Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Why you can't sell expensive products using spam

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Why you can't sell expensive products using spam · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to today's episode.
• 0:03
  Apologies because I'm out and about.
• 0:05
  I'm making today's podcast recording in the parking lot.
• 0:09
  I'm actually at the airport because I'm supposed to pick up
• 0:11
  someone. And anyway, the flight got
• 0:14
  delayed and I figured let me not let this time get to waste.
• 0:16
  So I just pulled out the microphone and let's see what we
• 0:20
  can get done. Now today I want to look at some
• 0:24
  random ideas around prospecting for those of you who are
• 0:28
  listening to the podcast for the first time.
• 0:30
  Prospecting is what prospecting means is any activities or any
• 0:36
  planning or any strategy that you do around looking for people
• 0:40
  who are looking for people who might be interested in your
• 0:45
  product or your service. So once you identify who those
• 0:48
  people are, you figure out a plan for how you're going to
• 0:51
  approach them, whether online or offline.
• 0:54
  And essentially that is what prospecting is all about.
• 0:58
  South, eventually we go past the planning stage and we have to
• 1:03
  get to the outreach stage. Outreach is when we actually
• 1:06
  start taking action. So whether it's phone calls,
• 1:09
  whether it's office visits, whether it's WhatsApp messages,
• 1:13
  whether it's Telegram messages, whether it's Zoom sessions, you
• 1:16
  know, whatever it is that you're trying to do, eventually we have
• 1:19
  to start trying to reach out to our potential customers.
• 1:25
  Really sorry about the noise here.
• 1:28
  I hope it doesn't come in too much through the microphones.
• 1:32
  OK, now, now what inspired this session was before I got to the
• 1:37
  airport, I had a meeting with one of my clients currently, and
• 1:42
  they are in the tech space and they sell some fancy software
• 1:46
  that is supposed to help with customer acquisition costs.
• 1:50
  So we're supposed to help you advertise much more effectively
• 1:54
  to your customers. And it's a product that is aimed
• 1:58
  at people who are in the business to consumer space.
• 2:02
  So that is big businesses that are trying to look for retail
• 2:06
  customers, you know, like me, to open accounts with them.
• 2:10
  So the prospecting activities that we've been doing, we're
• 2:14
  reaching out to fintechs, we'll be reaching out to banks.
• 2:18
  What else? Betting sites, you know,
• 2:23
  different people in the financial space, you know, that
• 2:25
  have to try and advertise and get customers.
• 2:29
  So OK, now one thing that crossed my mind, there's this
• 2:34
  software called Apollo. Oh, OK, well, not a software.
• 2:39
  How what would I call it now? Well, anyway, Apollo is a
• 2:42
  service that you can use. So you can use it either by
• 2:47
  going on the website, I think it's Apollo dot IO, or you can
• 2:50
  download the app, or at least there's an app available for
• 2:54
  people who are on Android phones.
• 2:56
  I can't remember if there's one for people who use iPhones.
• 3:00
  So Apollo is a website that you can use to look for details of
• 3:06
  your prospects, you know, to get their names, to get their phone
• 3:08
  numbers so that you can do outreach much more effectively.
• 3:13
  Because remember, like I said, part of prospecting is we're
• 3:16
  trying to figure out who are people that might be interested
• 3:18
  in my product or my service. Then where do these people hang
• 3:22
  out? And then where can I reach out
• 3:23
  to them in person or where can I reach out to them online so that
• 3:27
  I can engage them in a conversation, see if they have a
• 3:31
  problem that my product or service can solve.
• 3:35
  And then after that, I can make a pitch to show how it is that
• 3:39
  my product or my service can help.
• 3:42
  So the hard part, actually trying to get these people's
• 3:44
  details. Now I must confess that I have
• 3:46
  used Apollo in the past, but I didn't do a good job at it.
• 3:50
  And so I did the Nigerian thing. Now, you know, I used it, it
• 3:53
  didn't work. So I just said the software
• 3:56
  doesn't really work. But apparently the problem was
• 3:59
  not that it doesn't work, the problem was that I was bad at
• 4:02
  it. Because now that I'm working
• 4:03
  with this client of mine, he has a member of his team who is a
• 4:07
  specialist in Apollo and that's all she has been doing.
