Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Part 1 Crafting Winning Proposals: The Secret Lies in Client Questions

Transcript

Part 1 Crafting Winning Proposals: The Secret Lies in Client Questions · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Today is going to be a noisy
• 0:04
  episode because the kids are still home, school hasn't
• 0:06
  resumed yet. And then my neighbour is having
• 0:09
  some work done, some construction in his compound, so
• 0:11
  there's some cutting and welding and hammering and all of that.
• 0:15
  So I expect to hear some of that bleeding in through the
• 0:17
  background. Now today, what we're going to
• 0:20
  do is one of those things I promised you guys would get to
• 0:23
  when I was in Makudi with my family over the Christmas and
• 0:29
  New Year holidays. And we're going to look at how
• 0:31
  qualification and discovery can help you close more deals.
• 0:36
  Now this your first time listening to the show, you're
• 0:38
  wondering what the heck is qualification?
• 0:40
  What does discovery mean? OK, everybody knows what
• 0:42
  discovery means, but trying to know what discovery means in the
• 0:45
  sales context, in the business context.
• 0:47
  And don't worry, this is some of the stuff that we're going to
• 0:49
  get to in the in the when we get to the meat of the show.
• 0:55
  Now, the reason why I thought of this was because while I was
• 0:59
  over in Makodi in Benue state with the family, you know,
• 1:03
  staying with grandma for the holidays, I happened to overhear
• 1:07
  a conversation between an industrial cleaner, someone who
• 1:11
  does post post construction cleaning with one of our
• 1:14
  clients. So I had taken the well actually
• 1:18
  was wifey's idea. She was like, you know, we've
• 1:19
  been at home. We can't just come, come home,
• 1:21
  sit down, drink alcohol, eat pounded yam, eat roast beef.
• 1:25
  So I know roast beef, roast pork and then say we come for holiday
• 1:27
  that we have to go out. So so was our idea.
• 1:30
  So we look for a nice place to take the kids so they can go
• 1:32
  swimming. And then there's this place
• 1:34
  called Ropajo Apartments. It's really nice.
• 1:38
  Ropajo Apartments, nice resort in Makudi in Benue State, an
• 1:46
  eliminal run an advertisement for that boy.
• 1:47
  It's a nice place anyway. And the thing I liked about
• 1:49
  their pool was that the pool was secluded.
• 1:52
  So not like Sheraton hotels or not like Benway hotels and the
• 1:55
  other places where the hotels are public and you know, every
• 1:58
  everyone just overruns the pools.
• 2:00
  So this was a nice place. So while me and wifey were
• 2:03
  chilling that now and the children were swimming, I was on
• 2:06
  my phone playing chess and then of course overhearing
• 2:08
  conversations that was going on in the background.
• 2:10
  So one of the moms who was there brought her kids, 4 kids, all of
• 2:15
  them teenagers. I can't wait until you know, my
• 2:18
  kids get to teenage because as far as I'm concerned, once your
• 2:20
  children become teenagers, you're absolutely free.
• 2:25
  So excuse me. So one of the moms was there
• 2:28
  with with her kids or teenagers. I just assumed she was an equity
• 2:32
  parent. But then she had to step out to
• 2:34
  receive a phone call and it turns out that the mumsy
• 2:37
  actually is based in Abuja just like I am and she was also home
• 2:41
  for the holidays just like I am. But of course, you know, for
• 2:44
  those of us who are self-employed, you know, we
• 2:46
  never turn our phone off because you never know which way
• 2:49
  business might come, which is one of the reasons why those of
• 2:53
  you who keep saying I want to run a business, I want to be
• 2:56
  free. That's why I keep telling people
• 2:57
  that you don't know what you are saying because when you are an
• 3:01
  employee, you can tell you Olga, look Olga, I'm going to the
• 3:04
  village for Xmas and service is terrible and then you switch off
• 3:07
  your phone and that's it, problem solved.
• 3:09
  You still come back and hit your salary.
• 3:11
  But for those of us who are self-employed or who run
• 3:13
  businesses and we haven't built systems around those businesses,
• 3:17
  if you switch off your phone when you go to marketing for the
• 3:20
  holidays and somebody wants a job done, you don't.
• 3:24
  You don't get the job. Somebody else gets the job.
• 3:26
  And these are some of the hard decisions that you have to make.
• 3:28
  So in the early days, for those of you who are trying to look
• 3:30
  for a business because you want more freedom, just know that the
• 3:33
  freedom is not going to start from day one.
• 3:35
  The freedom is not going to start from the early days.
