Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Mastering the Art of Influence

Transcript

Mastering the Art of Influence · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to the show. I'm your host, Tavi Shima Ayede.
• 0:06
  This is definitely going to be a noisy episode because I'm at the
• 0:08
  car wash, so expect to hear interruptions in the background
• 0:11
  and today is a very windy day. If you'd love an opportunity to
• 0:15
  connect and to see what opportunities that you and I can
• 0:18
  explore, then call me on 08064662140 or you can WhatsApp
• 0:25
  me on the same number. The country code is +234 for
• 0:29
  those of you who are not Nigerian and for social media,
• 0:32
  you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 0:35
  So today we're going to continue with how to build strong
• 0:38
  relationships with decision makers.
• 0:40
  The reason why I'm going back to that topic, even though that's
• 0:43
  what we did yesterday, was because yesterday it looks like
• 0:48
  I went over and over why it is important that you should build
• 0:52
  relationships with decision makers.
• 0:54
  But I didn't actually tell you guys how we should go about
• 0:57
  doing that. So today I'm going to tackle
• 0:59
  that part of the equation. So today we're going to look at
• 1:03
  relationship building tools. Essentially, when you're dealing
• 1:06
  with people who are decision makers, if this is your first
• 1:09
  time of listening to the podcast, you don't know who a
• 1:10
  decision maker is and you don't know why that is relevant to
• 1:13
  what it is that you do. Then after you're done listening
• 1:16
  to this episode, listen to yesterday's episode and you're
• 1:18
  going to get caught up to speed. Now, since people are in the
• 1:24
  business of providing secrets to success, let me go on and
• 1:28
  provide secrets of my own. I'm just being tongue in cheek
• 1:31
  here because really, I don't believe that anything is a
• 1:33
  secret when it comes to sales or business development success.
• 1:36
  The answers already out there. So First off, if you want to
• 1:39
  build relationships with decision makers, you have to
• 1:42
  identify their concerns. Now, I know this might sound
• 1:46
  strange to you guys because if you're thinking about
• 1:48
  relationship building tools, I'm sure you are thinking about how
• 1:52
  to talk better, how to laugh better, how to smile better, you
• 1:55
  know, and stuff like that. But remember that this is
• 1:58
  business, you know, we're not about making friends.
• 2:00
  We're about building our bank accounts and making some money.
• 2:04
  And we are about providing value to the people that we're sitting
• 2:08
  across on the other end of the table.
• 2:10
  And so even they are not here to make friends.
• 2:13
  They are here to solve a problem.
• 2:15
  So it doesn't matter what business you're involved in,
• 2:17
  whether you're a wedding photographer or whether you own
• 2:19
  a car wash, like where I am right now recording this
• 2:22
  episode, whether you're an accountant, the person that
• 2:25
  you're having a conversation with is not looking for a new
• 2:28
  friend. The person is trying to solve a
• 2:30
  problem. If you're an architect, the
• 2:33
  person is trying to build a house and build a house on the
• 2:35
  budget. If you're the car wash, the
• 2:37
  person wants his car to be clean and let me see what else.
• 2:42
  If you're with a wedding photographer, of course the
• 2:43
  person wants their wedding covered in a very nice,
• 2:46
  sophisticated, stylized way or whatever it is that their taste
• 2:50
  happens to be. So when we're talking about
• 2:53
  building relationships with decision makers, we're not
• 2:56
  talking about coming here and making friends.
• 2:58
  Nobody needs new friends. Everybody already has enough
• 3:00
  friends, so they're trying to solve the problem.
• 3:02
  You're trying to make some money.
• 3:03
  So let's keep the focus on that. So First off, identify these
• 3:06
  people's concerns. I'm trying to figure out what it
• 3:10
  is that they're trying to solve. So if you're the architect
• 3:12
  trying to build a relationship with the people on the other end
• 3:15
  of the table is first of all, trying to figure out exactly
• 3:17
  what it is that they're trying to do.
• 3:19
  Do you understand their artistic vision?
• 3:21
  Do you understand their timeline for when the house is going to
• 3:23
  be built? Let's see what else?
• 3:27
  Oh, forgive me, I'm not an architect and I'm not in the
• 3:29
  building space, so I'm not sure exactly what it is that the
• 3:32
  architect does different from the draftsman and what the
• 3:35
  draftsman does different from the site engineer.
• 3:38
  So I'm just freestyling that, but you get my point.
• 3:42
  You want to figure out who this person is, what they're about,
• 3:44
  what it is they're trying to build, what's the timeline, what
• 3:47
  are they trying to achieve? That is the beginning of
• 3:49
  building relationships with decision makers and people on
• 3:52
  the other end of the table. Because if you're able to
• 3:55
  understand what it is that they're trying to do and you're
• 3:58
  able to align your needs with theirs and show them how you can
• 4:01
  bring their vision to fruition and help them get the results,
• 4:05
  then that's the beginning of everybody being all nice and
• 4:07
  happy. If you don't believe me, think
• 4:09
  back to the time when you had a Carpenter to come and do some
• 4:11
  work at your house and the Carpenter did rubbish.
