Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Is Your Sales Team Underperforming? It Might Be These 4 Things

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Is Your Sales Team Underperforming? It Might Be These 4 Things · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. If this is your first time
• 0:04
  listening to the podcast, I just confirmed this morning that we
• 0:07
  have over 900 episodes. So that means before the end of
• 0:10
  the year, we would have crossed the 1000 mark.
• 0:13
  So if you're brand new, there's a lot of stuff over here that
• 0:15
  you can binge listen to and there's going to be more coming
• 0:19
  down the Pike in the future. So rest assured that you have
• 0:23
  discovered the right place to learn about all things sales
• 0:26
  related, especially the discipline of personal selling,
• 0:30
  which is where you are having a conversation with someone either
• 0:33
  face to face in the DMS, what else, WhatsApp e-mail.
• 0:39
  I mean, so long as you are having a conversation
• 0:41
  one-on-one, then this is the perfect place to be.
• 0:44
  So today, what we're going to be discussing on the podcast is not
• 0:48
  a listener question. So this is not a question I've
• 0:50
  been given before, but I think that this is a topic that we
• 0:53
  should be looking at here. And for those of you who own
• 0:59
  your own businesses, I mean, you're in SME space.
• 1:03
  It's not just you. You're not just the one man show
• 1:05
  or one woman show. You have a bunch of people
• 1:07
  selling on your behalf, or maybe it's you and your husband and
• 1:12
  your kids selling on your behalf.
• 1:13
  I mean, whatever it is, this is one question that people in that
• 1:19
  kind of space have on their mind all the time.
• 1:21
  And that is how do we boost the sales team performance?
• 1:26
  This is not a question that I have, or rather, no, that's the
• 1:30
  wrong way about it. Yeah, this is a question that
• 1:32
  I've answered on the podcast in the past.
• 1:35
  So I'm going to take a different angle for today's episode.
• 1:39
  So in the past, I've answered it in a very brief, succinct
• 1:43
  series, but now I'm going to stretch it on and take a
• 1:46
  different angle with that. So my typical answers that I've
• 1:49
  given on the podcast, and even when people ask me this question
• 1:52
  on stage, for instance, I typically answer it in about
• 1:55
  four or five points. First off, I say you should hire
• 1:59
  the right people to begin with. After that, I say make sure that
• 2:04
  those people have been trained on your selling framework of
• 2:09
  choice. Then I usually say make sure you
• 2:13
  provide these people with sales enablement.
• 2:16
  I'll explain what sales enablement is later on.
• 2:18
  And then the last one is the question of incentives.
• 2:23
  Make sure that the incentives are worth it and these are
• 2:26
  incentives that they can count on.
• 2:27
  So let me give a summary now to all these things that I've
• 2:30
  spoken about. Now, when I say about higher
• 2:33
  right, I remember that we're talking about things from a
• 2:36
  sales and business development perspective.
• 2:38
  It's not about the academic background or it's not about
• 2:41
  their accomplishments and things like that, but rather it's about
• 2:44
  a winningness and a flexibility towards learning because sales,
• 2:50
  getting good at sales, requires attitudinal change in how we
• 2:55
  face the world. And if you have somebody who is
• 2:59
  set in their ways, who believes that they know the best and this
• 3:03
  is how the world works, trying to get that person to fit into
• 3:06
  your business and your system is not going to work.
• 3:08
  So you're better off just hiring the person who is already
• 3:12
  flexible enough and who has that growth mindset from the
• 3:15
  beginning. Because all this thing about
• 3:17
  growth mindset, attitudinal change, liking personal
• 3:21
  development, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff is really,
• 3:24
  really, really hard to train. So to make your life easy, don't
• 3:30
  hire somebody who has the MBA and who has the whatever it is
• 3:36
  that you're looking for. But the person know, they hear
• 3:39
  what as in the person is as dumb.
• 3:41
  OK, no, not dumb. The person is as obstinate as an
• 3:44
  ox. Don't hire that person.
• 3:47
  You guys will be constantly quarrelling.
