Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Hiring Sales & Business Development Talent: Science, Not Art

Transcript

Hiring Sales & Business Development Talent: Science, Not Art · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. It's a lovely Wednesday morning
• 0:05
  over here in Abuja. So let's get right down to
• 0:07
  business. The question for the day is how
• 0:10
  to find and how to acquire the right talent for your business.
• 0:15
  And I would be surprised if this is not a question that I've
• 0:18
  tackled in some shape or form over here on the podcast in the
• 0:22
  past. But for the benefit of those of
• 0:24
  you who are newbies, let's go ahead and tackle this again.
• 0:28
  And for those of you who are still or old and you've been
• 0:32
  with the show for a while, let's just take this as a refresher
• 0:35
  course. So how do you find and acquire
• 0:39
  the right talent for your business?
• 0:42
  Now, even though this particular question was asked in the
• 0:44
  general sense, because the first time I was asked the question,
• 0:48
  it was asked in the sales context.
• 0:50
  Yeah. How do you find the right sales
• 0:51
  guys, sales girls, sales professionals, you know, people
• 0:55
  who are going to sell for you? I don't mess you up.
• 0:57
  So the first time I tackled the question, now is the context.
• 1:01
  This time it's in a much more general sense.
• 1:04
  But I have to give this caveat that I'm not a recruitment
• 1:07
  specialist, I'm not an HR specialist, I'm not a personal
• 1:10
  specialist. That's the reason why I prefer
• 1:14
  to limit the ambit of these sorts of questions that I answer
• 1:16
  over here on the podcast to sales and business development.
• 1:20
  So I'm going to be limiting this to sales and business
• 1:24
  development talent. How do you find the right sales,
• 1:28
  customer service, support person, all those sorts of all
• 1:32
  those sorts of things. Now at the end of the episode,
• 1:35
  I'll have some general How I see.
• 1:41
  I'll have some general, I don't know, tips, tricks, or whatever
• 1:45
  to apply to those of you who are coming beyond the sales and
• 1:49
  business development space, but I'm just trying to let you guys
• 1:51
  know that this is the angle that I'm going to be answering this
• 1:55
  question from. So from a HR personnel hiring
• 2:00
  perspective, the topics that you should be paying attention to,
• 2:06
  if you're having this sort of business problem and you want to
• 2:09
  be listening to podcasts around those sorts of things or looking
• 2:12
  for material on these sorts of things, then you should be
• 2:14
  looking for blog posts, websites, you know, things
• 2:16
  around company culture, around interviewing, around talent
• 2:19
  management, all those sorts of things.
• 2:22
  And that's the beauty of the podcasting space because you can
• 2:26
  find podcasting topics on virtually anything.
• 2:31
  I mean, they have on podcasts on what's it called, crochet and
• 2:36
  knitting. And I find that really, really
• 2:38
  interesting because crochet, to crochet and to knit, you have to
• 2:41
  see what the person is doing. OK, well, I'm an outsider, so
• 2:45
  I'm assuming you have to see what the person is doing with
• 2:46
  their fingers and with those sticks.
• 2:48
  But yeah, we have podcasts on those as well.
• 2:50
  And anyway, so yeah, go up and do your research.
• 2:55
  So from a sales and business development perspective, these
• 2:57
  are the main issues that are involved when you're looking for
• 3:01
  finding the right talent, trying to acquire the right talent,
• 3:04
  trying to hire the right person. So the primary question is that
• 3:07
  we're going to be asking ourselves the, we should be
• 3:11
  asking our number one, can this person sell #2 does this person
• 3:16
  have product or industry knowledge?
• 3:18
  Number three, are they coachable or as I like to say when I'm
• 3:22
  speaking to business owner, business owners, do they hear
• 3:25
  word? For those of you who are not
• 3:27
  Nigerian, I'll explain what do they hear word?
• 3:30
  I'll explain what that means. So again, the questions, number
• 3:34
  one, can this person sell #2 do they have product or industry
• 3:39
  knowledge #3 are they coachable? Like I tell my Nigerian peeps,
• 3:43
  this person that you have on staff be like say this person
• 3:46
  know they hear word, do they hear word?
