
• 15:33
  determine where it is that you are going to look.
• 15:36
  So defining your ICP really, really, really important.
• 15:41
  Then the next step would be to identify your lead generation
• 15:45
  strategies. Now remember I said the lead,
• 15:48
  anybody that you can talk to, reach out to call, WhatsApp,
• 15:52
  SMS. But they have good reason for
• 15:54
  doing so because they have done something you can point to that
• 15:58
  shows they might be interested. So now we're looking at the most
• 16:02
  effective channels to reach these sorts of people that we
• 16:04
  have identified. Now for the young man that
• 16:07
  handed me the flyer, what he did made perfect sense, looking for
• 16:12
  parents who shouldn't in school so that I'm going to hang out
• 16:15
  outside schools. So you look for strategies for
• 16:19
  reaching people online. You can do online marketing.
• 16:25
  You send out advertisements on Facebook and where else,
• 16:29
  Instagram, places like that. Maybe Tiktok.
• 16:33
  I hear that people are not advertising on Tiktok.
• 16:35
  And then people who respond to those ads, those are leads.
• 16:39
  That is somebody you can chase because the person has done
• 16:41
  something that you can point to. The person responded to an
• 16:44
  advertisement. Then let's see, there's also
• 16:48
  social media, people engaging, people liking, stuff like that.
• 16:51
  You can do community building online.
• 16:54
  So based on the conversations that you get and the engagement
• 16:56
  that you get there, those people might be leads because they have
• 17:00
  done something, they commented they liked, they shared, they
• 17:04
  sent you Adm. So content marketing is also
• 17:07
  stuff you can do. Networking events, that's
• 17:09
  something you can do. Industry trade shows, that's
• 17:11
  something you can do. There are lots of things that
• 17:14
  you can do online or offline, but whether you do online stuff
• 17:20
  or social media stuff that will determine that will be
• 17:24
  determined by who your ideal customer profile is, your ICP.
• 17:29
  So that's why ICP, the first question.
• 17:32
  Now the next thing that we have to do that we have tried to
• 17:35
  identify lead generation. Lead generation just means how
• 17:40
  do I get people to show their hands?
• 17:42
  If I run an advert and somebody clicks, the person has showed
• 17:44
  their hands. If I go outside school and I
• 17:48
  hand a flyer and the person DMS, that person has showed his hand.
• 17:51
  So that's what we're trying to get.
• 17:53
  So next we have a qualification process that we have to run
• 17:57
  people through. Now qualification is just a
• 18:01
  series of conversations or interactions that you use to
• 18:05
  separate the wheat from the chef.
• 18:07
  We're trying to sort out customers.
• 18:10
  We're trying to look. So I'm trying to sort out people
• 18:12
  who are going to buy from time wasters.
• 18:15
  There's no point in spending time with time wasters.
• 18:17
  You can have what you think is a fruitful conversation with
• 18:20
  someone for two hours, but if truly, truly, truly the person
• 18:23
  was a time waster from the beginning, you have wasted those
• 18:25
  two hours. So qualification is what we try
• 18:28
  to swap through people. Who is meant to buy?
• 18:30
  Who is a time waster? Who is interested?
• 18:33
  Who is just curious? Who is a Wakapas?
• 18:36
  This is what we're trying to figure out now.
• 18:39
  We can only do this if we go through a process of engaging
• 18:44
  with people, having a conversation with people.
• 18:49
  So you do something, they respond.
• 18:51
  You see the respond based on who it is that responds.
• 18:55
  You keep talking. You keep talking to people who
• 18:59
  have responded positively. Yeah, let me put it that way.
• 19:02
  So back to the flyer example. I take the flyer, IDM.
• 19:06
  Now, it's cool. Someone takes the flyer and
• 19:08
  throws it, crumples it and throws it into the dustbin
• 19:11
  before your very eyes. Don't let that discourage you.
• 19:13
  It's just normal. You're looking for people who
• 19:16
  have responded positively. Just forget about the people who
• 19:18
  responded negatively for now, the stuff that we can do in the
• 19:22
  future to reduce the negative responses.
• 19:25
  But for now, let's only be concerned about people who
• 19:27
  responded positively from those who responded positively.
• 19:31
  Let's find out who is interested.
• 19:33
  Let's try and figure out how interested are they.
