Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Bridging the Gap: From Tech Support to Wedding Planning - The Power of Multidisciplinary Skills

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Bridging the Gap: From Tech Support to Wedding Planning - The Power of Multidisciplinary Skills · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Today I was going over my old
• 0:06
  notes and I discovered that I had a conversation with someone
• 0:10
  that I wanted to share over here on the podcast.
• 0:13
  I think this must have been a month or maybe two ago, but
• 0:17
  somehow it got lost amongst my paper shuffles.
• 0:22
  In fact, this is the reason why most of you who are considering
• 0:25
  being self-employed, involved in business or taking a sales role.
• 0:29
  This is one of the reasons why I'm going to recommend that
• 0:33
  using sheets of paper, post it, notes, things like that are not
• 0:36
  a very good way to track your commitments and to plan for the
• 0:42
  day. So really, I should be taking my
• 0:45
  own medicine and being not just more proactive, but then also
• 0:51
  using much more robust tools for managing my work flows.
• 0:55
  So instead of just using scraps of paper for this, I should have
• 0:59
  used a calendar or some sort of project management software,
• 1:04
  online diary, you know, things like that.
• 1:06
  You just pick whatever it is that suits your fancy.
• 1:09
  Anyway, so, so the conversation that I was going to share was a
• 1:13
  conversation that I had with someone called Kelly when I
• 1:19
  first met her. I called her Kelly and she
• 1:22
  corrected me that it's not Kelly like R Kelly Kelly, but more
• 1:27
  Kelly, which is Kelley. And since I met her, I've come
• 1:32
  across another Kelly as well. Although this Kelly happens to
• 1:36
  be a guy, so I guess the name is unisex.
• 1:39
  Now, how I got in touch with Kelly was because back when I
• 1:45
  was based in Lagos as a wedding photographer.
• 1:47
  For those who've been listening to the show, you know my story.
• 1:50
  So you know that after a while, after being married, my wife in
• 1:54
  Abuja, me in Lagos, the shopping didn't kind of make sense.
• 2:00
  So I made the move eventually. And now I'm in Abuja and I've
• 2:04
  been here for how long? 12 years.
• 2:09
  Yeah. So I've been here for 12 years.
• 2:10
  So of course, while I was coming to Abuja, I was making well, at
• 2:14
  the time I didn't realize that I was doing good sales practice
• 2:18
  and personal selling. But I started making some phone
• 2:21
  calls because I figured if I was going to leave Lagos and move
• 2:24
  over to a new city in Abuja and try and do business here as a
• 2:28
  wedding photographer, I was going to need a whole new list
• 2:32
  of contacts, people to call, people that I could do business
• 2:35
  with, get referrals from, get introductions to other
• 2:39
  stakeholders in the industry, those sorts of things.
• 2:41
  And when I did my research, I came across a company I was
• 2:44
  called Lily's Concepts. I, if I remember correctly, I
• 2:48
  think I came across Lily's concepts first because Kelly is
• 2:51
  important, is in partnership with another lady.
• 2:56
  She's in partnership with two other people, actually.
• 2:58
  So there's Kelly, there's Jumai, and then there's a Silent
• 3:01
  partner. I keep forgetting her name.
• 3:03
  So between the three of them, there are like 4 businesses that
• 3:08
  kind of roll within the same ecosystem.
• 3:10
  So there's Lily Concepts, I think Lily's Concepts.
• 3:16
  I think that's the flourish term of the business.
• 3:19
  And Kelly is the planner. And so I think there's they have
• 3:24
  a a venue in Wuse too that they rent out for bridal showers,
• 3:28
  small birthday parties, things like that.
• 3:30
  So between the three of them, four businesses can refer
• 3:35
  business back and forth. I can't remember which of the
• 3:38
  businesses that I found online, but eventually I put out a call
• 3:42
  to. I think I'm trying to read you
• 3:44
  my but actually I got in touch with Kelly and that is how I got
• 3:49
  introduced to the whole bunch. I've never met the silent
• 3:51
  partner, but you know, of course I've heard people.
• 3:55
  I've heard people talk about her.
