Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Prospecting with Purpose: Online Research and Building Transferable Skills

Transcript

Prospecting with Purpose: Online Research and Building Transferable Skills · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Sorry, I've been away for a
• 0:04
  couple of days, but I'm back and let's get straight down to
• 0:07
  business. So before we begin the usual,
• 0:10
  there's going to be a listener shout out and this is to
• 0:13
  Engineer AB. Sorry, I forgot to get your your
• 0:17
  real name or your full name rather.
• 0:19
  So Engineer AB, he's the creative director for Bao Bao
• 0:24
  Loose Engineering. Sorry, yeah, I'm definitely not
• 0:29
  pronouncing that right. So the company name is BAOLYUS.
• 0:34
  So BAOLYUS Baulius engineering and they're into fabricating
• 0:40
  agricultural equipment. So if you'd like to have a look
• 0:44
  at engineer ABS stuff, see what an what engineers do, you know,
• 0:51
  in the fabrication space in just basically making equipment that
• 0:55
  people need for carrying out the agricultural businesses, then
• 1:00
  check him out. It's the same name on YouTube.
• 1:03
  And if you check Google, you know, they have a Google My
• 1:05
  Business page there. So today's listener shout out
• 1:09
  Engineer AB and the company name is BAOLYUS Engineering.
• 1:18
  Yeah. So that's it.
• 1:19
  He discovered the podcast on Spotify.
• 1:21
  If I remember correctly. He reached out on Now first on
• 1:26
  LinkedIn. Eventually we had a chat on the
• 1:29
  WhatsApp and yeah, pretty stand up guy, interesting guy.
• 1:35
  And also a perfect example about how things are much more vibrant
• 1:40
  than we know in the Nigerian economy.
• 1:43
  Because a whole bunch of us who have passed through the school
• 1:45
  system, you know, primary school, secondary school, into
• 1:47
  university, the only things that we're exposed to are the typical
• 1:51
  stuff. You know, you grow up and be
• 1:52
  either a lawyer, a doctor, or unless he was engineer, you
• 2:00
  know, the, the, the usual professions that we have in this
• 2:03
  part of the world. But then we don't come across
• 2:05
  people like this who go to school, take their school chops
• 2:09
  and then apply it to something altogether different.
• 2:15
  Because during my day you are either going to be an
• 2:17
  intellectual in quote or you are going to end up in a Polytechnic
• 2:21
  and using your hands. But there are some people who
• 2:24
  are in a hybrid sort of role. So yes, he has gone to
• 2:29
  university and he has all the academic knowledge that is
• 2:34
  required to call himself an engineer.
• 2:36
  But then again, he's also doing lots of handiwork in fabricating
• 2:40
  all these machines. He works with his father, by the
• 2:42
  way. They run the business together.
• 2:44
  So fabricating all these wonderful machines that you need
• 2:48
  for processing food for poultry systems and all kinds of things.
• 2:53
  So that's a listener shout out for today.
• 2:55
  Engineer ABA, couple of shout outs.
• 3:00
  OK, let me just leave it at Engineer AB for now.
• 3:03
  So the other guys, I'm going to shout you out tomorrow.
• 3:06
  So for today, pause Today's podcast episode.
• 3:08
  I'd like to achieve two things or rather tackle 2 questions.
• 3:13
  One of them is how should I put it?
• 3:17
  Well, tips for outreach online. Now for the purpose of the
• 3:21
  podcast, whenever you hear outreach, just take that to mean
• 3:25
  you are reaching out to someone. So whatever it is that you're
• 3:29
  doing to try and contact someone, to try and get somebody
• 3:32
  on your radar, or rather you know, to get on somebody's
• 3:35
  radar, to get somebody's attention, initiate a
• 3:37
  conversation, whatever it is that you're trying to do, we're
• 3:40
  going to call all those things outreach.
• 3:42
  So I'd like to give a couple of tips for how you can be much
• 3:45
  more effective. Excuse me?
• 3:48
  I can be much more effective doing that online because a
• 3:51
  whole bunch of us are trying to use LinkedIn, use Instagram, use
• 3:54
  WhatsApp, use whatever tools are available to do outreach.
