Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / How to Tell if Your Sales List is Actually Good

Transcript

How to Tell if Your Sales List is Actually Good · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:03
  Today I'm going to be talking to career sales people in
• 0:06
  particular, although some of the things we're going to talk about
• 0:10
  will have implications for business owners who like to do
• 0:15
  outreach. Now, if you remember, in
• 0:18
  previous episodes, I've spoken about how I have been having
• 0:21
  some sessions with one of my clients, one of my past clients,
• 0:26
  who is currently trying to hire some sales people.
• 0:28
  And I've been sitting in on those or I call it on those
• 0:33
  interview sessions to help them select staff.
• 0:39
  So like I mentioned, it's not something that ioffer because,
• 0:43
  you know, hiring is not my expertise, it's not my area of
• 0:48
  specialty. But like I said, if you've given
• 0:51
  me money before, then you are my friend.
• 0:53
  And this guy has given me money in the past, so therefore he's
• 0:56
  my friend. And I don't mind doing favours
• 0:59
  for my friends. So I sit in, I listen, and then
• 1:01
  I give my own opinion on what, or rather on who is going to
• 1:05
  make a good sales hire or not. And in the sales process, of
• 1:10
  course, we're asking these people questions about their
• 1:14
  selling history, about their selling philosophy, their
• 1:17
  selling frameworks, their approach to sales and business
• 1:21
  development in general. So we're asking them quite a
• 1:26
  bit. We're asking them lots of
• 1:28
  questions. And I've noticed some themes
• 1:31
  that are coming up, some themes that are reoccurring.
• 1:36
  And I think it's a problematic trend.
• 1:38
  I know that in America, people are already engaged in this kind
• 1:41
  of behavior. I just didn't think it would
• 1:43
  seep into Niger. And that is this whole thing of
• 1:46
  people recycling lists. Now let me explain, OK, Some
• 1:54
  industries, right when you're about to head out, you find a
• 1:58
  list of potential customers somehow, maybe because you run
• 2:02
  an advertising campaign and people respond and then they
• 2:04
  give you their contact details, or maybe use a, what are these
• 2:08
  things called, a crawler or a bot to scrape details off the
• 2:12
  Internet and then you start calling people.
• 2:14
  But either way, those are also our professional sales people
• 2:17
  who are used to the idea that there is a list that we're
• 2:19
  working from. Now for some of you who are
• 2:22
  business owners, you know, you're self-employed.
• 2:24
  Some of you are also OK with that idea.
• 2:26
  Like you're used to the idea that there is a list that we're
• 2:29
  running through. OK, no problem.
• 2:32
  So what I've noticed is that there are some sales people who
• 2:34
  believe in recycling lists. In other words, you have a list
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  like 300 people you call through this 300, you talk to some
• 2:42
  people, some people say F you, some people you know caught the
• 2:46
  phone on you. Some people goes to you.
• 2:48
  You know, anyhow, Shah, you've gone through the list once
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  you've closed some deals, you now keep that list again, hoping
• 2:57
  that in another maybe nine months, six months, one year,
• 3:05
  they would have forgotten about you.
• 3:06
  And then by you blast the list again.
• 3:08
  And then you start from the beginning and start running the
• 3:11
  thing all the way through now. Well, like I said, in America,
• 3:18
  that was that's how they run their things.
• 3:20
  But it's not even in America itself.
• 3:25
  It's not considered best practice.
• 3:26
  And so it's not something that sales people should be doing
• 3:29
  here. Oh, by the way, sorry, forgive
• 3:30
  me for the noise in the background.
• 3:32
  I'm making today's recording at home and I didn't use my that my
• 3:37
  my new microphone, the one I Jack into my phone.
• 3:40
  I'm not using it. So there's going to be a lot
• 3:42
  more noise spilling into the background then.
• 3:44
  Plus the kids are home. So you hear a bunch of stuff.
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  So even in America where people do this, no recycling list, it's
• 3:51
  not considered good practice or it's not considered best
• 3:54
  practice. So Nigerians are big.
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  We should not be adopting this kind of thing of recycling
• 3:58
  lists. All right, Because The thing is,
• 4:02
  if somebody told you to F off last year, what are the chances
• 4:06
  that if you call the guy again in nine months time, you think
• 4:09
  the guy will be much more amenable to talking now?