• 3:48
  So something we have to ask as well.
• 3:51
  So why are these questions important?
• 3:54
  Number one, can they sell? Because sales is either an art
• 3:58
  or a science. The jury is still out.
• 4:01
  People argue over these things all the time.
• 4:04
  If selling is an art, if you believe selling is an art, then
• 4:07
  you're looking for someone, you're trying to hire the right
• 4:09
  artist. If selling is a science or a
• 4:12
  discipline, then you're looking for someone who has the right
• 4:15
  process. If you've been listening to the
• 4:18
  show for any length of time, you will know or not be surprised
• 4:23
  that I fall into the science and the discipline ahead of the
• 4:25
  argument. I think that sales, there's some
• 4:29
  artistry involved, yes. Some people have some flair when
• 4:32
  it comes to talking to people, chatting people, or making
• 4:34
  friends with everyone, Yes, but there's also a science and
• 4:38
  there's a discipline to it. So there's an A+B equals to C
• 4:41
  aspect of sales, which is if you know this and you do this and
• 4:45
  you do this in this manner, then you can be guaranteed these kind
• 4:48
  of outcomes, all things being equal.
• 4:52
  So my ideas on how selling is a science and a discipline, it
• 4:59
  influences my my approach and how I tackle these sorts of
• 5:03
  things. Now, another reason why I don't
• 5:05
  like this whole artist angle is because it makes people believe
• 5:08
  that some folks are born good at sales and it provides an easy
• 5:13
  excuse for people to quit when things get tough.
• 5:16
  So for business owners, if you think that sales is an art, then
• 5:21
  you think that the problem why this salesperson doesn't work
• 5:24
  out was because you had the wrong artist.
• 5:26
  And then you're keeping an eye out trying to hire the right
• 5:28
  artist, which in itself is a very tough thing to do.
• 5:33
  But then when we look at it at the level of the individual
• 5:36
  salesperson or the individual business person, it lets you off
• 5:39
  with easy excuses. You can say, oh, I wasn't born
• 5:41
  good at sales. People say that I wasn't born
• 5:43
  good at sales. I don't like talking to
• 5:45
  strangers. Business is not in my DNAI don't
• 5:48
  call from a a business family. I don't come from a pushy
• 5:52
  family. I don't like stress, blah, blah,
• 5:54
  blah. These are the kind of excuses
• 5:57
  that we come up with when we fall into this whole artist,
• 6:03
  artist thing. So, but this is an important
• 6:07
  question basically because the answer to the question whether
• 6:13
  you think art is a science, so whether you think sales is an
• 6:17
  art or a science is going to determine who it is that you're
• 6:19
  looking for. But either way, this question
• 6:22
  can they sell is an important one.
• 6:25
  You need to decide whether sales is an art, something that people
• 6:29
  are born with or whether it is a less is a science.
• 6:35
  You can just follow steps and you can end up being good at
• 6:37
  this and then hire accordingly. So if you think that you're
• 6:40
  looking for the perfect artist, the perfect sales specimen, then
• 6:44
  you better do your job descriptions very well and
• 6:49
  include that in the in the hiring process.
• 6:52
  And I hope that you and your business partner have a good way
• 6:54
  of figuring out whether this person is indeed the artist that
• 6:57
  they came to be. But then if you think, like me,
• 7:02
  that sales is a is a science and it's a discipline, then the onus
• 7:08
  is on us to make sure that we have knowledge of our processes
• 7:12
  and our customers and that we have worked out these processes.
• 7:15
  And then we can bring people within the system and then teach
• 7:20
  them how to sell. So can they sell?
• 7:24
  What is sales? All these questions, these are
• 7:27
  the kind of things we tackle as #1 then #2 The second question,
• 7:31
  do they have product knowledge? Do they have industry knowledge?
• 7:35
  This is important because this is the foundation of good
• 7:37
  salesmanship or good saleswomanship.
• 7:40
  Now, there was a previous episode where I spoke about
• 7:43
  selling drugs, so let me just use that as another example, not
• 7:46
  because I'm saying you guys should go out and sell drugs.