• 3:59
  So yeah. So yeah, that's it.
• 4:03
  Now, the primary tip that I'm going to give for today is
• 4:05
  something I've spoken about in the past, but I really think
• 4:08
  from what I see out there that you guys are just not getting
• 4:11
  it. And that is this whole thing
• 4:14
  about research. You should be researching your
• 4:19
  prospects before you do any form of outreach.
• 4:24
  Now, this was not possible back in the day.
• 4:27
  So for our parents who are trying to run their businesses
• 4:30
  or their careers in the 60s, seventies, 80s and 90's, the
• 4:35
  opportunities didn't exist to go and do research on someone.
• 4:39
  I mean, you might talk to somebody and say, oh, I want to
• 4:42
  go and meet engineer. I know her.
• 4:45
  You know, what can you tell me about the guy or engineer know?
• 4:48
  How is your guy? How far now can you hook me up,
• 4:50
  hook me up with a meeting, you know, that sort of thing.
• 4:53
  But now we have the opportunity and we have the resources
• 4:56
  available to be able to go online to engineer know has
• 5:01
  LinkedIn to his Instagram, to his what else, to his website to
• 5:06
  whatever to kind of get a fair idea about who he is, what
• 5:10
  business he's up to, those sorts of things.
• 5:12
  Before we show up at his office or before we give him a phone
• 5:15
  call or before we visit his house to try and see how we can
• 5:17
  run our business. And we have not been taking full
• 5:20
  advantage of these resources that are available.
• 5:23
  So just do some basic research. Now, I want to give a warning, a
• 5:26
  bit of a caveat here. Now, some of you that are going
• 5:29
  to say, because some people have said we should do research,
• 5:33
  you're going to spend 3045 minutes, one hour doing
• 5:36
  research. By the time you're spending one
• 5:40
  hour or 30 minutes doing research, you have gone too far.
• 5:43
  What I'm just saying is the basic stuff before you go out
• 5:45
  and meet somebody, All right, So you think Engineering Oha is a
• 5:49
  good person to go and check out? Just do a basic Google search.
• 5:54
  A few things will come up. His LinkedIn handle will come
• 5:58
  up. Click on the LinkedIn and then
• 5:59
  see. Click on the company page and
• 6:01
  then see 5-10 minutes should give you kind of a good idea
• 6:06
  about how to start, where the conversations might go, things
• 6:11
  like that before you reach out. Now, the reason why I bring this
• 6:13
  up is this. Recently a web design
• 6:17
  professional reached out to me on LinkedIn and was trying to
• 6:20
  sell me on how I should update my website.
• 6:25
  Now, for those of you who've been listening to this podcast
• 6:27
  for any length of time, you guys know that I do not have a
• 6:33
  website. I have never had a website.
• 6:37
  Well, back in my wedding photography days, back when me
• 6:40
  and my brother were in business together, we did have a website.
• 6:44
  But I have ditched the whole thing of having a website as a
• 6:49
  delivery part of my business strategy.
• 6:52
  By the way, I am not saying I am correct.
• 6:55
  I am not saying you guys should ditch your websites, it's just
• 6:59
  that with where I am now, with the kind of ideas that I have
• 7:04
  for business development, drumming up interest, all those
• 7:06
  sorts of things, a website for now is not central to how I
• 7:11
  choose to run my business. And so I do not have a website
• 7:16
  at as at the date of this recording, but this web design
• 7:20
  professional reached out to me and tried to sell me on updating
• 7:24
  the website. So This is why I say that you
• 7:26
  guys should be doing just some basic research before I reach
• 7:28
  out to people. If this fellow had just checked
• 7:31
  my profile, my LinkedIn profile, he would have gotten enough
• 7:37
  signals on whether I need websites, whether I use websites
• 7:44
  or you know, stuff like that. So this is the kind of research
• 7:49
  that I'm talking about. You just open somebody's
• 7:51
  LinkedIn handle and of course on most people's LinkedIn handles,
• 7:54
  I like to put up their website. So if somebody puts up LinkedIn
• 7:57
  handle, there's no websites, but there's a link to a podcast.