• 19:37
  Let's try and figure out how our product or service might solve
• 19:39
  their problems or help them achieve their vision.
• 19:42
  Because in this case, if somebody DMS the young man who
• 19:47
  put out the Flyers, it might be because they have a problem, my
• 19:51
  son's bag is spoiled. That might be a problem.
• 19:54
  Or you could have a vision that they're looking towards.
• 19:57
  I don't like the way my son's bag looks.
• 19:59
  My son looks like an orphan. I want him to look like a child
• 20:02
  that is well catered for, you know?
• 20:04
  So in that case, that's a vision.
• 20:05
  So no matter the product or the service that you have, when
• 20:07
  people call you, they're either trying to solve a problem or
• 20:11
  they have a vision. I'll need to try and be able to
• 20:13
  figure that out. Then we need to make sure that
• 20:16
  money expectations are close enough.
• 20:19
  Because if you have a product that is 2500 naira, but the
• 20:25
  person you're talking to thinks 500 naira can solve that
• 20:28
  problem, your expectations are way, way off.
• 20:32
  There's no how you can close that deal.
• 20:34
  You can't get a 500 person, 500 naira person to spend 25, but if
• 20:40
  the person is thinking it might cost 2000, but your solution on
• 20:44
  average is 2500, there might be room for you guys to do some
• 20:48
  business because you can get somebody who is thinking 2000.
• 20:51
  You can get that person to pay 2-3, maybe 2-4, who knows, might
• 20:55
  be able to get that person to pay 27, but you can't go from
• 20:58
  500 all the way up to 25. It's just too much.
• 21:01
  Then we also have to make a proposal, then ask for a
• 21:05
  commitment. So this is the process, more or
• 21:10
  less. So whether online or offline, we
• 21:13
  always have to be doing something, create some sort of
• 21:17
  engagement, like handing the flyer.
• 21:20
  If I collect it, that is engagement.
• 21:22
  If I send Adm, that is engagement.
• 21:24
  If I call, that is an engagement.
• 21:27
  And when people engage, we always have to be trying to ask
• 21:30
  for commitments and get them to take the next possible step.
• 21:34
  Now we've done 21 minutes so far.
• 21:35
  I wanted us to look at the fictional case study for someone
• 21:38
  selling shoes. The reason why I thought about
• 21:40
  that is because I'm currently chatting with someone right now.
• 21:43
  This one is just personal chat, someone that I met in my wedding
• 21:47
  photography days and she's currently selling sneakers.
• 21:50
  And I just thought, wow, that's interesting because I didn't
• 21:52
  know that there are people in Nigeria, particularly young
• 21:56
  women, who make a living selling sneakers.
• 21:59
  Because I thought that sneaker heads, I just figured, 'cause my
• 22:02
  generation, I think, are the kind of people who used to be
• 22:05
  sneaker heads. But I figured, you know, we're
• 22:07
  growing old, you know, we have other things to do rather than
• 22:09
  buying sneakers. So I'm going to have a chat with
• 22:11
  her. It'll be nice to learn about
• 22:15
  that part of Niger, because I didn't know that we have a
• 22:17
  collector's market in Niger. I always like finding out new
• 22:21
  and interesting ways about how people are making money.
• 22:26
  So, oh, sorry. OK.
• 22:29
  Yeah. I think I accidentally paused
• 22:30
  the recording. OK, I think I'm back.
• 22:33
  So, yes, So that's what inspired this case study.
• 22:35
  So what I'll do is since we are 20 minutes over, we'll do the
• 22:39
  case study tomorrow. And we're going to be looking at
• 22:44
  a fictional example about a female based in Nigeria who
• 22:47
  wants to start selling sneakers online.
• 22:50
  And the focus will be on how we're going to create a winning
• 22:53
  sales process, going from lead generation, getting people to
• 22:57
  show their hands to closing deals.
• 23:00
  So that's it for today. Thank you very much for your
• 23:02
  time and your attention. Please connect with me on
• 23:06
  LinkedIn like Adi Adi, BA Enos did.
• 23:12
  So please connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 23:16
  You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link.
• 23:19
  We're currently listening to this episode.
• 23:21
  Also, if you'd if you prefer, can connect with me on WhatsApp.
• 23:24
  The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234.
• 23:32
  As for those of you who are not Nigerian, thanks for your time
• 23:34
  and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next
• 23:36
  episode.