• 4:11
  And so far the thing has been working like magic.
• 4:14
  Well, to me personally, she has been able to get like 4, let's
• 4:17
  let's say about four details, 4 customer details, that's names,
• 4:23
  4 number and e-mail addresses. And so far on the four, on the
• 4:26
  four accounts, it has worked. It has worked quite well.
• 4:30
  So I must admit I'm impressed. So now I know that the problem
• 4:32
  was not with the service, it's not with Apollo, but the problem
• 4:35
  was with me. So what I am going to do So what
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  I'm going to do is I'll just try and learn how to be much more
• 4:43
  effective at using Apollo. But anyway, on this one, the
• 4:47
  reason why I'm making this podcast episode is just to let
• 4:49
  you guys know that sometimes the problem is not with the tool.
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  Sometimes the problem is with you.
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  So it's not that the tool doesn't work.
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  It's just that maybe perhaps you haven't figured out how to make
• 4:59
  the thing work correctly. So for those of you who listen
• 5:03
  to any podcast episodes where I may have said bad things about
• 5:07
  Apollo, I take that back. I just have to learn how to use
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  the software correctly because now that I've seen someone who
• 5:14
  is an Apollo specialist, I've seen her using it to good
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  effect. Oh, by the way, Apollo, just the
• 5:20
  same way that we spell Apollo in Nigeria.
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  But of course, you know, when we say Apollo is not Apollo like
• 5:25
  in, you know, that eye disease, it's not like conjunctivitis.
• 5:29
  So Apollo. Apollo.
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  Yeah. So that's what they've been.
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  That's one of the tools I've been using for getting customer
• 5:38
  details. Now, I mentioned that I had
• 5:40
  tried Apollo in the past, but I wasn't happy with the results.
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  So what I started doing was to use LinkedIn instead to get
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  company details. So let's say I wanted to reach
• 5:48
  out to someone. OK, I'm in the airport now.
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  So let's just assume that I'm trying to do some business with
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  the FAAN. That's the Federal Aviation
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  Federal, I don't know, Airport Aviation Authority and whatever
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  FAN stands for, they are the body that regulates aviation in
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  Nigeria. So they make sure that airports
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  are safe. They make sure that airports are
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  properly scheduled, properly managed, you know, things like
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  that. So let's assume now that I was
• 6:16
  trying to do some business with the FAAN.
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  Let's assume that I'm trying to do some business with the FAN
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  now. Before I was blown away by the
• 6:26
  Apollo specialist work using Apollo, what I would have done
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  was I would have gone on to LinkedIn and I would have done a
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  search for FAAN. That is fun.
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  And then of course it is going to give me a number of results.
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  It will show some posts that are relevant to FAAN.
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  I'll have a look at that because it's possible that maybe the
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  author of the post or maybe some of the people who commented on
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  the post might be relevant people that I could look at.
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  Then I would also narrow down the search to people, people on
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  LinkedIn because LinkedIn has LinkedIn has an advanced search
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  feature that allows you to search according to people,
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  locations, organizations, different topics, you know,
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  things like that. So I would have toggled the the
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  LinkedIn feature afterwards to limit it to people only so that
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  I'll be looking at people who either work with FAAN.
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  Again, that's the body that regulates airports in Nigeria.
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  So I'll be limited to looking at people who work with a FFAAN.
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  Let's see what else, OK, People who work with FAN or people who
• 7:37
  have some relationship to someone who works with the FAAN.
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  So that is one of the tools that I would have been using to find
• 7:47
  customer details. Then of course, you guys already
• 7:50
  remember the episodes where I spoke about how I use
• 7:55
  Truecaller, Google and then AI tools, you know, to find
• 8:00
  information about potential customers.
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  Then I'm about to go and, you know, have a visit with or call
• 8:06
  or send a text message or have a chat with.
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  So those are some ideas around prospecting, but I just want to
• 8:15
  say I take back any bad thing I said about Apollo.
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  It's a correct tool. It's a nice tool.