• 8:02
  You check around the podcast, you can't see anything.
• 8:04
  You check the Instagram, you can't see anything.
• 8:06
  I think we'll be safe to assume in this case that the person
• 8:08
  doesn't have a website or it's not something that he's
• 8:10
  promoting. So in this case, if he had done
• 8:14
  his research, it wouldn't have been oh boy, how far?
• 8:19
  This is what I do. If you want to update your
• 8:22
  website, I'm here. If you had done some research,
• 8:25
  the take would have been something like, hey, oh boy,
• 8:28
  what's up? I've seen your stuff.
• 8:30
  I love the podcast, especially what you said on episode XYZ.
• 8:33
  However, I think you could be growing the podcast some more if
• 8:37
  you had a website and part of your strategy was ABC and 123.
• 8:41
  Now that is a different kind of conversation and that is
• 8:43
  outreach that is relevant because the guy has done some
• 8:47
  research. Now, this is the reason why
• 8:49
  research is important. Remember, I am not saying take
• 8:52
  30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour to research somebody.
• 8:55
  Just do some basic stuff. Open up the person's LinkedIn
• 8:59
  and check. Open up the person's Instagram
• 9:02
  and check, open up the person's website and check if you just
• 9:06
  look at those things, you will now you have an idea about how
• 9:09
  you how you should approach the conversation, whether you're
• 9:11
  supposed to be formal or informal, whether you can be,
• 9:16
  how casual you can be or give you a sense of how you want to
• 9:20
  carry on the business conversation.
• 9:22
  Because like in this fellow's case, like I said, if you had
• 9:24
  done some research, he would have seen that the way to start
• 9:27
  the conversation with me is not I'm here when you want to update
• 9:32
  your website, but it would have been, I like what you do.
• 9:35
  You're doing real good. However, I think you can do
• 9:38
  more. If you had a website, would you
• 9:40
  be interested in having a conversation to see how we can
• 9:42
  hook this up? So please research.
• 9:47
  For those of you who are worried or complain about why people
• 9:49
  snob you online, this is the reason why lots of you are
• 9:53
  getting snubbed and people will see your message and not
• 9:56
  respond. So when you send a WhatsApp
• 9:58
  message, I see those two blue tick Marks and the person didn't
• 10:02
  see anything. This is the reason why you're
• 10:05
  doing a whole bunch of outreach that is not relevant and is not
• 10:09
  targeted. And that's because you have not
• 10:11
  done some basic research. So #1 tip for today for those of
• 10:15
  us who are doing online outreach, just do some basic
• 10:20
  research. Before there was the Internet,
• 10:23
  go and ask your parents. Before there was the Internet,
• 10:26
  your father or your mother would not just go and enter somebody's
• 10:28
  office called like that for a meeting.
• 10:30
  I mean, how you ask one or two people in church or in the
• 10:34
  office, you know, like, oh, you know this guy, like how far,
• 10:39
  what kind of person is he or what kind of business are they
• 10:42
  into? Or when do you think would be
• 10:43
  the best time to branch the guy? Should I meet him in church or
• 10:47
  should I meet him at home and all those kinds of stuff.
• 10:50
  So with the same common sense that our mothers and fathers and
• 10:54
  our uncles and aunties used to run their businesses, 60s,
• 10:58
  seventies, 80s, that is the same scope that we should be doing
• 11:00
  right now, 2024-2025 and beyond. We just have to adapt it to the
• 11:06
  online space since a whole bunch of us spend a lot of time
• 11:09
  online. Then the second tip that I have
• 11:13
  today, this one is for sales professionals, really those of
• 11:18
  you who are employees. So you don't run your own
• 11:20
  business, but you work for somebody.
• 11:24
  You work for somebody who has a business.
• 11:25
  So back to the example that I used, I think in the previous
• 11:29
  recording, your Madam owns a shop and she sells clothes
• 11:35
  imported from the UK for children between the ages of 6
• 11:39
  and 18. And you're the person who
• 11:42
  handles the Instagram and you're the person who is in the shop so
• 11:45
  that whenever people come, they interact with you.