• 3:56
  In fact, I hear some people say that the third partner is Lily
• 3:59
  in the Lily's concepts. Anyway, so if you remember,
• 4:04
  there was a time maybe 2-3 months ago when I was talking to
• 4:08
  other people and discussing about all kinds of things,
• 4:12
  business sales, business development related, marketing
• 4:14
  related and then sharing their insights over here on the
• 4:17
  podcast. And so that's what the whole
• 4:19
  conversation with Kelly was about.
• 4:22
  So I found the conversation with Kelly, even though we're shorter
• 4:27
  than most, it turned out to be a good example about how having a
• 4:31
  multidisciplinary background is good for business, how it gives
• 4:36
  you certain kinds of interpersonal skills that you
• 4:39
  can party into future endeavours.
• 4:41
  Because that's something that I've spoken about on the podcast
• 4:43
  time and time again. Some people think that because
• 4:47
  you have a degree in chemistry then it puts you at a
• 4:49
  disadvantage in business and I say that it's it's it's not the
• 4:54
  case. So your first degree might have
• 4:55
  been in zoology or in chemistry or in law or whatever.
• 4:59
  But The thing is when we have multiple disciplinary
• 5:01
  backgrounds and approaches, it actually informs the way that we
• 5:03
  do business for the better. We come with a whole new way of
• 5:07
  thinking, different frameworks, different skills that we bring
• 5:11
  to the table and it helps inform our future endeavours.
• 5:14
  And Kelly is one of such examples because in her previous
• 5:19
  career, I think back when she was in America, she was involved
• 5:24
  in the tech and in the software space, and she worked with a
• 5:27
  company that handled car diagnostics.
• 5:30
  So for those of us who drive fairly modern Toyotas, you know,
• 5:34
  those of you who are driving Toyota models, you know, 2017
• 5:38
  and up, you know, sometimes you have a problem is there's
• 5:41
  something flashing on the dashboard.
• 5:43
  You take it to the mechanic, they take this fancy thing,
• 5:47
  looks like a retro kind of pad. They take it, they plug it under
• 5:51
  the hood and then the thing flashes and says this is the
• 5:53
  problem. And then mechanics start solving
• 5:55
  the problem. So car diagnostics, how do you
• 5:58
  know what's going wrong with the car?
• 6:00
  What is working, what's not working, what is overheating,
• 6:02
  what needs to be replaced, You know, those sorts of things.
• 6:05
  And in her previous career, she was involved in tech support and
• 6:08
  customer care. So we don't have those sorts of
• 6:12
  industries in Nigeria yet. I guess the time will come
• 6:15
  because like I said, now your car has a problem.
• 6:18
  It's stalling, it's not working. Something on the dashboard is
• 6:22
  flashing. You take it to the mechanic, the
• 6:24
  mechanic hooks up the diagnostics computer, You know,
• 6:28
  they run it, they read it, and then they start trying to
• 6:30
  diagnose the problem. But for in Kelly's previous
• 6:34
  role, she handled tech support, customer care.
• 6:37
  So the mechanics who are doing those sorts of job will be able
• 6:40
  to call in to her to try and figure out exactly what was
• 6:43
  going on. In case they're not, they're not
• 6:45
  able to get an adequate reading. And I know because I've been in
• 6:49
  that situation by myself where the what's it called the airbag
• 6:53
  function in my car was flashing the airbag and seatbelts and
• 6:57
  that made me uncomfortable. I went to the mechanic and we
• 7:00
  tried. We need one person couldn't
• 7:02
  interpret. We, I think we ran through three
• 7:04
  or four different interpretations and then the
• 7:08
  consensus became that the airbag, what's it called, the
• 7:13
  airbag sensor was malfunctioning.
• 7:17
  And so the best way to not cause a problem in the future, you
• 7:20
  know, like you're driving and then the airpag just deploys was
• 7:23
  actually to disable the the airbag safety thing.
• 7:27
  So the seatbelts work quite fine, but we had to disable the
• 7:30
  airbag thing and that's that was on my phone marker.
• 7:33
  I'm not, I'm not saying that that's what you guys should do
• 7:36
  if you run into that kind of problem.
• 7:37
  It's just the reality of being in Niger for now.