• 3:37
  The freedom is going to start when you build a solid reputable
• 3:42
  business around you with standard operating procedures,
• 3:44
  with systems and structures. That's when the freedom is going
• 3:46
  to come. But in the early days we pretty
• 3:49
  much have to keep our phone off our phone on all the time.
• 3:51
  So as I had the pool, I'm self-employed, my phone was on.
• 3:54
  The other mum said she was at the pool fiddling with her phone
• 3:57
  and of course the phone was on. So she received a call then
• 4:04
  anyway. So there was somebody in Abuja
• 4:06
  who had just finished doing a construction job and the person
• 4:09
  wanted to do some cleanup. And so that's the person, That's
• 4:12
  the reason why the person was calling her.
• 4:15
  And so she took the call and that is where I got this idea
• 4:17
  about qualification and discovery because that is part
• 4:20
  of what the lady was doing during the phone call.
• 4:23
  She was doing qualification, she was doing discovery, and we
• 4:27
  should all be doing that in our businesses.
• 4:29
  But lots of us have never heard of the term before and lots of
• 4:32
  us don't even know that there's a certain way that we have to
• 4:35
  structure business conversations.
• 4:38
  So let me just try and define qualification and discovery now.
• 4:42
  Qualification and discovery are the business conversations, all
• 4:46
  the conversations that you have when you're in a certain
• 4:50
  business context or in a certain business relationship and you're
• 4:53
  trying to figure out a couple of things.
• 4:55
  You're trying to figure out the problem that the person has, the
• 4:58
  vision that the problem has, the person has, the pain that the
• 5:01
  problem, the pain that the person has, or the aspirations
• 5:05
  that the person has. Sorry, I jumbled it up, so let
• 5:07
  me just go over it again. So you're having a conversation
• 5:09
  and then the conversation is business related.
• 5:11
  So of course, you know if you're having a conversation because
• 5:13
  you're toasting a babe, that's not qualification or discovery.
• 5:16
  Or if you're trying to toast a guy, that's not qualification or
• 5:20
  discovery. So it's strictly business and
• 5:23
  then you're trying to figure out something, you're talking to
• 5:25
  someone, you're trying to figure out what's the problem, what's
• 5:27
  the vision, what's the pain, what's the aspiration?
• 5:30
  Because no matter what it is that you do, your customer
• 5:33
  either has a problem, a vision, a pain, or some aspirations.
• 5:37
  In this case, the person called the woman because they want to
• 5:40
  do post industrial cleanup, sorry, post construction
• 5:43
  cleanup. The problem is the guy has built
• 5:45
  a brand new house or a brand new office and it's dirty.
• 5:49
  You know, when the construction finishes, you know, just like my
• 5:51
  neighbor who is doing some building now in his own house,
• 5:54
  when the welder finishes, the welder will stand up and go and
• 5:56
  the weather will leave nail filings, metal, what else?
• 6:02
  Shavings, chippings, all kinds of things.
• 6:05
  So that's the problem that this guy has.
• 6:07
  They have finished building the house.
• 6:08
  Carpenters have left rubbish, brick layers have left rubbish,
• 6:11
  welders have left rubbish, cement mixers have left rubbish,
• 6:15
  Packers have left rubbish. The person that did the POP and
• 6:20
  the ceiling has has left rubbish.
• 6:21
  Everybody has left rubbish on the construction site.
• 6:24
  So that's the problem. The guy also has a vision.
• 6:26
  Now this house that I have built or this office that I have
• 6:29
  built, I want it to be clean in a certain way and I want it to
• 6:31
  be stylized in a certain way. I want it to be decorated in a
• 6:36
  certain way. So part of the problem, or
• 6:39
  rather part of pursuing the vision means you have to pay
• 6:41
  someone to come and clean up the whole construction site so that
• 6:44
  the people who are now going to come and buy the office desk and
• 6:46
  do the office decor and then everything without moving and do
• 6:49
  their job. So you can see that there's a
• 6:51
  problem and you can see that in this case, there's a vision.
• 6:54
  The reason why I'm stressing this thing on problem and vision
• 6:56
  is because there's some people who say, look, I don't like
• 6:57
  talking about problems. It's negative.
• 6:59
  Why should we assume our customers have problems?
• 7:01
  And my point is, look, you are just being semantic.
• 7:04
  Everybody has either has a problem or efficient depending
• 7:07
  on how you want to look at it. So you know, just pick your
• 7:09
  poison, pick the term you like and then run with it.
• 7:12
  So our customers are calling us because there's a problem or
• 7:16
  there's a vision, there's pain that they're facing or their
• 7:19
  aspirations that they're moving towards.
• 7:20
  This guys pain is I've finished building this building.