• 11:47
  So I am now talking to sales professionals.
• 11:49
  Now I'm talking to that sales guy or sales girl who is manning
• 11:54
  the Instagram and who is in the shop for when people come, or
• 11:58
  your guy imports car batteries and stuff like that, but he's
• 12:04
  not in the shop all the time. You've done your apprenticeship,
• 12:07
  so you're now the one in the shop while our guy is not
• 12:09
  around. And then if somebody needs a
• 12:11
  battery or a new transmission system or whatever, they come
• 12:14
  and talk to you. So I'm talking to sales
• 12:16
  professionals now, or you work for Lead Way Insurance or Access
• 12:21
  Bank insurance and you know your sales manager sends you out
• 12:25
  every single Monday to go and look for customers.
• 12:26
  So this is the tip. Now for those of those of you
• 12:30
  who are employees, you are still sales professionals.
• 12:33
  You're just doing it on behalf of somebody else, trying to move
• 12:37
  somebody else's business. Now before I get into the tip,
• 12:41
  we should be doing our best as sales professionals, sales
• 12:46
  employees, we should be doing our best to move our or our
• 12:49
  Madam's businesses forward. And this is the reason why.
• 12:55
  The reason why is because in moving Madam's business forward,
• 12:59
  if you are the person who is manning the Instagram handle and
• 13:03
  you are in the shop, you know when people come in on to buy
• 13:05
  the business clothes or you sell for lead insurance.
• 13:09
  In trying to move or gas business forward, you will have
• 13:13
  to learn some skills that are easily transferable into
• 13:16
  different contexts. The more of these skills that
• 13:19
  you pick in trying to do good for Olga and Madam now, it'll
• 13:25
  make you much more valuable to your own business interest when
• 13:30
  you start your own business tomorrow.
• 13:33
  Excuse me, So if right now you sell for Lead Way insurance or
• 13:37
  you sell insurance products for Access Bank or for GT Bank and
• 13:42
  you're just doing yourself anyhow anyhow, yes you're doing
• 13:45
  the business anyhow anyhow, but the truth is you are also
• 13:49
  hurting yourself because after three years when you're ready to
• 13:53
  start your own business, no matter what it is, let's say you
• 13:55
  want to leave, leave selling insurance and you want to be a
• 13:59
  wedding planner. If you did not try to apply
• 14:05
  yourself as a salesperson when you are selling lead way
• 14:08
  insurance, you're going to be starting your career as a
• 14:12
  wedding planner with a deficit. You could have spent three years
• 14:18
  while being paid salary working for somebody else.
• 14:20
  Learning how to look for customers, being confident in
• 14:23
  how to approach people. Learning how to have qualifying
• 14:26
  conversations to figure out what people's problems are, Learning
• 14:30
  how to make effective proposals, learning how to build rapport
• 14:33
  and build relationships. You could have been doing that
• 14:36
  for three years while you're working for somebody else and
• 14:38
  somebody was paying you salary. It actually is the best way to
• 14:42
  learn. So while you are an employee and
• 14:46
  somebody's paying you money. Now I'm sure you might be
• 14:49
  thinking if I overdo, I'm growing somebody's business.
• 14:52
  Yes, I agree you're growing somebody's business and it
• 14:56
  sucks. But The thing is you are also
• 14:58
  investing in yourself so that tomorrow when you leave, because
• 15:04
  chances are you will leave. You know, was during our parents
• 15:06
  day that people used to stay 20-30 years with one employer.
• 15:09
  You know, now typically we, we move in shop, shop, shop.
• 15:12
  I would say people who work for an employer maybe 3-4 years and
• 15:14
  then you cut and then you move. So when you leave, if you've
• 15:18
  implied yourself, you are now going to take these skills with
• 15:21
  you. You're not going to leave these
• 15:23
  skills for the employer. Whatever skills you pick up when
• 15:26
  you're learning how to sell insurance for GT Bank or for
• 15:30
  Access Bank or for lead way, you will carry those skills with
• 15:32
  you. Your employer is not going to
• 15:34
  say that rapport building skill that you built.