• 7:40
  Now when you have that sort of problem, the mechanics are
• 7:43
  trying to do diagnostics, but we don't have people in tech
• 7:46
  support and customer care that we can call up and say this is
• 7:49
  flashing. What exactly does this mean and
• 7:51
  what is the next, what is the next point of call, What is the
• 7:57
  next point? Call to action and stuff like
• 8:01
  that. Besides, it's not like in
• 8:04
  Nigeria we have authorised what are they called, repair shops
• 8:08
  and things, things of that nature.
• 8:10
  So yeah, that was her job, she was on tech support and she was
• 8:12
  on customer care. And I remember I said at the
• 8:16
  time I met Kelly in Abuja, she was in planning and all things
• 8:23
  events and you will see that as we continue with this
• 8:27
  conversation, you will see that the experience that she got
• 8:31
  running tech support and customer care for a tech
• 8:37
  software platform came in handy. So excuse me, absolutely came in
• 8:42
  handy when it came to weddings and events and this is an
• 8:45
  example about how having a multi descent area background, a
• 8:49
  different background apart from events and weddings brought to
• 8:53
  it a certain level of interpersonal skills which
• 8:55
  translated very well to future endeavours in wedding planning.
• 9:00
  So don't think that because you studied zoology or agricultural
• 9:03
  economics or Yoruba history or whatever, don't think that you
• 9:06
  are at a disadvantage for going into any kind of business.
• 9:10
  Now of course, if you're going to be a financial analyst or you
• 9:15
  know those sorts of things, then there's going to be a certain
• 9:18
  level of continuing education that you have to do.
• 9:21
  Maybe take your CFA, take your stockbroking exams, you know,
• 9:24
  blah blah blah, those sorts of things.
• 9:26
  So that you can at least be competent and show some kind of
• 9:30
  professional credibility when speaking to to potential
• 9:34
  customers. Because at the end of the day, I
• 9:38
  can learn all this stuff on my own.
• 9:40
  But the person who does have some certifications when it
• 9:42
  comes to these things, you know, finance, analysis, trading,
• 9:46
  stock picking, those sorts of things, it will give the person
• 9:49
  a certain area of credibility over me, at least just in the
• 9:52
  beginning anyway. So personality.
• 9:59
  Honest. No.
• 9:59
  She would describe herself as a people person and she said that,
• 10:04
  yeah, she describes herself as a people person.
• 10:06
  Before she was involved in tech support and software, she was
• 10:11
  also, she had also done some work in retail and human
• 10:15
  resources. And she says that all those kind
• 10:17
  of roles that put you in the customer, customer facing
• 10:21
  functions, customer care functions, those sorts of things
• 10:25
  that they help you beef up your EQ and your EI.
• 10:28
  So EQ is emotional quotient, EI emotional intelligence kind of
• 10:33
  the same thing. Now to understand what EQ is or
• 10:36
  EI is, just look for previous episodes where I where I
• 10:40
  dedicated entire episodes to the whole thing of IQ that's
• 10:45
  Intelligent Quotients, Emotional Quotient, which is more
• 10:48
  important. And then also this new term that
• 10:50
  people have been flashing around these days, which is Tech
• 10:52
  Quotient. But in summary, emotional
• 10:56
  quotient is just your ability to understand your own
• 11:01
  interpersonal dynamics. You know, who am I?
• 11:03
  How am I feeling? Am I good?
• 11:05
  Am I properly regulated? Am I jazzed up?
• 11:08
  Then you understand the emotional environment external
• 11:13
  to yourself. My boss, my customers, my kids,
• 11:17
  my wife, my boyfriend, girlfriend, everybody else.
• 11:21
  What's the external environment like?
• 11:24
  How's everybody feeling? You now understand the
• 11:27
  interrelationship between these two environments.
• 11:29
  How am I feeling? Am I jazzed up?