• 7:48
  I'm just trying to stress a point about how product
• 7:52
  knowledge is important or industry knowledge.
• 7:56
  Now, I am currently working with a client that is in the
• 8:03
  alternative energy space. I'm also talking to a bunch of
• 8:07
  other people who are trying to boost their businesses using
• 8:12
  content marketing, you know, podcasting and copywriting and
• 8:16
  all the other stuff like that. And I also have someone that I'm
• 8:19
  working with who is currently, he's in the gaming space.
• 8:24
  So he has a a business hub or a tech hub and then he's in the
• 8:31
  gaming space. So that is because I have
• 8:36
  knowledge about the process of selling that can be applied to
• 8:39
  other industries. However, if you take me despite
• 8:45
  my skills and tell me to sell drugs because I don't know
• 8:51
  anything about drugs, I'm going to be a terrible salesperson.
• 8:55
  These are the industries that I'm working with.
• 8:57
  I know a little bit about them and I can interview the business
• 9:03
  owners long enough, engage in qualification and discovery to
• 9:06
  try and figure out a couple of things about the industry.
• 9:08
  And we can figure out the best way to sell these things,
• 9:11
  whether it is selling solar panels or whether it is trying
• 9:15
  to get people to download your your games more.
• 9:21
  But then when it comes to drugs, I know absolutely nothing about
• 9:23
  the business. I don't know what gives you the
• 9:26
  quickest high, what gives you the longest high or what gives
• 9:31
  you the safest high. I have no idea which ones take
• 9:35
  you up because there's some drugs that you take to, you
• 9:38
  know, speed you up. That's something I found out
• 9:41
  about when I was in the UK 'cause I just assume that every
• 9:44
  single drug, well, coming from Nigeria, coming from OAU or back
• 9:48
  from our low university, the best university in, in the whole
• 9:51
  wide world. My assumption was that you take
• 9:55
  drugs because you know, you want to, you want to get high, you
• 9:57
  want to quicken, you want to go up.
• 9:59
  But in the Scotland found out that some people take some drugs
• 10:02
  that you know will step you down, will calm you down, will
• 10:06
  make you mellow and stuff like that.
• 10:07
  By the way, I'm not advocating drug use.
• 10:10
  I'm just trying to show you how complex this industry in quote
• 10:16
  is, whether it's licit, illicit, illegal, legal, whatever.
• 10:21
  So I have nothing about, I know nothing about the ones that take
• 10:24
  you up, the ones that make you down, the one that's supposed to
• 10:26
  keep you even keeled and block out everything.
• 10:29
  I have no idea. I also have no idea how these
• 10:31
  things interact with other medication, whether you're on BP
• 10:35
  medication or whether you have diabetes medication or whether
• 10:37
  you're on Viagra or whatever. I have no idea about which ones
• 10:40
  are synthetic, which ones are natural.
• 10:42
  That was also a mind opener to me when I got into Scotland and
• 10:46
  the member of the police force came to address my set.
• 10:51
  The jam by two had just come in. Oh, by by the way, for those of
• 10:54
  you are not Nigerians jam by just means anybody who is new
• 10:56
  into the university system. So they came to address we jam
• 10:59
  by to just let us know like what's up Like, hey, you guys
• 11:02
  are coming from different countries over here in the UK.
• 11:06
  These are some of the things that people do you, you know,
• 11:08
  people will tell you to try this, try this.
• 11:10
  This thing is not illegal. This thing is not whatever.
• 11:13
  So nobody can arrest you, but just know that this is how it
• 11:15
  interacts with your central nervous system.
• 11:17
  This one is addictive, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:19
  They just wanted us to know, you know, just want us to know
• 11:21
  what's up. Like you're in a new place.
• 11:24
  This is the layer of the land. People do all kinds of weird
• 11:26
  stuff here. There are artificial things that
• 11:28
  people are using to get high. It's not illegal.
• 11:31
  So police is not going to harass you.
• 11:33
  You know, they want to arrest you.
• 11:34
  But just know that you take these sorts of things.