• 15:37
  Put the rapport building skill, leave it in the office, go out
• 15:40
  of here, but leave the rapport building skills you carry it
• 15:43
  with you. So because of that, my tip for
• 15:45
  sales professionals is that you should want to improve your
• 15:49
  performance. The reason why I'm talking about
• 15:53
  this today is because I've been having a trying customer
• 15:59
  interaction. Somebody brought me in, prove
• 16:01
  his business, talking to a bunch of that sales people and there's
• 16:04
  one person in particular he's just not getting it.
• 16:08
  He doesn't understand. He clearly doesn't want to
• 16:11
  improve performance. I mean he's not getting it that
• 16:14
  if you are with an employer in Nigeria, because let's face it,
• 16:17
  Nigerian employers, most of them are just jackasses as they don't
• 16:21
  care. So if you are in that
• 16:23
  organization, that rare organization in Nigeria where
• 16:27
  your employee, your employer actually gives a hoot and has
• 16:31
  actually paid for you to do online training, this online
• 16:33
  training that bring a coach in, bring a, this bring a personal
• 16:37
  development special, bring a whatever.
• 16:40
  It's gold if you're in that kind of organization and yoga or your
• 16:46
  Madam has called somebody in, take advantage of that
• 16:50
  opportunity and want to improve yourself.
• 16:53
  I want to improve your performance because like I've
• 16:56
  been saying, if you work in that kind of organization where the
• 17:00
  person calls me in and it's my job to make sure that you guys
• 17:03
  are at your best, you sell at your best.
• 17:07
  When you decide to leave in two or three years, it's not as if
• 17:10
  you can take the benefits of all these training and performance
• 17:15
  improvement that you've been, you know, they've been running
• 17:17
  you guys through. It's not as if you can remove it
• 17:19
  and drop it for the company. You will leave with that
• 17:22
  knowledge. So please, sales professionals
• 17:25
  who are employees of other people, you should want to
• 17:27
  improve yourself and you should want to improve your
• 17:30
  performance. Sorry about the noise that is in
• 17:33
  the background. You know, I'm not in my usual
• 17:35
  recording space and you know, we've gone through that whole 7
• 17:39
  days rain and blah, blah blah. So everybody's taking advantage
• 17:42
  of the sunshine and what do you call those things?
• 17:46
  You know, lawn mowers and all those things.
• 17:47
  You know, everybody's cleaning up the grass and all that.
• 17:50
  So that's the noise that's coming through in the
• 17:53
  background. And what was I in my rant?
• 17:56
  So I was just saying sales professionals, this thing really
• 17:58
  blows my mind. If you want to improve your
• 17:59
  performance and This is why, because if you improve your
• 18:02
  performance here and yes, you grow your orgas business or our
• 18:05
  dam's business, it sucks because you're helping your guy become a
• 18:08
  millionaire. Yes, that's true.
• 18:10
  But The thing is, eventually you're going to leave Orga or
• 18:12
  Madam, the time will come for you to improve your own life and
• 18:16
  become a billionaire or a millionaire or a billionaire.
• 18:21
  The process of getting to your millions or billions is going to
• 18:25
  be jump started or going to move a whole lot quicker if you did a
• 18:28
  good job while you are with OCA of learning how to improve
• 18:32
  yourself. So my recommendation for those
• 18:35
  of you who are sales professionals selling on behalf
• 18:36
  of other people #1 information diet.
• 18:39
  It's not just food we should diet from.
• 18:42
  You should have an information diet.
• 18:44
  You should have some form of regular weekly, daily, monthly,
• 18:49
  whatever, self improvement, skill acquisition, something
• 18:53
  that expands your frameworks and your mindsets.
• 18:55
  You should be doing any of these things.
• 18:58
  Now. I have some good news for you.