• 4:14
  It was because the Carpenter didn't understand what it is
• 4:16
  that you are trying to achieve and they ended up producing
• 4:19
  rubbish. And believe me, if you remember
• 4:21
  correctly, that did not help the relationship between both of
• 4:24
  you. And that's the reason why you
• 4:25
  don't call that Carpenter again to do work for you.
• 4:28
  So the secret to building a strong relationship with
• 4:32
  decision makers or with clients on the other end of the table is
• 4:35
  to not obsess over building a relationship in the 1st place.
• 4:38
  Just come in there, identify their concerns, make sure that
• 4:41
  your needs are aligned, and then the relationship will take care
• 4:43
  of itself. Of course, if you listen to the
• 4:46
  episode that I did three days ago, now I was on relationship
• 4:51
  building. I can't remember, but I know it
• 4:54
  was about 3 days ago. So if you don't listen to this
• 4:56
  episode, skip back to episodes and then listen to that.
• 4:59
  I spoke about commonality or how you build rapport.
• 5:03
  That is also going to help when it comes to building
• 5:05
  relationships. So no need to be labeled that
• 5:07
  since we're already done that on another episode.
• 5:11
  I want to make sure that today's episode is not one of those 30
• 5:13
  minute episodes. Then there are also some
• 5:16
  frameworks to help when it comes to building relationships or
• 5:22
  trying to identify people's concerns and things like that.
• 5:24
  And one of them is from Victor Antonio.
• 5:28
  He is a sales trainer, mostly technical sales based out of
• 5:31
  America. Now, I cannot remember his
• 5:34
  framework entirely because he has lots of nice acronyms that
• 5:39
  he uses to explain some stuff. But going based off memory, let
• 5:42
  me just talk about a couple of things that he talks about.
• 5:45
  South Victor Antonio talks about identifying the management user.
• 5:48
  For those of you who are in technical sales, you know you're
• 5:50
  trying to sell IT or software, let's say.
• 5:55
  OK, I'm outside the Accountant General's office right now in
• 5:59
  Abuja. So if you want to go and sell,
• 6:04
  let me see, OK, let's say you graduated from Babcock and you
• 6:07
  studied computer science and then you have connects with guys
• 6:10
  in China and you don't have to supply Apple laptops at a good
• 6:15
  price. And then maybe your uncle works
• 6:17
  in Accountant General's office or Ministry of Finance and he
• 6:20
  has the hookup. He thinks he can arrange a
• 6:22
  meeting for you to say you can supply laptops to the whole to
• 6:25
  the whole building or maybe to a certain department.
• 6:28
  So this is the framework that Victor Antonio says that you
• 6:31
  should adopt. So first of all, if you think
• 6:33
  about the management user, management user basically just
• 6:36
  means Orga. You have to liaise with all the
• 6:39
  Orgas in the department because they have to be on board because
• 6:42
  orga has to know what's up in the department before any
• 6:44
  decision is made. So definitely you guys to align
• 6:47
  with the management user or the Orga, then you also have to
• 6:51
  think about the technical user. The technical user is the desk
• 6:55
  officer, the person, the very person who's going to be
• 6:58
  handling that laptop on a day-to-day.
• 7:01
  Because if you're trying to sell into Accountant General's Office
• 7:04
  and you think that Apple computers are the best in the
• 7:07
  world and everybody should adopt Apple computers, but the people
• 7:11
  who are in Accountant General's office or who are in Ministry of
• 7:14
  Finance or whatever are used to working with Microsoft Windows,
• 7:17
  then this is going to be a hard sell.
• 7:20
  Because if the Olga likes the vision, but the technical users,
• 7:25
  the desk officers say, Olga, we don't like this thing, we cannot
• 7:28
  use it. It doesn't work with our
• 7:29
  process. You know, this and this and
• 7:30
  that, and that is going to make your deal unnecessarily hard.
• 7:33
  So it's not just a matter of going in there and aligning with
• 7:36
  Olga. You also have to be cool with
• 7:38
  the technical users and aligned with them.
• 7:40
  Oh, sorry. You know, I told you guys it was
• 7:42
  a windy day and I'm out of the car wash.
• 7:43
  So that's what I breeze in the background.
• 7:47
  Then Victor Antonio says we also have to pay attention to the
• 7:51
  economic buyer. The economic buyer is the person
• 7:54
  who is going to drop the money at the end of the day because
• 7:58
  the management user or the is not the person who is going to
• 8:01
  drop the money. The technical user or the desk
• 8:03
  officer definitely won't drop the money.