• 7:24
  It is now time for me to sell it or to rent it or to lease it or
• 7:27
  to use it and I need to clean it up before I can do all that.
• 7:31
  So that's the reason why he's calling this lady in Marcudy to
• 7:33
  say how far I've finished doing the building.
• 7:36
  Can you guys come and clean up the place?
• 7:38
  So qualification and discovery is that part of the phone call
• 7:42
  where this woman is standing outside the pool with a phone in
• 7:45
  our hand and trying to figure out, OK, this guy that has
• 7:47
  called me from Abuja, what is the problem?
• 7:50
  What kind of building is it? What does he want to use it for?
• 7:53
  How many square feet? What kind of construction did
• 7:55
  they do? How is he trying to touch it up?
• 7:58
  Why do they want it to look like that was the whole point of the
• 8:01
  conversation? That is qualification and
• 8:04
  discovery. A whole bunch of you have not
• 8:07
  yet realized that when somebody calls you, the first thing to do
• 8:10
  is qualification and discovery, trying to figure out what is
• 8:12
  going on before you now start giving proposal presentation or
• 8:16
  giving a price quote. Some of you, somebody will just
• 8:19
  call and say hello and say yes Sir, do you do cleaning?
• 8:22
  Yes, I do. How much we do 10,000 hour per
• 8:25
  square meter. The person is OK, thank you very
• 8:27
  much. And then you will cut the call
• 8:28
  and then that's it. How do you think you're going to
• 8:31
  close the deal if that is all that you do?
• 8:33
  Somebody calls you just say, Oh yes, we do it.
• 8:35
  And the price is this per square meter.
• 8:37
  In this case, the lady didn't make that mistake of oh, it is
• 8:40
  10,000 per square meter or 100,000 per square meter or
• 8:44
  something. She engaged the guy in a
• 8:46
  conversation to try and figure out who is this person, what is
• 8:51
  the problem? What vision do they have?
• 8:54
  What is the pain? What is the aspiration?
• 8:56
  What is the quality of work that they want done?
• 8:58
  All these sorts of things. Now, qualification and discovery
• 9:01
  is pivotal. It's absolutely important.
• 9:04
  It's absolutely necessary because that is what allows us
• 9:07
  to submit a relevant proposal and that is what helps us to
• 9:12
  give an appealing presentation or a seductive sales pitch.
• 9:17
  So we have to do qualification and discovery.
• 9:20
  If somebody just calls you, you're a cleaner like this one I
• 9:22
  was, and you just say, OK, it's 10,000 per square feet.
• 9:25
  The person will say, OK, thank you very much.
• 9:26
  And he will call the phone and then he'll write down over the
• 9:29
  XYZ Cleaners and associates 10,000 naira per square feet.
• 9:33
  Now he'll call the next person and go through the same thing.
• 9:36
  Hello. How much the other person will
• 9:37
  say is 15,000 per square feet. We say OK, thank you, he will
• 9:40
  cut it. And you now write on a sheet of
• 9:42
  paper 123 cleaners and associates, 15,000 per square
• 9:46
  feet. Then you call the next person
• 9:48
  and then you say how much and the person will say, OK, it's
• 9:51
  8000 naira per square meter. And then he will write it down,
• 9:54
  OK, OK Chuku and Sons Cleaners limited 8000 naira per square
• 9:58
  meters and then he will cut it. Then tomorrow he will now call
• 10:01
  OK Chuku and Sons because OK Chuku and Sons quoted 8 while
• 10:04
  you quoted 10. The next person quoted 15.
• 10:08
  And then you'll be in office saying this guy that called me,
• 10:10
  he's not serious. It's not like he's not serious.
• 10:13
  It's just that you guys do not have a sales process.
• 10:15
  You do not run through qualification and discovery.
• 10:17
  You left the person with the only information they asked for,
• 10:19
  which was price. And then at the end of the day,
• 10:21
  the person decided exclusively on price to go with local Chico
• 10:24
  and Sons. So what you have to do actually,
• 10:30
  it's to engage in qualification and discovery.
• 10:32
  Every single time somebody calls you, just like Wendy Zuma was
• 10:36
  Imakudi chilling with her children, somebody called.
• 10:39
  She didn't just give a quote, she went into qualification and
• 10:43
  discovery. So if you don't do qualification
• 10:46
  or if you don't do qualification discovery, your proposal, your
• 10:50
  presentation, your price quote, your whatever it is, is going to
• 10:53
  be hit and miss. Business is really hard enough.
• 10:57
  We need to improve the odds in our favor.