• 19:00
  Back in the old days, in the days of my father and my mother,
• 19:03
  if you wanted to improve your information diet, you would have
• 19:05
  to go and pay for those of us who grew up in Lagos, their
• 19:10
  training, OK, well, I don't know if they're still there, but some
• 19:13
  of the old names in training space, you'd have to go there
• 19:18
  and pay, you know, X 1000 naira per head or per employee, per
• 19:23
  organization. And you pay for these things.
• 19:26
  But now information is readily available on the Internet.
• 19:29
  The podcast that you're listening to, this is one of
• 19:32
  them now available on YouTube. If you go on YouTube, do an
• 19:35
  expanded search, you'll find other people.
• 19:37
  So it is not inconceivable to think that in this day and age,
• 19:43
  you can find seminars on YouTube that every single month, let's
• 19:47
  say the first Monday of every month, you listen to to improve
• 19:49
  yourself. It's not inconceivable to think
• 19:53
  that in fact, if you're a salesperson, it is it how I put
• 19:59
  it, you'll be stupid not to, let me just put it that way.
• 20:02
  At the very least first Monday of every month, go to YouTube,
• 20:07
  pull up some of those seminars and listen.
• 20:09
  In fact, the monthly thing, I think if you're doing once every
• 20:11
  month, I think that's not good enough.
• 20:13
  I would recommend weekly. But let me just say, let's just
• 20:16
  make allowance, OK? Some people don't like audio,
• 20:18
  some people don't like video, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 20:20
  OK, no problem. At least once a month, just make
• 20:23
  a date with yourself. Put it in your diary, put in
• 20:25
  your Google Calendar, first Monday of every month or last
• 20:28
  Friday of every month, or second Wednesday of whatever it is you
• 20:31
  want to do. Just these things are out there,
• 20:35
  they're free. Just listen.
• 20:37
  Watch it as you're watching personal and paper.
• 20:40
  Start writing down stuff. This one sounds stupid.
• 20:42
  I won't write it down. Oh, this one makes sense.
• 20:44
  Let me write this thing down. This one makes sense.
• 20:47
  And this one looks like it's something that can apply easily
• 20:49
  in this context. OK, no problem.
• 20:51
  Tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM, when I resume work.
• 20:54
  Let me try it. Let me see how it works.
• 20:57
  So you need an information diet. An example that I've given to
• 21:04
  the team that I'm currently working with on behalf of their
• 21:07
  employer is this. There's a guy called Victor
• 21:11
  Antonio. He is an American sales trainer.
• 21:15
  He comes from his mostly complex solutions that he sells that he
• 21:22
  used to sell back when he was in the field because now he owns
• 21:25
  his own agency. So he's not in the field
• 21:26
  anymore. So what he used to sell digital
• 21:31
  solutions, mobile solutions, engineering solutions, you know,
• 21:35
  all kinds of things to to different businesses.
• 21:40
  So they are selling routers and all that kind of fancy stuff
• 21:46
  that, you know, I can't remember right now, but the reason why I
• 21:50
  recommended Victor Antonio's podcast is not because Victor
• 21:53
  Antonio is the best or I mean, he's the correct guy, but it's
• 21:55
  not as if he's the best. I recommended him because his
• 21:58
  episodes are no longer than 10 minutes.
• 22:02
  So for those of you who love listening to my podcast, but
• 22:04
  you're angry because sometimes I do 10 minutes and then sometimes
• 22:07
  I do 45 minutes and then sometimes I do one hour and it
• 22:10
  makes it hard to plan your day. Don't worry, I'm working on
• 22:14
  that. So all those one hour episodes,
• 22:16
  I'll try and cut that out. But I'm not trying to say that
• 22:21
  if you're angry about long, long episodes, there are people like
• 22:23
  Victor Antonio who do nothing more than 10 minutes Max.
• 22:28
  I think Victor Antonio, I think I've listened to 1 episode that
• 22:31
  was 20 minutes, but 1010 minutes.
• 22:33
  Sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp.
• 22:34
  And the guy is done. And his focus also is on giving
• 22:37
  practical tips just like me, so that you listen to something
• 22:42
  today and it's something that Tuesday morning, 10:00 AM, you
• 22:47
  resume work, you can apply this thing.