• 11:36
  You can mess your life up. So it's a weird and vast
• 11:41
  industry. I know nothing about this.
• 11:43
  So even with my my knowledge about sales, if you try to get
• 11:47
  me to sell drugs, I won't be able to sell effectively
• 11:51
  precisely because I lack product knowledge or industry knowledge.
• 11:57
  Now, I use this example not because I'm saying you guys
• 12:00
  should go out and sell drugs. I'm just using this example
• 12:03
  because this is something that is highly addictive.
• 12:06
  And I want to show you guys that it's possible that you might be
• 12:08
  dealing with something that is highly addictive and that people
• 12:11
  want and that people are chasing.
• 12:13
  But if you lack product knowledge, industry knowledge,
• 12:15
  you're going to be a crappy sales salesperson.
• 12:19
  So product knowledge is important when we're talking
• 12:22
  about shady business like drugs. It's also very important when
• 12:25
  we're talking about legitimate businesses.
• 12:29
  So if you're going to be promoting or selling on behalf
• 12:34
  of a cryptocurrency, whatever, whatever, whatever, you need to
• 12:37
  know this whole cryptocurrency web three stuff.
• 12:41
  You need to have a basic understanding.
• 12:43
  If you're going to be selling solar panels, inverters, UPS,
• 12:47
  you need to have a basic understanding of how all these
• 12:49
  things work. You don't need to know the
• 12:51
  mechanics of how these things work, but just the basic
• 12:55
  understanding of this is this, that is that this is how it
• 12:57
  works together. This is the kind of results,
• 12:59
  These are the kind of performances, performance that
• 13:02
  you can expect out of your equipment and things of that
• 13:05
  nature. So product knowledge really,
• 13:06
  really important. So we should be asking ourselves
• 13:08
  that question, does this person have product knowledge?
• 13:13
  Does this person have industry knowledge?
• 13:15
  Now the last question, the one that I said about talking to my
• 13:20
  Nigerian people, when I say do they hear word, that's just
• 13:24
  another way of saying is this person coachable and can this
• 13:27
  person listen? So that is the last question,
• 13:30
  are these people coachable? Do they hear word?
• 13:33
  Can they listen? Can they take correction or do
• 13:36
  they think they're the issue that they can't learn anything
• 13:38
  from anybody else? Now from a sales and business
• 13:42
  about my perspective, this actually is the most important
• 13:45
  question out of the three that we've looked at so far.
• 13:48
  Regardless of whatever you, wherever you fall on, whether
• 13:52
  sales is an art or a science or whether product and industry
• 13:57
  knowledge is relevant or not, we cannot deny that this is the
• 14:00
  most important one. Are they coachable?
• 14:02
  Do they hear word? This is because someone who is
• 14:05
  not coachable, someone who does not hear word, will continue to
• 14:09
  go to the left. Every time you say no, go right.
• 14:14
  If you tell the person go up, the person will go down.
• 14:19
  If you tell the person go in a straight line, the person will
• 14:24
  start going in a crooked fashion.
• 14:26
  That's because this person assumes that they know
• 14:30
  everything and that you know nothing.
• 14:33
  This person is not quotable. This person will not listen.
• 14:37
  As we say in this part of the this part of the world, this
• 14:40
  person doesn't used to hear word.
• 14:42
  So you can't make progress with this person.
• 14:45
  This kind of person is going to cause problems for you and your
• 14:48
  business because they're going to end up making promises that
• 14:50
  you can't keep. They'll tell the customer a
• 14:53
  meanwhile, you have never promised on your website or your
• 14:56
  Instagram that that is something you can do.
• 14:59
  They're also going to lead to poor customer service experience
• 15:02
  because you as a business, you're trying to position your
• 15:04
  brand one way. You send these people out to
• 15:06
  sell on your behalf because they're making all kinds of
• 15:09
  promises. They have no clear system and
• 15:11
  they're dealing with customers this way or that way, depending
• 15:14
  on how they believe, sorry, how how they feel when they wake up
• 15:17
  that day. At least the poor customer, poor
• 15:20
  customer experience. And of course, the poor customer
• 15:22
  experience, it has an impact on the number of people that come
• 15:26
  back to do business with you or refer others to do business with
• 15:29
  you in the future. So summary, people that are not
• 15:33
  coachable, people that don't usually hear word, they have
• 15:36
  their own ideas about how businesses should run and
• 15:38
  they're going to end up imposing those ideas on your own
• 15:42
  customers. This is the reason why this is
• 15:44
  the most important question. Does this person hear word?