• 4:12
  Yes, he has forgotten you, but is there any, has anything
• 4:17
  happened to give you an impression that this person's
• 4:20
  needs or this person's circumstances or their outlooks
• 4:24
  have changed? And so because of that, the
• 4:26
  likelihood of a pleasant conversation now are much more
• 4:29
  likely. Has anything happened until you
• 4:34
  until you've gotten objective confirmation that somebody's now
• 4:40
  interested or things have changed in their personal
• 4:43
  circumstances? This whole thing of recycling
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  lists, OK, let me put it this way.
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  When you have a list, all right, your primary goal is to figure
• 4:54
  out, do I have a good list? All right, let's pay attention
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  now. Salespeople, business owners,
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  when you have a list, the primary concern is do I have a
• 5:07
  good list? Now, do I have a good list is
• 5:10
  going to mean a couple of things.
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  Number one, we're going to try and see if we have an accurate
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  list because there are some phone numbers or nothing that
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  will be wrong. Excuse me, There are some e-mail
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  addresses that will be wrong. There are some physical
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  addresses that will be wrong. There are some business
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  addresses that will be wrong because it happens.
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  Like, remember the guy who reached out to me sometime last
• 5:33
  week wanted to sell web design services for photography
• 5:38
  businesses. So definitely I was on the guys
• 5:41
  list. But the guys list is not a good
• 5:43
  list because he has people on that list who the last time they
• 5:48
  did anything photography related was 10 years ago.
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  And I happened to be one of those people.
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  So if I'm on that list, I know for sure that guy doesn't have a
• 5:54
  good list. So no matter how you got that
• 5:58
  list, somebody gave you the list.
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  Like, well, oh boy, I guess on leads call or you scrape the
• 6:02
  Internet for leads or you ran advertisements or whatever,
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  there will be some data there that is dirty or inaccurate or
• 6:13
  out of date. So number one, we're trying to
• 6:15
  figure out, do we have, do we have a good list?
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  Is our list accurate? So that will be the way that you
• 6:22
  approach the phone calls. You won't be calling everybody
• 6:24
  assuming that this one is a done deal, that they're interested.
• 6:27
  You keep an open mind when you're dying, you're trying to
• 6:31
  figure out, are you talking to the right person?
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  You're trying to figure out whether information is current,
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  whether people are interested, you know, things like that.
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  Then when we pass through the whole stage of that's an
• 6:41
  individual conversations, we make sure that, OK, this person
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  that we're calling the data is accurate.
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  All the facts that we have on paper, everything checks out.
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  The person I assume I'm talking to, OK, this is the person I'm
• 6:53
  actually talking to. That one checks out fine.
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  The next stage is actually is to figure out the people are
• 6:58
  interested. That is where traditionally in
• 7:01
  sales we do qualification and discovery.
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  We're asking questions about the person.
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  We're asking questions about the problem because we want to be
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  sure that the person is part of our ICP.
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  Our ideal customer profile, The kind of person that we like
• 7:14
  doing business with anyway, are the kind of people who derive
• 7:16
  value when they use our product, when they use our service.
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  Then we also want to figure out if they have a problem that our
• 7:22
  product or our service can solve.
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  So that's the focus. We're not calling to try and
• 7:29
  pitch immediately or to try and close the cell immediately.
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  We're trying to figure out is this a good list?
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  The data, the names, the addresses, the whatever.
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  Is this thing accurate? OK, good is accurate.
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  Next thing we do qualification and then we do discovery.
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  Are we talking to the right kind of people?
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  Do they have an interest and do they have the right kind of
• 7:47
  problems that our product or service can solve?
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  Now, if you take that approach and you're walking through a
• 7:53
  list the first time and you have spoken to people where the data
• 7:57
  is accurate and you have spoken to people and possibly close
• 8:02
  some deals where people are properly qualified, logically,
• 8:07
  does that not imply that the people who are left over the
• 8:10
  data is incorrect or the people are unqualified?
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  Let me repeat again. If we run through the list the
• 8:20
  first time, all right, we did our job well, it means that we
• 8:25
  would have spoken to people who the information that we have on
• 8:29
  them is correct, is on point. Then those people definitely had
• 8:34
  an interest and those people had a need that our product or
• 8:38
  service could solve. They were the right kind of
• 8:40
  people to talk to. So logically now, the people
• 8:44
  will remain, our data is not correct and these people are
• 8:49
  likely not qualified. There's no need why Nigerian
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  people should be recycling lists.
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  If you did a good job of going through it the first time, I
• 8:59
  beg, leave the list. The list is now dry.
• 9:03
  The people that you close the deal from in the first list, no
• 9:06
  problem. Those ones already moved.