• 3:49
  Eventually you're going to sack the person or the person is
• 3:51
  going to leave you. It's not going to end well.
• 3:53
  You're better off taking somebody who has the right
• 3:55
  attitude to begin with and then train the person up in product
• 3:58
  knowledge and all the other stuff then.
• 4:03
  OK, so the second thing I talk about is to make sure that you
• 4:05
  have trained these people on your own preferred selling
• 4:09
  framework because the principles behind how to sell are the same,
• 4:18
  while the application of those principles are different
• 4:21
  depending on the context, depending on your customers,
• 4:23
  depending on the industry, depending on things like that.
• 4:26
  So if you are a wedding photographer, let me start from
• 4:30
  there because that was my that's my primary constituency.
• 4:32
  That's why I started off my business journey over 15 years
• 4:36
  ago. So if you're a wedding
• 4:37
  photographer for the way that you run your business, there's a
• 4:41
  certain way that you want your business to be handled and you
• 4:44
  want your customers spoken to. So you need to make sure that
• 4:48
  you figured out all these things and then train those people on
• 4:51
  that. Because if someone is good at
• 4:54
  sales, but the person has a different philosophy and the
• 4:57
  person sees customer service, customer fulfilment sales in a
• 5:01
  different way than you do, it's going to create all kinds of
• 5:05
  problems. The person is going to sell
• 5:07
  things that you can't fulfil. The person is going to put off
• 5:11
  all kinds of brand associations that don't match, that don't
• 5:16
  match yours and you know, different things like that.
• 5:21
  So it's best to make sure that you have figured out a bunch of
• 5:23
  stuff first, especially if you're on SME, small and medium
• 5:28
  scale enterprise, small business owner, self-employed, you're
• 5:31
  trying to get people to sell on your behalf.
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  If you've been doing this for any number of years, you need to
• 5:35
  figure out a bunch of things. And then when this person comes
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  in, train the person. So the things you need to train
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  the person is who is your ideal customer.
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  Not everybody knows who your ideal customer is.
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  You might get a sales girl and put her in the shop and what you
• 5:49
  sell is children's clothes. And because of that, she thinks
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  everybody who has a child is your customer.
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  But you who owns the shop, you know that you only buy stuff
• 5:59
  from Mamas and Papas in the UK and maybe some of all these and
• 6:04
  maybe like Gap, the baby Gap and things like that.
• 6:07
  So these are brands that are not what's the word, These are not
• 6:13
  run-of-the-mill brands. So it's not just any parent who
• 6:18
  is your customer, but it's parents who have a certain
• 6:24
  income level, who have a certain kind of sophistication and who
• 6:28
  desire certain kinds of things. So when you get this sales girl,
• 6:31
  I put her in your store, you need to let her know that our
• 6:34
  ideal customer are people who look like this, who sound like
• 6:38
  this or who do this or who do that so that she doesn't waste
• 6:41
  her time running up to people like me and saying, Sir, will
• 6:45
  you come and check out the clothes in our shop?
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  And then I go there and then I see Baby Gap and I'm like what
• 6:51
  the hell, ME75K for a pair of trousers for my 10 year old son.
• 6:57
  No thank you. And then I walk right out.
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  So you need to let your people know who your ideal customer is.
• 7:02
  So if the sales girl that you put in the shop knows who your
• 7:05
  ideal customer is, if she sees someone like me walking around,
• 7:08
  she'll say this one and she will let me go.
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  Because I don't look like the kind of person who will spend
• 7:14
  75,000 naira for a pair of trousers for a 10 year old kid.
• 7:18
  I don't even spend 75 K for a pair of trousers for a 15 year
• 7:21
  old kid. I won't even spend 75 K for a
• 7:25
  pair of trousers on myself. Maybe times might change, but
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  right now? 75 K for a pair of trousers?
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  You must be kidding me. Now, that doesn't mean I'm a bad
• 7:34
  person. It just means that whoever it is
• 7:37
  that runs the shop or runs the Instagram handle or the whatever
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  has not trained up the person on who the ideal customer is.