• 15:47
  Is this person coachable? Because this is the one that is
• 15:50
  going to seriously screw you up in the business.
• 15:53
  So the most important criteria, hire someone who hears word,
• 15:57
  hire someone who is coachable. Another reason why this is the
• 16:01
  most important criteria because of the three that we've spoken
• 16:04
  about so far, this is the hardest one to train.
• 16:09
  If you believe that sales is an art, you can hire an artist and
• 16:13
  get the artist to tweak his process.
• 16:15
  If you're like me, I believe that sales is a discipline.
• 16:18
  You can hire somebody who is totally fresh or you can train
• 16:22
  the person up. Now, OK, when it comes to sales,
• 16:24
  it is 1 + 2 + 3, or it is A + B + C, or it is start here, move
• 16:30
  here, say this, and then do this.
• 16:32
  You can train the person on that.
• 16:34
  When it comes to this whole thing of being coachable, you
• 16:38
  can find somebody who don't actually hear word and you can
• 16:41
  train them to become attentive and listen.
• 16:44
  But it's, it's hard work. It's a lot easier to start with
• 16:48
  someone who hears word in the 1st place.
• 16:51
  To start with, someone who is coachable and open and amenable
• 16:55
  to learning and who will learn from you about who your
• 16:58
  customers are, how you start conversations with them, the
• 17:01
  processes you want followed on the back end, how you handle
• 17:05
  complaints, how you handle deliveries, how you handle
• 17:08
  customer service. The best way to dress, the best
• 17:11
  way to sound, the best way to answer the phone.
• 17:14
  I mean whatever it is, it is better to hire that person that
• 17:17
  used to hear word on day one and then you now start training them
• 17:22
  on steps one and two because you can hire somebody who seems to
• 17:26
  be the perfect artist in your own opinion.
• 17:29
  The person can sell, but then the person assumes that because
• 17:34
  they are the perfect artist, they are the alpha and the
• 17:36
  Omega. And so they will impose their
• 17:40
  own ideas on your own business and on your own customers.
• 17:42
  And then you guys will start quarreling and it'll be serious
• 17:45
  quarrel. So if you sell paint, you can
• 17:48
  teach people about your product. This is glossy paint, this is
• 17:52
  lossless paint. This is this kind of paint, this
• 17:54
  is that paint, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:56
  You can train the person on the industry thing, but if this is
• 18:01
  the kind of person that don't used to hear a word, if this is
• 18:03
  the kind of person that is not coachable, that is not amenable
• 18:06
  to learning, that has no humility, they will never adopt
• 18:10
  your sales process. And they will talk to your
• 18:11
  customers anyhow because they believe that their understanding
• 18:14
  of sales and business is better than yours.
• 18:17
  This is the reason why #3 is the most important because it's the
• 18:21
  hardest, the hardest to train on.
• 18:26
  So if you are worried about finding and acquiring the right
• 18:30
  talent for your business from a sales and business development
• 18:32
  perspective, hire someone who is coachable.
• 18:36
  Hire somebody who used to hear a word, then train them on
• 18:40
  everything else. Let me repeat, if you're worried
• 18:44
  about finding and acquiring the right talent for your business,
• 18:47
  we're talking about sales now. Sales, customer service,
• 18:50
  business development, whatever it is that you want to call it.
• 18:56
  Hire somebody who is coachable first, who is humble first, then
• 19:02
  train them on everything else. But remember what I said at the
• 19:07
  top of the show? This relates to sales and
• 19:09
  business development only. If you run a brain surgery
• 19:14
  clinic, a brain surgery outfit or whatever, then please hire
• 19:17
  the best brain surgeon possible, even if he or she is a bastard.