• 8:20
  It's a very correct tool and if you know how to use it well, you
• 8:23
  can get some really fantastic results because I've seen
• 8:25
  someone use it to get the correct name of the correct
• 8:30
  e-mail address and the correct phone number for about let's say
• 8:34
  four or five people in the banking sector in Niger.
• 8:36
  So I won't like, I'm impressed. So I'm going to reopen my
• 8:40
  account and then see how I can learn how to work with that.
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  And it also goes to show that you learn new things everyday.
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  So I'm a specialist in the sales process.
• 8:49
  It doesn't mean I'm a specialist when it comes to individual
• 8:53
  sales tools like Apollo. Then another thing that we
• 8:57
  discussed with my client today was they wanted to use automated
• 9:00
  messaging for reaching out to prospects and I had to tell them
• 9:05
  to match break seriously that I had to slow down.
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  And that's the reason why now using automated messaging is not
• 9:11
  a bad idea. That is when you know, you set
• 9:14
  up your, you know, now you fancy e-mail marketing people, you set
• 9:18
  up all your computer programs, you collect the e-mail addresses
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  and then messages all start going out automatically to
• 9:25
  people. You know, whether it's every day
• 9:27
  or whether it's every two, two days or every three days or
• 9:30
  every five days or every one week or every two weeks or
• 9:33
  whatever. But it sounded like they wanted
• 9:36
  this to be a high volume campaign where messages be going
• 9:38
  out repeatedly to people every number of days.
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  So I have to tell them that, look, you guys need to match
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  break because what you're doing is you're selling an expensive
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  service that's denominated in dollars and it's sophisticated
• 9:50
  piece of software that's supposed to help people with
• 9:53
  customer acquisition, that's supposed to help people get
• 9:55
  customers affordably and more affordably than than Google and
• 10:02
  Meta and TikTok. Meta is the yeah, Meta Facebook.
• 10:08
  So I told them that look, this approach of high volume is not
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  going to work because automated messaging, especially high
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  volume messaging, usually works when you're dealing with low
• 10:19
  cost items, you know, cheap, cheap something.
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  Then while you also need high volume of people to close the
• 10:26
  sale, of course, if it's cheap, cheap something, you need plenty
• 10:29
  of people to buy it so that you can make money.
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  Like TomTom, for instance. I think TomTom now is about, I
• 10:35
  think the last time I checked, TomTom was like maybe 10 naira,
• 10:38
  maybe 15 naira. So on the 59 item, you know, you
• 10:41
  need millions of people to be buying before you can make good
• 10:43
  money. Or like when you're selling
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  fancy expensive software, you know, where license licenses can
• 10:50
  be anything like I don't know, maybe 10 thousand $20,000, you
• 10:56
  know, something like that. You know, for that one, if you
• 10:57
  get a few 100 people to buy from you in a year, it's not bad as a
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  start, you know, in year 1 because it's my customer that
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  currently in year 1 of the business.
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  So low volume something then If it's a low volume, then yes,
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  please continue to blast people with those emails.
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  And you know, people either buy or they die, you know, but
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  shadow must buy from you just be blasting the thing out with a
• 11:21
  high volume. So when it's low cost, you need
• 11:24
  a high volume. They're sure go on with the
• 11:26
  automated sales campaigns. And especially if something has
• 11:29
  a short sales cycle, you can harass people until they buy
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  because of your sales cycle for something is, is let's say, 2
• 11:37
  weeks or three weeks. OK.
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  Like, let's say, OK, school holidays are here now.
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  So let's say you go to Jumia and you look at bicycles because
• 11:45
  maybe your kids want bicycles. And so you add to cart, but then
• 11:49
  you don't finish your transaction.
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  Now, a bicycle is the kind of thing that somebody will buy,
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  you know, sharp, sharp, one week, two weeks.
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  So if Jumia decides to pepper you with emails because you
• 11:59
  looked at bicycles, you know, you looked at a couple of
• 12:02
  bicycles, you put one to cart and then Jumia decides that
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  they're going to be blasting with emails, you know, every
• 12:07
  two, two days for the next two weeks.
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  You know that one. It makes sense because in a
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  bicycle you want to buy. So now you know, no problem.