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  So you can see how it tiles into ties into sales performance.
• 7:48
  If your sales boy, your sales girl, your husband, your younger
• 7:52
  brother, your children, if they don't know who the ideal
• 7:55
  customer is, their sales effectiveness is going to be
• 7:57
  poor because they're going to spend time running after the
• 7:59
  wrong people. Then you also need to train them
• 8:01
  on where can these people be found?
• 8:03
  How do you start the conversation with them?
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  How do you get them through the buying process?
• 8:08
  How do you handle money objections and negotiations?
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  So let's say somebody who is maybe two or three steps above
• 8:14
  me enters into the store. So yeah, the person can afford
• 8:17
  to buy 75K for a pair of trousers.
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  Of course, Nigerians like to haggle, so the person sees IT75K
• 8:24
  but the person knows OK, this is authentic baby gap or this is
• 8:27
  authentic Mama and Papa. And so the person thinks at 75
• 8:30
  K, let me see if I can get it for 60 K.
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  And then the person says 75K for what?
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  Your sales boy, your husband, your sales girl, your children,
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  they need to be able to figure out how do you handle these
• 8:44
  money objections, How do you start negotiating things like
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  that. That's how you make people much
• 8:48
  more effective. Then you also need to free up
• 8:50
  your people on how to do customer service and excuse me
• 8:54
  and after service functions. You also need to train them on
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  how to get repeat business because the real money is not
• 9:01
  going to be when. So excuse me, Yeah, my SO
• 9:05
  thought is getting better. So the real money is not going
• 9:07
  to be made when I walk into the shop and then I buy 1 trousers
• 9:11
  for 75K and let's say on that 75 K, let's say your profit is
• 9:16
  maybe 35 grand. So the real profit is not when
• 9:19
  you get that 35K from me. The real profit is if I buy baby
• 9:24
  trousers today for 75 K and then I come back next month.
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  And then I buy 2 shirts, one for a boy, one for a girl and maybe
• 9:34
  one for my niece. And I buy each of them, you
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  know, 7575 K And then, you know, between last month and this
• 9:40
  month, you've now made, what was that, 353570?
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  So you've now made 140K on top of my own head, one customer.
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  So that's the trick to get the people to come back again and
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  again. And also to get me to now tell
• 9:54
  my friends who are paid up so that they can go to the store
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  and also buy baby Straussers for 75K.
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  But unfortunately, I'm not in that segment yet.
• 10:04
  So if you do sell stuff like that, don't bother reaching out
• 10:07
  to me. I'm not your customer.
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  And I'm not going to spend 75 K to buy trousers even for myself.
• 10:12
  I'll just talk about the kids. All right.
• 10:16
  So these are the sorts of things that you have to train other
• 10:18
  people on. Now, it should be obvious, but
• 10:22
  for some people it's not obvious.
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  It means you must have figured out all these answers yourself
• 10:28
  and create an SOP, standard operating procedure, whether it
• 10:32
  is detailed or whether it's in bullet points.
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  That is what you will use to now train your sales team.
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  Also, if it's in writing, it's something that they can refer to
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  maybe when your phone is switched off because some days
• 10:43
  you wake up, you don't feel like it.
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  You leave your phone off until 12.
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  Your your people who sell for you, they need to be able to
• 10:49
  refer to something if they have a problem and try and sort it
• 10:52
  out before they can reach out to you later on.
• 10:56
  So these are the sorts of things that you have to be able to
• 10:58
  figure out. If you don't know how to figure
• 11:01
  out all these things before you start trying to onboard people
• 11:04
  to sell on your behalf, no problem.
• 11:06
  That's what people like me are here for.
• 11:08
  Then the whole thing about sales enablement is this sales
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  enablement is just a fancy word for sales training.
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  Not just sales training, but other facilities that people
• 11:17
  need to get the job done because there's certain kinds of
• 11:20
  technologies that people need. So if you have a job where, OK,
• 11:25
  let's go back to the sales, the shop where you sell Baby Gap
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  and, and Mamas and Papas and stuff like that.