• 8:05
  The person that will drop the money is the person who is in
• 8:07
  the accounting department or the human resources department or
• 8:11
  the procurement department or the purchasing department or
• 8:15
  whatever department it is that they have there.
• 8:17
  So for Victor Antonio, he says that when we look, when we're in
• 8:20
  complex sales, especially in technical and IT kind of sales,
• 8:24
  that is how we should think about breaking into this deal.
• 8:28
  Who are the management people? Who are the auger begin to align
• 8:31
  with them? Who are the technical users?
• 8:33
  Who are the desk officers? You need to be talking to those
• 8:36
  people. Who are the economic buyers?
• 8:37
  Who is the person that is going to sign on the cheque or
• 8:40
  authorize the transfer? At the end of the day, you also
• 8:42
  need to make sure you're talking to those people and bring them
• 8:44
  in on the deal. So once you know who the
• 8:46
  management user is, the technical user is, the economic
• 8:49
  buyer is, then remember what I said about identifying their
• 8:52
  concerns, what's important with them?
• 8:54
  Align your needs to theirs and then build some commonality
• 8:57
  along the way. Make sure you're a decent human
• 8:58
  being to chat with and you should be doing OK.
• 9:03
  Remember, if some of these terms sound strange, if this is the
• 9:06
  first time listening to the show, especially when I say
• 9:07
  commonality and rapport, rapport.
• 9:09
  After you're done listening to this episode, skip back 2
• 9:13
  episodes. The episode has trust.
• 9:17
  It has trust in the title. I can't remember what it was
• 9:19
  called. Anybody has trust in the title.
• 9:21
  If you listen to that, you only hear about the three CS and
• 9:23
  that's another framework from Tom Hopkins and that's
• 9:29
  commonality, credibility, and competence.
• 9:33
  Yes, commonality, credibility, and competence.
• 9:35
  So you guys will learn some more there.
• 9:36
  It's also going to be useful when it comes to building
• 9:39
  relationships with decision makers.
• 9:42
  Then also when we are trying to build relationships with our
• 9:47
  customers and decision makers, we also have need to offer
• 9:50
  insights. Insights just means important
• 9:53
  stuff that they have not paid attention to before.
• 9:58
  That is insight. For instance, I'm a member of a
• 10:00
  group, the African podcasters and voice actors.
• 10:05
  Something, something, something. So we have a water group and a
• 10:11
  couple of us, you know, it's our tan season and we work with our
• 10:13
  voice, you know, whether we're consultants or we do radio work
• 10:16
  or TV work. And so it's that time of the
• 10:18
  year. Some of us have started coughing
• 10:20
  and sneezing and, you know, things like that.
• 10:23
  And so I was just chatting on the group, like in like, hey,
• 10:26
  guys, you know, I'm supposed to collaborate with somebody.
• 10:28
  The guy is down with a cold. Even me, my, my throat is
• 10:30
  dreaming one kind. So like what are tips for voice
• 10:34
  care and things like that? Now, of course there are some
• 10:37
  usual voice exercises and voices and voice routine that people
• 10:42
  already know of. Well, then there are some things
• 10:44
  that are helpful but people did not consider like OK, that I
• 10:49
  told you guys before about how my father-in-law and my
• 10:51
  mother-in-law, every time this thing starts, they tell me I
• 10:54
  should just take warm water and I should mix it with lime and I
• 10:58
  should mix it with ginger and I should mix it with honey.
• 11:00
  And so they spoke about the honey thing.
• 11:03
  Some members of the group talk about the honey thing.
• 11:05
  He's looking as if this thing is an African remedy because even
• 11:07
  people in Zambia are talking about this, this remedy.
• 11:10
  So maybe I should try it out. When somebody said something
• 11:13
  about cold water and coffee, about how that restricts vocal
• 11:17
  cords. Now, you see, in my own
• 11:18
  situation, now that is something that is really, really, really
• 11:20
  insightful because it's important information, but it's
• 11:23
  not something I've considered before and I probably never
• 11:26
  would have considered. So you need to find ways to give
• 11:30
  insights to your customers. So like if you're selling into
• 11:34
  Accountant General's office, you want to sell computers to the
• 11:39
  whole department. If once in a while you call up
• 11:42
  the technical user and then you drop some knowledge on them,
• 11:46
  like hey my guy, I don't know, blah blah blah.
• 11:49
  I was just thinking, you know, since people use Windows system
• 11:53
  with this AI tool, you can integrate this and this and that
• 11:56
  and that. You should be able to help you
• 11:57
  to process this payment and process that payment.
• 12:00
  You know, I'll be how you see him and the guy will be like,
• 12:02
  ah, yes, it's true. Let me try it.