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  They're no longer on the list. They're now on our phone and now
• 9:10
  on our CRM. Our goal now is relationship
• 9:13
  building because we want them to buy from us again and then we
• 9:17
  want them to send their friends and their family members to come
• 9:19
  and buy from us. So those ones that are not on
• 9:21
  the list, again, then you get some people where the data at
• 9:26
  first was correct, but then maybe they are partially
• 9:30
  qualified, like they're interested but they don't get
• 9:32
  money or you know, they get money but the need is not really
• 9:37
  a hot thing. Those people who should have
• 9:39
  also removed them from the list and put them into relationship
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  building processes, relationship building funnels, those are the
• 9:46
  people that would have removed their contact details.
• 9:48
  We put them on WhatsApp group or we put them in, you know, e-mail
• 9:53
  blasts so that once in a while then we'll receive message from
• 9:56
  us. You know, just regular updates,
• 9:59
  you know, Happy Valentine or new product release, 20% off.
• 10:05
  And now apart from that, valuable emails that you send
• 10:07
  out. Or are you still facing this
• 10:09
  problem? This is how you solve it.
• 10:11
  You know once in a while, you know every three to three weeks,
• 10:14
  every one one month, you know they would receive message from
• 10:17
  us. Just so that we remain top of
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  mind, we remove those ones from the list.
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  Now the hope is because we're doing relationship building or
• 10:25
  relationship nurturing sequences with them.
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  The goal is that maybe when they now need a product or service,
• 10:30
  they will now say, oh it's true that guy mean they message me
• 10:34
  regularly or this baby has been in touch with me, then they will
• 10:37
  now get back in touch with you. Well anyhow, anyhow, I hope you
• 10:41
  guys are following me. Sorry for those of you who are
• 10:44
  new into the business space. This one might sound
• 10:46
  unnecessarily technical, but from what I'm seeing within only
• 10:50
  fear me. I just want to be sure that the
• 10:54
  this thing is not becoming widespread practice because this
• 10:58
  one that you know, we talked to 4 candidates, three of them are
• 11:01
  recycling lists no more. It's a troublesome I'm trying to
• 11:04
  they didn't even work in the same company.
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  So please let us not be recycling lists.
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  If we do a good job the first time, we have already closed the
• 11:13
  deal on the prospects or the candidates where the team makes
• 11:17
  sense. We've already closed those ones,
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  we've removed them. Then the ones that are somehow
• 11:22
  somehow qualified, we've already removed them so that we can use,
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  we can be doing relationship nurturing, relationship
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  building, relationship nurturing sequences.
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  The people that are remaining on this list, if we did a good
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  process the first time around, the data is rubbish.
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  The names are not correct, the e-mail address is not correct,
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  phone number is not correct. You know, whatever data there is
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  highly, highly, highly inaccurate, very problematic.
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  Therefore, the ones where the data even checks out, they're
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  not qualified. They're not in the market for
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  the product or service. They are not interested in the
• 11:58
  product or service. They have no need for your
• 12:00
  product or service. They cannot afford your product
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  or service, which is the very reason why the first time round
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  they caught the call on you or they blocked you or they said F
• 12:09
  off or whatever it is shot. They try to show you off.
• 12:14
  So please let us not be recycling lists.
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  I beg you will hear it on other podcasts.
• 12:22
  Yes, and they do it in America, but also that even in America it
• 12:25
  is not considered good practice. It is not considered good
• 12:29
  practice. The focus when you get a list is
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  do I have a good list? Is this list clean?
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  The information is up to date. The information is accurate.
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  Then after that, are these people qualified and interested?
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  That's the focus the first time round.
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  Please stop recycling lists. You're better off walking
• 12:54
  through a list properly one time.
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  Then when you get to next year or next month or next quarter
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  and it's time for a fresh list, you're better off taking the
• 13:05
  learnings that you did from the last time and you need to get a
• 13:08
  better list this time. So even last time what you did
• 13:10
  was you used a web crawler or a bot or whatever to scrape data
• 13:15
  like that photography guy did before reaching out to me.
• 13:18
  And then on the list there were people there who had not been in
• 13:21
  photography business for 1010 years or more.
• 13:25
  What you will now do is for those of you who are tech, you
• 13:27
  know, gurus and you know all these your stuff, you know how
• 13:31
  to program your crawler or your bot so that this time around
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  when you're scraping the data, it will only scrape for people
• 13:38
  that you know reasonably have done anything photography
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  related in the last, you know, 2-3 months or something.
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  So don't be recycling your lists.