• 11:33
  So in your baby Gap store sales enablement will mean, let me
• 11:39
  see, OK, well, first of all, the lady in the shop, she needs a
• 11:44
  cell phone so she can store customers phone numbers in, so
• 11:47
  she can call people so that she can follow up things like that.
• 11:50
  So you need a correct phone that is there.
• 11:52
  And it shouldn't be 3310, it shouldn't be Nokia 3310.
• 11:55
  It should be something that you can store numbers.
• 11:58
  Maybe she can even follow people on Instagram if you are dealing
• 12:02
  with a high network, people who have high net worth, maybe the
• 12:07
  should should be able to follow those people on LinkedIn or
• 12:11
  whatever. But I mean, you get the point.
• 12:13
  It should be a correct phone. Well, a decent phone, even if
• 12:15
  it's a not a correct phone, it should be decent.
• 12:18
  So phone, phone call my phone. So that one is steady.
• 12:22
  Then there should also be a computer in the store and you
• 12:25
  know, with those fancy scanning things so that when you take it
• 12:28
  and you scan bleep, you know, it just shows on the invoice that
• 12:33
  it shows in the, you know, now those of you who do retail will
• 12:36
  show on the computer how many trolls that they buy and blah,
• 12:40
  blah, blah. And of course all of this thing
• 12:42
  will also be updating in ACRM as a customer relationship
• 12:48
  management tool. So that by the time I come into
• 12:53
  the store and I leave and the sales girl is done with the
• 12:55
  interaction, she'll be able to see there on the computer that
• 12:59
  Odogo Tavishima bought 4 pairs of baby trousers AT75K each.
• 13:06
  And then I also bought what else, Maybe two pairs of
• 13:13
  earrings for my wife at 120 K each.
• 13:17
  And let's see what else. Any.
• 13:19
  You get the point. But it will all be there.
• 13:21
  Odogo Tava Shima 1st of June came in.
• 13:25
  This is what he bought. Total order, blah, blah blah.
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  If she's good at her job, she would have been doing some small
• 13:32
  talk with me so that she would now know that OK, the two
• 13:35
  trousers I bought her for my son and the two dresses I bought her
• 13:38
  for my nieces. And then the bangle that I got
• 13:41
  is for my wife and everything. So some of that in the CRM.
• 13:45
  But The thing is you need to have the all that computer tech
• 13:49
  and that CRM to begin with. And this is the whole thing
• 13:52
  behind sales enablement. You don't only give the person
• 13:55
  the training, give them the facilities that they need to get
• 13:59
  the job done. For some people, like in the
• 14:03
  banking space, I don't know about now.
• 14:05
  Now things have gotten really expensive.
• 14:07
  But when one of my cousins got into banking a long time ago,
• 14:11
  she started off before me. So let's say, let's say me like
• 14:14
  20 years ago, part of sales enablement then was making sure
• 14:17
  that the people had a car. It's not like they gave
• 14:20
  everybody one car. You know, there's no bank in
• 14:22
  Nigeria that is not paid off, though we give a salesperson one
• 14:25
  car. So what they used to do was
• 14:26
  there will be, there were different pools of cars, a
• 14:29
  driver to each car and I think each car to five people or six
• 14:31
  people and then you hit the road.
• 14:33
  So all of this, all of that, that's what we call sales
• 14:36
  enablement. Then on the thing about
• 14:39
  incentives, an incentive is just whatever it is that you do to
• 14:44
  try and ginger somebody to do more so you can see how this
• 14:47
  effects performance. So in this case, the incentives
• 14:51
  for sales people is going to be money basically, and other terms
• 14:56
  of service, but let's stick to money.
• 14:58
  So some people say fixed salaries.
• 15:01
  If you're my sales person, everybody earns 300K.
• 15:03
  No matter how you bring, everybody earns 300K.
• 15:07
  There's some people who say a base and then give Commission.