• 12:15
  But then if it's an expensive item that you're trying to buy,
• 12:18
  maybe like you walk into a car dealer and you look at a Tesla,
• 12:24
  for instance, a Tesla cyber truck, because the guy gets your
• 12:28
  e-mail address. You'll be somehow, if that guy
• 12:30
  starts preparing you with emails every single day, it's a Tesla
• 12:33
  cyber truck. You know, for a big item like
• 12:35
  that, for an expensive item, you can't be harassing people every
• 12:38
  day with their e-mail. Come and buy it.
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  Come and buy it. No, you know, your e-mail will
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  be a matter of relationship nurturing.
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  You know, let them be seeing you every once in a while.
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  You know, you might be dropping message, I don't know, maybe
• 12:50
  once a month. You know, I'm not in the car
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  space. So I don't know what's an
• 12:53
  acceptable cadence, an acceptable flow to be using.
• 12:58
  But it will be peppering somebody with emails every
• 13:01
  single day on top of an expensive item that cost 400.
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  And I think last time I checked was like 430 million naira or
• 13:08
  something like that. You know, it's, it's somehow.
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  So if you're, if you're also thinking about prospecting,
• 13:16
  doing business, outreach to people, I want to start blasting
• 13:19
  them. We e-mail, it doesn't work for
• 13:20
  everything. The quick, quick e-mail every
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  two, two days, every 3-3 days. It's only if your item is low
• 13:26
  cost, your item is cheap. Then because of that, you need
• 13:29
  high volume. You're looking for hundreds and
• 13:32
  thousands and millions of people to buy.
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  And then it's a short sale cycle.
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  If what you have is an expensive item, you don't need, you know,
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  millions of people to buy, you know, per SE.
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  And if the sales cycle is long, then take it easy with the
• 13:45
  emails. Now, any kind of outreach that
• 13:48
  you do in this situation, that's in a situation where you're
• 13:52
  dealing with an expensive product, you know, like my
• 13:54
  client software, what you have to do in this case is your
• 13:59
  outreach has to be personalized. Your outreach has to be custom.
• 14:05
  Even if your outreach is high touch, high touch just means
• 14:08
  you're buzzing people all the time or calling people all the
• 14:11
  time. Now, whether you do high touch
• 14:13
  or soft touch or low touch, the most important thing is this
• 14:16
  kind of outreach has to be personalized and it has to be
• 14:19
  custom. It has to be tailored to this
• 14:21
  unique individual. Every phone call they receive,
• 14:24
  every WhatsApp message they receive, every text message that
• 14:26
  they receive, It has to be clear that the message is personalized
• 14:30
  to them, is not created by a bot, it's not created by some
• 14:34
  automated e-mail, something, even if it's created by a bottle
• 14:37
  automated e-mail, whatever, it should be customized in such a
• 14:40
  way that the person receiving the message will think that the
• 14:43
  message was intended for him or her and only him or her or
• 14:49
  nobody else. So that's a few words on this
• 14:53
  automated emailing. Then for this client of mine,
• 14:57
  we'd had some trouble trying to reach some of the senior
• 15:00
  executives of the bank because one of the people that we tried
• 15:03
  to reach was the head of our brand management and
• 15:08
  experiential marketing. That didn't work out.
• 15:11
  Then we also tried getting in touch with the brand marketing
• 15:15
  and corporate communications manager.
• 15:17
  That also didn't work out. Well, for this one, I jumped in
• 15:20
  on the phone and I tried to reach this particular executive.
• 15:24
  He didn't answer my call, but we ended up having a very brief
• 15:27
  WhatsApp exchange. Oh, by the way, that's another
• 15:29
  thing. If you're trying to reach out to
• 15:30
  people and you're sending emails and sending emails and sending
• 15:33
  emails and it's not working, then don't stick to the same
• 15:36
  mode. Because when it comes to sales,
• 15:39
  sales is multimodal. It means you go try them any
• 15:42
  which way. You try different things.
• 15:44
  You know, you go to the person's office today personal day house,
• 15:47
  no problem. Tomorrow you send e-mail,
• 15:50
  nothing, no problem. Another time you will try phone
• 15:52
  call. You know, if he clicks good.
• 15:54
  If he doesn't click, no problem. Then from phone call you will
• 15:57
  try WhatsApp. From WhatsApp you could try
• 15:59
  e-mail. You know, from there you could
• 16:01
  try find personal introduction as in different modes.