• 22:50
  So that's what I recommended to the team.
• 22:52
  I said, look, this is Victor Antonio.
• 22:54
  You guys are in the complex sale.
• 22:57
  Victor Antonio is from a similar background.
• 22:59
  So you guys just take this Victor Antonio, listen to it
• 23:02
  every day. Let's discuss one thing and you
• 23:04
  believe that this simple assignment, listen to something
• 23:08
  for 10 minutes every day. The people that I'm talking to,
• 23:13
  they don't drive, they take public transport.
• 23:15
  How hard is it for you to sit in a downfall and you remove your
• 23:21
  earphones? If I in Lagos?
• 23:25
  Well, I don't know what Lagos is like right now because I haven't
• 23:27
  lived there in a long time. But while I live there, my own
• 23:29
  commute was two hours, one hour to work, one hour back.
• 23:34
  If traffic was rough, my commute would be, you know, 3-4 hours,
• 23:38
  you know, maybe one hour getting to work and then maybe two hours
• 23:40
  back. In cities like Lagos where you
• 23:44
  have these long commutes, you are daft if you are not sitting
• 23:50
  down in traffic and then just taking out at least 10 minutes,
• 23:55
  pull out your earphones, Listen to something that is going to
• 23:58
  enhance your ability to sell. You are just being daft.
• 24:04
  So look for these resources, especially those of you who live
• 24:07
  in Lagos, those of you who live in pH where you spend 45
• 24:12
  minutes, one hour in traffic, help yourself look for some of
• 24:17
  these things on your way to work, Listen to one.
• 24:22
  After that, they can, you know, watch, I don't know, Netflix,
• 24:27
  something much more entertaining.
• 24:30
  And then on your way back, watch another.
• 24:32
  That 551010 minutes that you're doing every single day is always
• 24:36
  going to be able to help you double or triple your
• 24:38
  performance with your current employer this year or next year.
• 24:43
  But by the time you've been doing that for two or three
• 24:45
  years while you are working with this guy, by the time you're
• 24:47
  ready to branch out on your own, you are starting with lots of
• 24:54
  knowledge and transferable skills that make it easy or
• 24:57
  easier for you to grow your business.
• 25:00
  So there is no need in the beginning for you to pay for a
• 25:05
  sales consultant. These free resources are there.
• 25:08
  Come up with an information diet or podcasts or YouTube when
• 25:13
  you're consuming this, excuse me, when you're consuming this
• 25:16
  material, make sure you have pen and paper so you can write down
• 25:20
  one or two things that makes sense and then you can execute.
• 25:24
  Then drop with a simple plan. Drop a simple plan and then
• 25:27
  execute it. So OK, I listened to Victor
• 25:29
  Antonio. Victor Antonio says whenever
• 25:32
  your customer says the price is too high, this is how I'm
• 25:34
  supposed to answer. No problem.
• 25:36
  You write it down, then you now put that post it note, leave it
• 25:39
  on your desk so that next time you're on the phone and somebody
• 25:42
  says, oh, your price is too high, you just look at the post
• 25:45
  it note what Victor Antonio said.
• 25:47
  Just do exactly what it is that he said.
• 25:51
  If it didn't work, OK, go and talk to your guy, talk to other
• 25:54
  people. This was my strategy.
• 25:55
  I don't think I did this well, how could I have done it better?
• 25:58
  And then tomorrow you try it again.
• 26:01
  By the time you did a couple of times, by the time you've been
• 26:03
  doing this for a year, you will not be afraid.
• 26:05
  You will not shake anytime a customer calls you and says, oh,
• 26:08
  your price is too expensive. And the good news is when you
• 26:12
  start your own business and you leave your own OGA and then
• 26:14
  somebody calls you, a person says your price, your price is
• 26:16
  too expensive, you will shake your confident because you have
• 26:19
  been answering people who say your price is too expensive over
• 26:22
  the course of the last year. And not only that, you've been
• 26:25
  listening to other people, whether it's Tavishima or Victor
• 26:28
  Antonio or any other person to give you different strategies
• 26:32
  about how should you should handle those sorts of things.