• 15:10
  So some people say, look, if you're one of my sales people,
• 15:12
  everybody gets 150K. That's the base.
• 15:16
  But you're going to get a percentage on XYZ, whatever it
• 15:21
  is that you can sell. And in those kinds of
• 15:23
  organizations, it's possible for a salesperson to earn 150K today
• 15:26
  because that's the base. But then next month, if they
• 15:29
  sell very well, they might earn 500K because apart from the 150,
• 15:33
  they've sold X amount. And so the compensation goes up
• 15:39
  or down. So that is called variable
• 15:42
  compensation. So either fixed salaries or
• 15:45
  variable compensation. I'm not going to get into the
• 15:48
  argument of which is better. Some people say fixed salaries
• 15:51
  is better, some people say that variable compensation is better.
• 15:55
  Although for people who say fixed salaries, especially
• 15:57
  people in the West, you know, people in America and in the UK,
• 16:00
  well, I think that's what works for your own clients.
• 16:03
  I don't think that would really work in Nigeria anyway.
• 16:06
  Let me not go into all that. But the most important thing is
• 16:09
  this. Sales is hard.
• 16:12
  Whatever it is that you decided, don't mess with it.
• 16:15
  If you told everybody 150, so you've told everybody 300 K
• 16:20
  every month, no matter how much we sell, then give them that 300
• 16:25
  K every month. The moment you start messing
• 16:28
  with it that and yes, initially I'd said, I'll give you 300 K
• 16:32
  every month, but you, you're not pulling our weight.
• 16:34
  You're not pulling our weights. Instead of 300 K, I'm giving you
• 16:36
  160. I'm giving you 280.
• 16:37
  I'm giving you aha, you started messing with their motivation.
• 16:40
  If you say it's 300 K, give everybody that 300 K every
• 16:43
  single month. If you're not happy with
• 16:44
  somebody's performance, you know, sack the person, get
• 16:46
  somebody else. Then for the variable
• 16:48
  compensation, if you told them it's 150K flat, that's the base
• 16:55
  and then you're getting 10% on every extra.
• 16:57
  Whatever you sell, just pay them what you said because there's
• 17:02
  some people who will say variable compensation, no
• 17:05
  problem. Today the person didn't sell.
• 17:08
  I give them 150K next month the person sells small are giving
• 17:11
  them money 200K. But then if the person works
• 17:15
  really hard in March and then the person sells and when you
• 17:21
  calculate the Commission you see that Commission is supposed to
• 17:23
  be 600K. If that is what you told them,
• 17:27
  pay the person the 600 Ki know it's hard.
• 17:30
  You're better off paying the person the 600 K first.
• 17:33
  Then later on, you don't call everybody and say, look, guys,
• 17:35
  in the beginning I told you that, you know, everybody's 150K
• 17:38
  flats. Then depending on how you sell,
• 17:40
  I'll be adding. But you guys have been crushing
• 17:42
  it. You're really going out of the
• 17:43
  park and I really appreciate that you're helping my business
• 17:44
  grow. Well, to be honest, man, like
• 17:47
  those margins are higher. Like is is is doing me, is doing
• 17:52
  me. Somehow I can't beat those
• 17:53
  margins. Again, have an honest
• 17:55
  conversation about it. Now you're going to be able to
• 17:58
  get some buy in and you're going to be able to review the thing
• 18:03
  and keep everything above board and people won't feel like
• 18:08
  you're taking them for a ride. Because I told you guys on the
• 18:11
  podcast about a guy I know here in Abuja who used to see who
• 18:14
  used to sell for a Benz and dealership.
• 18:17
  And this was the sort of thing that happened to him.
• 18:19
  He was doing it, he was doing it, he was doing it.
• 18:21
  And then, you know, usual now you get married and then you
• 18:23
  have children and girls like Amor and he stepped my game up
• 18:27
  and he did. He stepped his game up until one
• 18:29
  day or guy refused to pay him on the two M Commission so he said
• 18:34
  no problem. So once he collected his money
• 18:37
  for the month he left he said look I'm not doing this again
• 18:39
  and he left and he went someplace else.