• 19:23
  Because if you have somebody who is the best brain surgeon in
• 19:27
  Nigeria and he's a member of your staff, if he puts 100
• 19:32
  people on the table, 99.9% of them survive.
• 19:36
  I mean this person is the absolute best, but he's a
• 19:39
  bastard. What you can do is you can limit
• 19:42
  him to operation table only and hire somebody else who's going
• 19:45
  to handle the customer service, the interactions, the blah,
• 19:48
  blah, blah, blah, blah. At least your patients when they
• 19:51
  go into surgery, they will come out alive.
• 19:54
  So if it's brain surgery clinic then please disregard what I
• 19:59
  have said. Hire the best person.
• 20:01
  Even if the person is an idiot, even if the person has poor
• 20:03
  bedside manner. I guess go ahead, hire the
• 20:06
  person. Let the person enter first.
• 20:08
  Is the outcomes you're looking for.
• 20:09
  We'll figure a way around it. The same thing with engineering
• 20:12
  when it comes to engineering and building sites and everything
• 20:15
  will be nice. If your engineer is good and
• 20:17
  polite to architects and polite with with workmen and foreman
• 20:21
  and all of that, it will be wonderful.
• 20:23
  It will be beautiful. But the main thing is we want
• 20:26
  this project to be delivered on time.
• 20:28
  We don't want a house that is going to collapse because you
• 20:30
  know how how every year we hear that houses are collapsing in
• 20:32
  Lagos and even now in Abuja, you know, you put on the news, you
• 20:35
  hear that oh, a house collapse here, a house collapse there.
• 20:38
  So we don't houses to collapse. We want projects to come in on
• 20:41
  time and on budget. So in this case, I guess you go
• 20:43
  ahead and hire the best engineer possible.
• 20:46
  Even if the engineer is an absolute idiot and when he comes
• 20:49
  on site he quarrels with everybody and blah, blah, blah,
• 20:51
  You can kind of manage those things because you want this
• 20:53
  thing to, you want the project to be safe and you want the
• 20:57
  project to run on time. There's a way that we can patch
• 21:00
  when it comes to poor bedside manner and these sorts of
• 21:03
  things. So for medicine and for
• 21:05
  engineering, yeah, you should be hiring.
• 21:06
  The best known is no doubt, but for sales and business
• 21:10
  development rule for your business, the person doesn't
• 21:15
  have to be OK, like with the, let me see, OK with the
• 21:22
  cryptocurrency thing. The person doesn't need to know
• 21:24
  the back end. He doesn't need to know how to
• 21:25
  code. He doesn't need to know all of
• 21:27
  that. If you have somebody who is
• 21:29
  willing to learn, you can teach him up and say, OK guy, this is
• 21:33
  our sales process. You run them through all that.
• 21:36
  Now after that, you now say, OK, look, you have to know a couple
• 21:38
  of things about these, these web three.
• 21:40
  You can't go out and be talking cryptocurrency and web three to
• 21:43
  people. I don't know what's up.
• 21:44
  You now train the person. This is Web 3, this is
• 21:46
  cryptocurrency. This is how it aligns.
• 21:49
  This is how we can use it to get business results or this is how
• 21:52
  you can use it to get results in the personal space or this or
• 21:55
  this or that and that, you know, so you can train them upon all
• 21:59
  those. Anyway, let me not believe about
• 22:00
  the point. I think I've already made the
• 22:02
  the point clear enough. So for all other things that are
• 22:06
  hiring related, talent related, human resources related,
• 22:10
  personnel issues related, please be sure to consult the relevant
• 22:14
  professional because I am not. But I've told you from a sales
• 22:19
  and business development perspective how we should tackle
• 22:21
  these sorts of things. So that's all for today folks.
• 22:24
  Remember to connect with me on WhatsApp.
• 22:25
  The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234.
• 22:31
  For those of you who are not Nigerian, then connect with me
• 22:34
  on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm
• 22:37
  the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of
• 22:39
  my name and e-mail address from the link.
• 22:41
  We're currently listening to this episode.
• 22:43
  Thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 22:44
  I'll catch you guys at the next episode.