• 26:35
  Anyway, I've gone for 30 minutes.
• 26:37
  Let me just wrap it up here. But bottom line is this, for
• 26:40
  those of you who are trying to do business online, please
• 26:42
  research people before you reach out to them.
• 26:46
  That is the difference between your outreach being irrelevant,
• 26:50
  not targeted, ineffective, all kinds of things.
• 26:54
  So just do some basic research. Don't look at anybody for 10
• 26:57
  minutes. Open the LinkedIn, see the
• 27:00
  LinkedIn header, the everything. Scroll down 1-2.
• 27:03
  OK, close it. Open the website, look at it.
• 27:07
  Click on About us, go back to the main page, Scroll down, flip
• 27:12
  1-2, then close it. Open the Instagram, look at it.
• 27:17
  Scroll, scroll. Look at a couple of pictures.
• 27:19
  Get a sense of what this person is like.
• 27:21
  OK, this post seems interesting. Click on it, look at it, read
• 27:23
  it, then close it all that won't take you up to 5 minutes.
• 27:27
  You will now be better prepared to call up this person or to go
• 27:30
  to their office or to go to their house or to or to try and
• 27:36
  have a conversation with them, you know, after church or after
• 27:39
  mosque or whatever. And therefore sales
• 27:41
  professionals, somebody else is paying your salary.
• 27:43
  I know you don't want to make organ Madam a millionaire, but
• 27:47
  it is not organ Madam that are suffering.
• 27:51
  You are the one who is suffering yourself.
• 27:53
  Organ Madam, they'll be all right because they've built this
• 27:56
  business to the level that they've been able to even pay
• 27:58
  for you to come and work for them.
• 28:00
  So any which way they'll be all right.
• 28:04
  Get an information that improve the performance of the business
• 28:08
  where you work because the only way to do that is for you to
• 28:12
  improve yourself. And when yourself, when you have
• 28:15
  improved yourself and you're moving on to something else and
• 28:19
  you're starting your own business, you want to take all
• 28:21
  these transferable skills and the new confidence, the
• 28:24
  information, the everything with you and that is what's going to
• 28:27
  help you grow your business. So let me just wrap it up like
• 28:30
  that. So please connect with me on
• 28:32
  WhatsApp for questions, tips and insights.
• 28:35
  Phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234.
• 28:41
  Also connect with me on LinkedIn, which is the best
• 28:43
  networking and business and career development social
• 28:49
  network. You can say you want to improve
• 28:51
  yourself or improve your business and you're not on these
• 28:53
  places. So I mean, you should.
• 28:55
  But of course, you know, some of it is a context dependent
• 28:57
  because I'm currently talking to somebody who's in the Web 3
• 29:00
  space. And in his own opinion, like,
• 29:02
  look, Web 3 is Twitter. That's where every all the web
• 29:05
  three people are. So LinkedIn, there's no need.
• 29:07
  And in that, in that case, I would say, yeah, you're correct.
• 29:11
  As it stands in Niger of today, yeah, all the web three people,
• 29:14
  they all hang out on Twitter. Sorry, not Twitter.
• 29:16
  What's it called now? X?
• 29:18
  So that's everybody hands out, so hangs out.
• 29:21
  So yeah, it's context dependent. But I really think the rest of
• 29:24
  you would be able to benefit immensely by being on LinkedIn.
• 29:30
  Because for those of us who are there on LinkedIn, we talk about
• 29:33
  career, we talk about business, we talk about personal
• 29:35
  development, we talk about all kinds of things.
• 29:38
  But you know, there's no twerking videos or no videos of
• 29:41
  oh, you won't be, you won't believe what this happened.
• 29:43
  No videos of Mr. Macron, none of those sales, sorry, first strap
• 29:50
  videos and stuff like that. So you you'll be able to go
• 29:53
  there, learn, hang out with like minded people and just have a
• 29:57
  productive time online basically.
• 29:59
  So that's it, that's the end of my rant for today.
• 30:01
  Thanks for your time and attention.
• 30:02
  I'll catch you guys at the next episode.