• 18:41
  So if that's what you promise them, pay them.
• 18:44
  Don't mess with their don't mess with their motivation because
• 18:47
  selling is hard. Try and keep things constant.
• 18:51
  If you have to change do it in a very upfront above board manner.
• 18:55
  Would have been a different conversation if the owner called
• 18:58
  him and said, hey guy, you know what, you've been selling very
• 19:01
  well and I appreciate that. But bro, let me not lie you
• 19:05
  yeah, your Commission is supposed to be two M but because
• 19:08
  of what we've been suffering here in the office and cash flow
• 19:11
  and everything, that two MI won't lie.
• 19:13
  I can't pay that 2M now. So like how far you know, can I
• 19:17
  give you 1.2 and we'll call it Square Or if I'm paying you that
• 19:20
  two M, maybe this two M Commission will pay it over the
• 19:22
  next three months. You know that kind of
• 19:24
  conversation, things will be different.
• 19:26
  Most Nigerians are not unreasonable.
• 19:29
  And anyway, I'm sure you get the point.
• 19:32
  So, so you see how all these things now tie into how you can
• 19:38
  get people to perform well if you select the right person, you
• 19:43
  train them well, you incentivize them well, and you have a robust
• 19:47
  sales process that you've taught them.
• 19:49
  You've seen how these things can affect sales performance, but
• 19:56
  the different angle that I want to take now is this sales
• 19:59
  performance is contextual. So it depends on the nature of
• 20:02
  the problems that people face, and it also depends on the
• 20:05
  industry. So because of that, in
• 20:08
  tomorrow's episode and in future episodes, of course, I can't
• 20:11
  promise you how many episodes that will because you know how
• 20:13
  we do this podcast now, I just wake up and then I look at the
• 20:16
  question and then I answer the question for today.
• 20:18
  So I can't tell you that we're going to do it in five or in 10,
• 20:20
  but tomorrow has future episodes.
• 20:22
  We're going to tackle the problems on a case by case basis
• 20:26
  about what you can in what you can do to improve performance
• 20:30
  when you're faced with different kinds of difficulty.
• 20:33
  So the framework or the kinds of difficulties that we're going to
• 20:37
  be looking at are are people related issues, how do we deal
• 20:41
  with that, process related issues, how do we deal with
• 20:44
  that, market related issues, how do we deal with that?
• 20:47
  Because Nigeria, we're currently going through that.
• 20:50
  You know, the cost of fuel went up after the election, cost of
• 20:53
  living quadrupled, the price of everything has gone up.
• 20:56
  So right now in Niger, there's some serious market related
• 20:59
  issues because the thing that you used to sell before for
• 21:03
  2500, because of how things have changed, you now have to sell it
• 21:06
  for seven, five. And then the Nigerian consumer
• 21:09
  is being pressed on all sides. Disposable income has reduced,
• 21:14
  you know, things like that. So there's market related issues
• 21:16
  and then there's also organizational issues.
• 21:18
  So those are the frameworks that we're going to look at it.
• 21:21
  How do we increase people's sales performance when they are
• 21:23
  faced with people related issues, process related issues,
• 21:28
  market or economic related issues and then organizational
• 21:31
  issues. So that's going to be the
• 21:33
  difference. We're going to try and identify
• 21:35
  the root cause of why sales starts to decline.
• 21:39
  Then we'll now see what kind of solutions that we can implement
• 21:44
  that will bring the results up. So more on that in future
• 21:48
  episodes. So that's all for today folks.
• 21:50
  Remember to connect with me on WhatsApp.
• 21:52
  The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234.
• 21:58
  For those of you who are not Nigerian, then connect with me
• 22:01
  on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you guys.
• 22:04
  My name is Tavishima Ayede. You can confirm the correct
• 22:07
  spelling of my name and you also have my e-mail address from the
• 22:10
  link where you're currently listening to this episode.
• 22:12
  Thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 22:14
  I'll catch you guys at the next episode.