• 11:31
  Plus, how is everybody feeling? And then that interrelationship
• 11:35
  that is going on, how is that either furthering a positive
• 11:43
  emotional environment or furthering our ability to get
• 11:48
  work done to get relationships moving forward, You know, those
• 11:51
  sorts of things. So that's what emotional
• 11:53
  quotient is all about really. So you have some sort of
• 11:56
  emotional mastery or understanding about yourself and
• 12:00
  getting a sense of people's emotional health and
• 12:05
  interactions, you know, out there in the environment, trying
• 12:08
  to figure out how the interplay between both and emotional
• 12:12
  environments work and how you can navigate that to be able to
• 12:15
  get work done. So you can navigate that to
• 12:17
  build relationships, to get work done, to close the sale, to
• 12:20
  solve a problem and whatever it is.
• 12:22
  So she said being involved in all those roles, tech support
• 12:26
  for car diagnostics, working in retail, working in human
• 12:29
  resources, it gave her a good dose of EQ and EI training and
• 12:33
  it helped with being able to maintain relationships with
• 12:36
  clients, whether it's on the official level or on a personal
• 12:41
  level. So you guys are seeing how
• 12:43
  multiple disciplinary backgrounds, how that helps.
• 12:45
  So you take someone who did tech, who did retail, who did
• 12:51
  human resources and you see you later on see how it makes her a
• 12:55
  real stand up wedding professional.
• 12:59
  So the reason why she can be an absolute star in the wedding
• 13:03
  planning and the event planning business is recycling.
• 13:07
  Because she had mastered certain kinds of skills.
• 13:10
  Sitting behind the screen and answering phones as a tech
• 13:14
  support, as a software support person in the tech industry And
• 13:19
  also learning how to navigate, being in front of people
• 13:22
  one-on-one, doing retail and then also handling human
• 13:26
  resources where you are the interface between the employees
• 13:29
  and management or or the corporation at large.
• 13:33
  So, yeah, so I'll repeat that again.
• 13:37
  Multidisciplinary backgrounds. Really, really, really
• 13:40
  impressive. Right Now you might not know how
• 13:43
  your Yoruba history degree is going to parlay into success in
• 13:46
  business, but just hang in there.
• 13:49
  There are lots of things that look a lot clearer when we look
• 13:52
  back in hindsight. One day you look back in
• 13:54
  hindsight and you say, oh, OK, I spent four years studying Yoruba
• 13:58
  history or studying agricultural economics, and I thought it was
• 14:01
  a waste. But now, with hindsight, looking
• 14:04
  at where I am now, I can see how these experiences and this
• 14:07
  education helped to inform my business success.
• 14:12
  So how did she get into the planning space?
• 14:14
  She insists that she has always been a planner because whether
• 14:17
  in Niger or in America, she's always been that girl, you know,
• 14:21
  people, you know, the one that is planning the birthdays or
• 14:24
  this office celebration, this office thing, that office thing,
• 14:28
  Grandpa's birthday, people's get together.
• 14:31
  And so she said she has always been a plan.
• 14:34
  So her being a people person, plus the listening skills that
• 14:38
  are needed to plan all these stuff like this, whether it's
• 14:42
  grandpa's birthday because, you know, trying to plan family
• 14:45
  things, you know, is not easy. Everybody has their own opinion.
• 14:48
  In fact, I find it real frustrating trying to deal with
• 14:50
  families. You know, you're trying to
• 14:51
  organise a collection or you're trying to do a party or
• 14:53
  something. Solely frustrating dealing with
• 14:55
  families, strangers. Yeah, I can handle that.
• 14:57
  But for some reason, her family members just ticked me off.
• 15:00
  When we have a thing that needs to be planned, so you take that
• 15:05
  plus a previous work experience, and that is what informed her
• 15:10
  being a very good wedding planner, because listening
• 15:13
  skills absolutely essential. Eventually she partners with her
• 15:16
  best friend and then Lily's concept is born.
• 15:21
  And the hall rental space. And the florist business, the
• 15:27
  planning business, I can't remember the 4th, 1:00 and yeah,
• 15:31
  everything pops off really. So of course I had the usual
• 15:35
  questions about whether it being a hobby in the beginning pose
• 15:42
  any difficulties, but she said no, it doesn't.
• 15:46
  I mean, the fact that it started off as a hobby makes it much
• 15:48
  more fulfilling now and it doesn't feel like work.
• 15:51
  But she does admit that is hard work.
• 15:54
  So a couple of lessons that we can take away from this,
• 15:56
  starting from the top multidisciplinary background.