• 12:03
  And then he tries it and then it works and the guy will heavily
• 12:06
  be grateful. And you know, when they're
• 12:09
  considering in the departments, you know which vendor to go
• 12:12
  with, it's one of the things that will be in your favour
• 12:14
  because everybody will think this guy is a correct guy or
• 12:16
  this babe is a correct babe. So yes, maybe she's young, she
• 12:19
  just graduated Babcock University two years ago, so
• 12:22
  maybe she's young, but she sounds like she knows what she's
• 12:25
  doing. She's been giving us correct
• 12:27
  insights that is improving the way that we work and things like
• 12:29
  that, you know, so we might as well consider her.
• 12:33
  So you see that these are ways that you can be building
• 12:36
  relationships with decision makers and it will help you move
• 12:39
  your house, help you move your business.
• 12:42
  Then let's see what else. Let me look through my notes.
• 12:46
  OK, I already mentioned that there's an episode that I did 2
• 12:49
  episodes ago on building trust. So what you do is just skip back
• 12:53
  2 episodes. You listen to that or if you're
• 12:55
  listening to this on YouTube, what you do is just type in
• 12:58
  Tavishima in the search bar, type in Tavishima and then type
• 13:01
  in trust and then hit send. And then any episode that I have
• 13:05
  done with the over 970 episodes that we have for the show right
• 13:10
  now available on YouTube, any episode that I've done around,
• 13:12
  trust all the episodes will just be there and you can listen to
• 13:15
  them. Remember, like I said, when you
• 13:19
  are listening to any of the resources that I have on YouTube
• 13:22
  or you're listening to anybody's resources on YouTube for that
• 13:24
  matter, listen with a pen and a paper.
• 13:27
  The goal is you should be writing something down today
• 13:30
  that you can use tomorrow, 9:00 AM immediately to start moving
• 13:35
  your business forward. Don't just listen and say, oh,
• 13:37
  that was nice, that was nice. Keep a pen and paper handy.
• 13:40
  Don't annotate the whole thing. Just write down the thing that
• 13:43
  you know you can do tomorrow morning. 8:00 nine o'clock to
• 13:47
  move the business forward. Then of course, try and be
• 13:51
  personable and likable when you're talking to people,
• 13:53
  talking to business maker, decision makers and something
• 13:57
  that I cannot over stress, you know, be patient, but be
• 14:00
  persistent because when you're doing complex sales, these
• 14:03
  things take time. If you listen to yesterday's
• 14:06
  episode and you consider the examples that we spoke about,
• 14:10
  you see that these things take time.
• 14:13
  If you're going to sell computers to a department or to
• 14:16
  every single department in the accountant General's office,
• 14:20
  these things take time. You're not going to enter into
• 14:22
  that place today, meet with somebody tomorrow and then
• 14:25
  collect a cheque for hundreds of millions next tomorrow.
• 14:29
  It doesn't work like that. The patient complex deals take
• 14:33
  time, so there's a lot that can be said on the matter, but let
• 14:36
  me just bring it to a close today because I don't want to
• 14:40
  keep doing these 30 minutes episodes.
• 14:41
  I don't want to test you guys patience.
• 14:43
  So thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 14:47
  I'll catch you guys in the next episode and remember, if you
• 14:49
  would like an opportunity to connect and see opportunities
• 14:53
  that we can explore together, you and me, call me on O
• 14:56
  806-466-2140 or WhatsApp me on the same number.
• 15:02
  The country code is +234. For those of you who are not
• 15:05
  Nigerian because I noticed that 2% of you are Chinese.
• 15:08
  So please reach out to me. Are you guys really, really
• 15:10
  Chinese or you just happen to be Nigerian diaspora, you know,
• 15:13
  Nigerians who are living in China, you know, reach out,
• 15:15
  let's have a chat. Let me see what problems that
• 15:17
  you guys are facing. Let me see how I can help.
• 15:20
  And most importantly, let me see what you, you know, my Chinese
• 15:22
  brothers would like to know to help move your business forward.
• 15:28
  I was about to say something racist.
• 15:30
  So let me, let me just keep. Well, anyway, let me just say
• 15:32
  it's not exactly racist. DSTV is doing this thing where
• 15:36
  they're showing a couple of movies about Bruce Lee and Jet
• 15:40
  Li and who again. So please, my Chinese listeners,
• 15:44
  you know, Novak's, I'm not sure whether those guys are Chinese
• 15:48
  or Japanese or whatever, but it's, you know, we Nigerians,
• 15:51
  especially those of us who are like, you know, 70s to 80s kids,
• 15:55
  you know, we grew up watching all that Bruce Lee stuff and
• 15:59
  Jackie Chan and all that. So forgive me if it sounds
• 16:03
  racist. Well, you know, we got love for
• 16:04
  you guys. We like your cinema.
• 16:06
  So yeah, that's it. I'll catch you guys in the next
• 16:08
  episode. Yeah, that's it till tomorrow.