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  Go through a list properly. Take any learning that you get
• 13:54
  from the list and use those learnings.
• 13:56
  Use those insights to now inform how you're going to build your
• 14:00
  next list. So the last time you did
• 14:03
  advertising campaign, you got some contacts from it.
• 14:05
  After you processed that list, what did you learn, the things
• 14:08
  you learned? Take it, throw it into the new
• 14:10
  advertising campaign so that when you run the campaign and
• 14:13
  you now get some contacts, get some leads, you'll get good
• 14:19
  quality, good quality leads because sales is hard.
• 14:23
  We don't make phone calls just for the sake of making phone
• 14:26
  calls while making phone calls or sending e-mail, sending
• 14:29
  emails and sending WhatsApp because we have a reasonable
• 14:32
  hope of closing a deal. There is no point in recycling a
• 14:36
  list when the, the, you know, you separate the wheat from the
• 14:39
  shaft. So the, the shaft, The Dirty
• 14:42
  will remain. We don't have any reasonable
• 14:44
  hope that there's any, anything sweet, anything cogent, anything
• 14:48
  tangible inside. Again, don't be making phone
• 14:50
  calls for the sake of making phone calls.
• 14:52
  So that's it for the podcast episode for today.
• 14:55
  For those of you who just discovered the podcast for the
• 14:57
  first time, sorry that this one is a little bit technical.
• 15:01
  Well, I'm assuming it's going to be a little bit technical if
• 15:03
  you're the first time. This is the first time listening
• 15:04
  to the podcast. So my name is Tavishma Aidi.
• 15:07
  I am a former lawyer turned business consultant.
• 15:11
  If this is your first time listening to the podcast and you
• 15:14
  found things a little bit too technical and have a couple of
• 15:16
  questions, reach out to me on 0806466 2140.
• 15:22
  You can call, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message.
• 15:25
  So just let me know what you found confusing.
• 15:27
  I'll do my best to explain to bring you up to speed, but also
• 15:30
  make sure you subscribe to the podcast because you know,
• 15:34
  podcast episodes, you know, sometimes up, sometimes down,
• 15:36
  sometimes highly technical. And then sometimes I come here
• 15:39
  and I'm just faffing about just giving you guys general gist.
• 15:43
  Butcher subscribe so that you will get caught up to speed and
• 15:47
  you will get the overall context of all the ideas that we
• 15:50
  discussed over here on the podcast.
• 15:52
  Therefore, those of you who are regular listeners, you've been
• 15:55
  in the business of recycling lists and you've been running
• 15:58
  into some problems. Give me a call, give send me a
• 16:01
  text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140.
• 16:08
  Reach out. Let's have a chat about how we
• 16:11
  can make sure that we go through our list well the first time or
• 16:15
  how we can process the insights, process the learnings that we
• 16:20
  are getting from our outreach activity.
• 16:22
  So we can use that to make our future outreach better.
• 16:26
  Now, I'm not against giving people free advice.
• 16:29
  So when you reach out to me and if you want free advice, just
• 16:32
  let me know in the very first call, in the very first message,
• 16:36
  just let me know after you do that toasting thing that you
• 16:38
  guys like to do like, oh, this podcast is awesome, blah, blah,
• 16:40
  blah. I like it.
• 16:41
  Keep the keep the toasting coming.
• 16:43
  So after the toasting, you now go straight to the point.
• 16:45
  You hit the nail on their head And you say, Bros, the free
• 16:48
  advice that I'm looking for. No problem.
• 16:50
  I'm cool with that. We will now schedule the time
• 16:52
  where we'll have a conversation. And because you're looking for
• 16:55
  free advice, I will answer one question only.
• 16:59
  So make sure that you do some research.
• 17:03
  You think hard about what are your one question is going to
• 17:06
  be. But then if you want us to go in
• 17:08
  depth and look at some things in total and examine this thing
• 17:12
  properly, then we'll have to book your consulting session.
• 17:16
  If you have plenty of money and you want us to consult for a
• 17:18
  month, that's not a problem. If you don't have enough money,
• 17:21
  you don't want us to consult for a week, it's all good.
• 17:23
  If you are kind of Cray and you want us to discuss for one hour
• 17:27
  and it's not a problem. Even now, once every day I got
• 17:30
  you covered. But remember, if you don't get a
• 17:33
  couple, you have to limit yourself to one question only.
• 17:36
  All right, so that's it. Thank you very much for
• 17:38
  listening. I will catch you or some other
• 17:40
  time.