• 16:00
  Do not despise where you are right now if you're studying
• 16:06
  European history. One O 1, that's what you studied
• 16:08
  in university. Don't worry, seems like it's
• 16:12
  useless now. It's going to pay off in the
• 16:13
  future. You're going to be able to look
• 16:14
  back and say oh OK, how I what I learnt and the experiences that
• 16:19
  I had, you know, contributed to where I am today.
• 16:22
  So don't worry about that. Interpersonal skills really,
• 16:25
  really important. Especially because in the
• 16:27
  personal skills, pally into different endeavours.
• 16:30
  And I've made podcasts about that in the future.
• 16:33
  So you can take your interpersonal skills into
• 16:34
  becoming a pastor, into becoming a father and mom, to becoming a
• 16:37
  businessman, into becoming a politician.
• 16:40
  You're going to need it. Oh, sorry.
• 16:42
  That was my alarm. OK, so 15 minutes.
• 16:44
  So let me wrap this up quickly. Let's see what else.
• 16:49
  OK. And then the whole thing about
• 16:50
  work and hobbies. So don't be one of those people
• 16:52
  who assume that because they think I started off as a hobby
• 16:55
  that you're going to enjoy it all the time and it's not going
• 16:57
  to feel like work. So because because she has said
• 17:00
  here that it doesn't feel like work, because maybe for her work
• 17:05
  is suit and tie, somebody else calling the shorts, you know,
• 17:08
  blah, blah, blah. But she does admit that it is
• 17:11
  hard work. And because remember I said that
• 17:14
  between the three of them they are responsible for four
• 17:16
  businesses. So it's not easy.
• 17:18
  You know, you and your friends trying to get a florist
• 17:20
  business. I'm up and going, trying to do
• 17:23
  hall rentals and equipment rentals and then the wedding and
• 17:27
  the event planning. So it is hard work.
• 17:30
  So it may have started off as a hobby, but it is going to be
• 17:33
  hard work then. OK.
• 17:37
  So with this, with me finding the notes from Kelly's
• 17:40
  conversation, I can now let you guys know finally once and for
• 17:44
  all. Now this is going to be the last
• 17:46
  conversation portion that I'm going to begin sharing over here
• 17:50
  on the podcast. Because trying to schedule these
• 17:52
  conversations and trying to schedule these interviews and
• 17:55
  try and gain the insights to share over here with you guys
• 18:00
  was becoming quite mature. You know you have to manage
• 18:03
  other people's. What's it called?
• 18:07
  Schedules. Because we're all on different
• 18:10
  timelines, you'll have different things to do with our day.
• 18:12
  So I have put that part of the podcast to the rest.
• 18:15
  Currently we have over 805 podcasts over here right now and
• 18:21
  the majority of them will continue to be solo based
• 18:23
  episodes where it is me talking about all things sales,
• 18:26
  marketing, especially personal selling related ideas and
• 18:32
  principles, frameworks about how you can use these kinds of
• 18:35
  skills to grow your business. So I'm grateful to Kelly.
• 18:40
  I'm also grateful to Amina, Tokumbo, Banu, then Adiniki,
• 18:47
  Adigbita, who else? You know all the wonderful
• 18:51
  people who agreed to speak to me for the podcast, especially the
• 18:56
  ladies, because I believe that we don't have enough of female
• 19:01
  representation when it comes to business, education and those
• 19:03
  sorts of things. So I'm really, really glad for
• 19:06
  the people who agreed to speak to me over here on the podcast
• 19:09
  so that we can. So it won't really speak to me,
• 19:12
  so I could share the insights over here on the podcast.
• 19:14
  So yeah, that's it. Thank you very much guys for
• 19:17
  your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next
• 19:20
  recording. I'm your host.
• 19:21
  My name is Tavishima Agade. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 19:25
  Confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address in case
• 19:28
  you want to reach out from the link.
• 19:30
  We're listening to this episode. Then also connect with me on
• 19:33
  WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140.
• 19:39
  Country code is +234 if you're not Nigerian.
• 19:41
  Thanks for your time and attention, and I'll catch you
• 19:43
  guys at the next episode.