• 10:58
  So anything that is hit and miss, let us ignore these sorts
• 11:02
  of things. So let me go into some more
• 11:07
  details. When she stepped up to take a
• 11:09
  call, these are the parts that I overheard, overheard that she's
• 11:12
  involved in cleaning, industrial cleaning, post construction
• 11:16
  cleaning, residential cleaning, all that kind of cleaning.
• 11:19
  So that's what she does. Then she also took the details
• 11:22
  of the person over the phone. Oh, OK, thank you very much.
• 11:25
  How did you get my information? Blah, blah, blah.
• 11:26
  Oh, so also give my phone number.
• 11:28
  Oh, OK, so how is she doing? Blah, blah, blah.
• 11:31
  You know, all that kind of small talk.
• 11:33
  She took that over the phone and then she now started asking
• 11:36
  questions about the building. The usual questions, you know,
• 11:39
  how many square meters or where is the project?
• 11:42
  OK, what kind of construction did you people do you know,
• 11:45
  blah, blah, blah, what are you trying to achieve this and this
• 11:48
  and that and that. There were some questions the
• 11:50
  guy could answer. There were some questions that
• 11:52
  the guy could not answer. And then Oman did something that
• 11:54
  I thought was really smart. She was like, OK, just take a
• 11:57
  video now just should be all there.
• 11:59
  Just do a WhatsApp video and then send the thing to me now.
• 12:03
  Now let me look at it. If I have any more questions, I
• 12:06
  will ask you. And then that will now we can
• 12:09
  now start talking about pricing and then timelines.
• 12:12
  And then the girl was like, Oh yeah, sure, sure.
• 12:13
  No problem. I mean, this is me just over
• 12:15
  here from her own part of the conversation.
• 12:18
  That's how they ended the conversation.
• 12:20
  So let me repeat. She stepped out.
• 12:22
  I'm only talking about the stuff that I could hear from her own
• 12:25
  end of the conversation. So she's into cleaning,
• 12:28
  industrial cleaning, residential cleaning, post construction
• 12:31
  cleaning. Then she took details over the
• 12:34
  phone. There was some small talk.
• 12:37
  How'd you get my phone number? Oh, how is so so so and so or
• 12:40
  blah blah blah. Complaints of the season, Happy
• 12:42
  new year, blah, blah, blah. OK, all the cleaning.
• 12:44
  What kind of construction is it? Office or residential?
• 12:47
  What? I would what are you using this
• 12:49
  for? OK, what are the timelines?
• 12:51
  Did you guys do this? Did you guys do that?
• 12:53
  OK, if you don't have all the information, just should be
• 12:56
  you're in the building. OK, just stand there now just do
• 12:58
  WhatsApp video. Just pan from left to right.
• 13:00
  Send it to me if there's any more questions.
• 13:03
  Excuse me if there's any more questions, I'll call you back
• 13:05
  now, now and then we'll start talking some more concerning
• 13:08
  timelines and price. And then that's how the
• 13:10
  conversation ended. Then as soon as that
• 13:12
  conversation was done, she did what most of us do.
• 13:16
  You know, those of us who are self-employed, she called up the
• 13:18
  team and she started talking to them like, hey, she could be
• 13:21
  somebody just called blah, blah, blah.
• 13:23
  A poor district. This dot dot dot dot dot dot
• 13:26
  it's looking like it's this kind of job site.
• 13:28
  So I need you to come up with some costing now.
• 13:32
  Now the guys want to send me a video.
• 13:34
  I'll forward it to you. Look at it.
• 13:35
  Let me know what else it is that we need to consider.
• 13:38
  Then where is Bio? Is Bio still here?
• 13:41
  OK, what often Ketchi. Ketchi has travelled.
• 13:43
  OK, assuming that it's this timeline, that timeline, how
• 13:45
  soon can we get back to him? This and this, blah, blah, blah,
• 13:48
  you know, that sort of conversation.
• 13:49
  Then she ended the call and then from there she went back to meet
• 13:52
  her kids by the pool. And then by that point, me and
• 13:56
  my wife, you know, and the kids, we had to go because things are
• 13:59
  winding down was really close to 6:00 PM.
• 14:02
  And, you know, the young people are beginning to come out.
• 14:04
  You know, guys are coming with shisha, people with tattoos,
• 14:06
  they're coming with bikinis and everything.
• 14:08
  I say, OK, it's time to it's time to leave now.
• 14:11
  You know, maybe if I was a single man, I would have stayed
• 14:12
  behind, you know, for the good times.
• 14:14
  But so it's time to move. So we had to leave, but I'm sure
• 14:17
  that the conversation ended pretty well between her and the
• 14:21
  other person. Even if it didn't end pretty
• 14:23
  well, she definitely handled it the right way.