• 16:05
  Any which way, you don't know which one will click.
• 16:07
  So if you've been trying e-mail, e-mail is not working.
• 16:10
  You know, my voice said that was all right, pick up the phone.
• 16:13
  Like, and you know my client, the the sales member for my
• 16:17
  client, of course she knew she was going to call eventually.
• 16:19
  So I was saying that look, you know what, it's not be sad they
• 16:23
  wash you. I was just trying to get you to
• 16:26
  call quicker than you normally would.
• 16:28
  So you sent 2 emails, no response.
• 16:32
  Pick up the phone. Let's see.
• 16:34
  So anyway, so yeah, that's also another thing.
• 16:37
  Selling is a multimodal when you're doing outreach.
• 16:39
  So don't just keep doing the same thing over and over and
• 16:41
  over again. If you've been sending WhatsApp,
• 16:43
  sending WhatsApp, sending WhatsApp, no response.
• 16:45
  Pick up the phone, you've been calling, calling, calling,
• 16:47
  calling, no response, OK, send SMS. You've been sending SMS
• 16:51
  tire and it's not working. OK, try and walk into the
• 16:54
  office, but you're selling, especially when you're selling
• 16:58
  complex, expensive services. Selling is multimodal.
• 17:02
  So any which way, Multimodal just means different modes, many
• 17:06
  modes. So you're going to try many.
• 17:08
  Which way? Do one way, click, go, click,
• 17:11
  then let's see what else? What else?
• 17:17
  OK, yeah. So eventually, since we're not
• 17:19
  able to go in through the senior executives, we were going to try
• 17:22
  a different approach by approaching some of the account
• 17:25
  officers who are responsible for executing specific campaigns.
• 17:29
  And that's the next thing that my clients are going to try out.
• 17:34
  And it's something that I had suggested earlier and it's
• 17:38
  something that I endorse because the thing with people who how
• 17:43
  would I put it now, should I say account officers?
• 17:46
  The thing with account officers is whenever you're trying to
• 17:48
  reach out to them, if you ever get through to any of these
• 17:50
  kinds of people, usually because you, you and them are on the
• 17:54
  same level, you know, you, the salesperson and the other person
• 17:57
  who is the account manager or the why would I call it off?
• 18:01
  When you understand what I'm saying, then, you know, they're
• 18:04
  not be Olga Olga. They're on the lower rung.
• 18:07
  So these people on the lower rungs, you know, sometimes if
• 18:09
  you do a good job, they have absolutely no problem making
• 18:12
  introductions to the relevant person.
• 18:14
  So that's also a good approach that we are that we're going
• 18:19
  through with this. My, my client.
• 18:22
  So let me see. So I'm just looking through some
• 18:24
  of the notes that I scribbled. I think I have gone through most
• 18:30
  of the main issues I wanted us to talk about today.
• 18:36
  Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's it.
• 18:39
  So if you'd like to connect with me, then call me, send me a text
• 18:41
  message or a WhatsApp message on 0806466 2140.
• 18:48
  And then applying these things to your particular circumstances
• 18:51
  can be tricky. So if you'd like me to have a
• 18:52
  look at your situation, just call me, send me a text message
• 18:55
  or send me a WhatsApp message on 08064662140.
• 19:02
  If you're interested in a sales audit or want me to look at some
• 19:06
  of your business processes, then just send me a WhatsApp message
• 19:09
  on the same number. And if you want to be a part of
• 19:12
  my WhatsApp channel, that's not a problem, then just send me a
• 19:16
  WhatsApp message and I will hook you up.
• 19:18
  So you get to see updates every now and then on a new episodes,
• 19:22
  what I'm up to and things of that nature.
• 19:24
  So that's it. Thank you very much for your
• 19:26
  time and attention. Really sorry about the noise in
• 19:29
  the background, but I figured while I'm here, let me not waste
• 19:31
  time, let me just get one or two things done.
• 19:34
  So don't worry, the next episode is going to be much quieter.
• 19:37
  I'll wait until I get home. And anyway, you'll hear from me
• 19:43
  at the next episode.