• 14:26
  She did qualification, she did discovery, she called her team.
• 14:29
  She now had a baseline of information that they could talk
• 14:35
  about, you know, things like that.
• 14:38
  Anyway, so where was I? I lost my train of thought.
• 14:45
  OK, yes, I have. So qualification and discovery
• 14:50
  in this context, remember qualification and discovery is
• 14:53
  we're trying to figure out who is this person that is calling,
• 14:55
  what is the problem that they have?
• 14:57
  What is the vision that they have?
• 14:58
  What is the pain that they have? What are the aspirations that
• 15:01
  they have? What are they trying to solve?
• 15:03
  And then from the second conversation that they had with
• 15:05
  our people, do I have the inventory?
• 15:07
  Do I have the skill set? Do I have the team to try and
• 15:09
  fulfill? Because it's possible that she
• 15:12
  could have called Shagun and then maybe Shagun is in the
• 15:16
  village in case she's in the village.
• 15:17
  Everybody's in the village. Unfortunately, no, you can't
• 15:19
  handle this deal. But Shagun could be around in
• 15:22
  case she could be around, you know, all those members of her
• 15:24
  staff. But then maybe it is post
• 15:27
  construction cleaning where they use them, asbestos, for
• 15:30
  instance. And maybe they don't have the
• 15:31
  safety equipment to handle asbestos because asbestos is a
• 15:36
  carcinogen, is known to cause cancer.
• 15:38
  So maybe it's not that kind of thing that they can do, but
• 15:42
  bottom line is we should be asking all these questions.
• 15:44
  So for someone who is involved in cleaning, residential
• 15:51
  cleaning, industrial cleaning, post conduct, construction
• 15:53
  cleaning, you know, any kind of cleaning, what you should be
• 15:57
  doing is exactly what this woman did.
• 16:00
  After you figure out who is this person, how did you get my phone
• 16:02
  number or who referred you and all that small talk, you now go
• 16:06
  straight into the kind of project.
• 16:08
  You ask the person whether it is residential cleaning, whether
• 16:11
  it's commercial cleaning or whether it's industrial
• 16:13
  cleaning. The reason why I need to know
• 16:15
  these sorts of things is because it depends on the, it's a factor
• 16:20
  for how you're going to price the project and it's also going
• 16:22
  to determine what it is that you're going to use.
• 16:24
  So for residential cleaning, because I have a cleaner coming
• 16:28
  once a week. So residential cleaning, you're
• 16:32
  going to use different kinds of materials and there's also going
• 16:35
  to be different kind of stress that compared to if you're
• 16:38
  cleaning, commercial cleaning, maybe a hospital.
• 16:40
  So obviously my guess is it will be much more expensive to clean
• 16:44
  a hospital than a residential house, even if the residential
• 16:47
  house and the hospital are the same size, because the cleaning
• 16:50
  standard is different, the cleaning chemicals you need is
• 16:53
  different, the level of cleaning scrutiny you have to go through
• 16:57
  is different. So you have to ask these sorts
• 16:59
  of questions when somebody calls you on the phone, you don't just
• 17:02
  tell the person it is 10,000 naira per square meter.
• 17:05
  And then the person will say, OK, thank you, let me think
• 17:07
  about it. I will call you back.
• 17:08
  Then the person will call the phone.
• 17:09
  No, you asked the person. OK, thanks for calling.
• 17:11
  How do you get the phone number or from the Instagram?
• 17:14
  OK, I know what? Hello.
• 17:15
  Or do you follow us? OK, no problem.
• 17:17
  After we're done with this conversation, I'll follow you
• 17:18
  right back. But I have, before I can give
• 17:20
  you a quote, I need to ask a couple of questions because it
• 17:22
  depends, you know, is this a house we're cleaning or is it
• 17:25
  office or is this an industrial thing that you want us to clean?
• 17:29
  And then you hear what the person has to say, just like the
• 17:32
  woman, what the woman said. Then you also need to ask about
• 17:36
  that particular areas of concern like so excuse me, sorry, Hammer
• 17:43
  time in Abuja. So my voice is beginning to
• 17:45
  crack up. I was like, so you also need to
• 17:49
  ask about the areas of concern. So in Abuja, most of the houses
• 17:52
  that we have here are completely crap.
• 17:54
  They're completely useless. Sorry one moment, the houses in
• 17:59
  Abuja are completely crap because they were built with, I
• 18:02
  don't know what they were built with, but everywhere I go,
• 18:05
  everybody's house has mold in it except for those people who live
• 18:08
  in the sorry one moment. Let me just go take care of my
• 18:12
  throat.