Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

Meetings take a lot of time so it’s not a good idea to agree to one without a simple phone call to agree on the agenda and ask questions to see if this meeting is worth having in the first place! Phone calls might be scary, but getting good at them will save you time over the long run.

The proper paradigm to have around customer service is not just problem solving, but customer satisfaction. The key benefit to doing this? You’ll find out over time what it is that your customers love about you and you’ll be able to highlight that in your sales, marketing and branding activities.

Sales skills are handy in other aspects of the business because a good sales person won’t make any assumptions. When dealing with thorny customer service issues, ask questions to get to the root of the problem and what’s most important to the customer. Then you’ll have all the information you need to make amends.

Personalizing messages work because they show some regard to the recipient! You’ll get double marks if the messaging also turns out to be relevant to the receiver. Use this to increase your responses to your follow up and get more effective at business messaging.

Even though sales and personal selling should be the primary business skill we need to advance our businesses, eventually we’ll have to tackle knowledge management as well. This is a key tool in transferring “know how” to our employees and can help establish thought leadership for ourselves.

Finding mentors is also a sale of sorts because you’re trying to sell the other individual on the benefits of having a mentee hanging around. Don’t go straight for the jugular with your ask. Take some time out to overcome “know, like, and trust” and keep things informal.

Being talented at too many things isn’t a good excuse for not starting anything in particular. What’s the central thesis of yours? Money? Artistic fulfillment? Start with each idea within a given time frame and then see what meets the goal. Being multi talented is good. Being crippled by inaction isn’t.

This is a partner spotlight for individuals and business who have an aim of raising the level of professionalism in the Wedding Industry. Today we celebrate Seyi of Love Weddings NG and wedding vendor 101.

Getting into business by raising finances is a viable option and not everyone has to bootstrap to be in business. Sales skills will be essential to raising finance because you need “qualification” and “discovery” skills when speaking with potential financiers. These will help in drilling down to what their expectations are regarding the money. After that you need to have a “heart to heart” with yo...

Market validation is essential to figure out if you have a workable and marketable idea. You won’t find that out until you engage in a deliberate process of trying to sell and to bring your unique ideas to the wider market.

It’s important to know why you intend to make the plunge into being your own boss. After you’re done with your “why” and your motive, you have to come up with a good plan. That’s pretty much the opinion of @careerthoughtswithlyn over on Instagram who is our listener highlight of the day. This is good advice for intending newbies who are considering the leap from 9 to 5 to becoming a Wedding Indust...

It’s not just in the tech space that people seek financing before they start getting profits. If you’re going to do this in the wedding space, make sure you have the conversation about expectations. You have to be clear on what the expectations are on the size of the loan, what it would be used for, and the repayment modalities. If you don’t have the conversations, this is a recipe for stress and...

This is the idea that there has to be a receptive market for your product or your service. For those of you who are seeking an entrepreneurial life of freedom, this is another thing to contend with before you are truly free!

It’s tempting to think becoming your own boss means total autonomy and total freedom to live by your own rules! Unfortunately total autonomy also means extreme responsibility for yourself in personal, financial, and business matters. Becoming your own boss is not as liberating as most people make it out to be. Take the plunge! But have realistic expectations about that he cost of “total” freedom.

These can be viable forms of getting income that WAY outperforms your regular trade. However only engage in these with money you can afford to loose and be sure you’re education enough on the fundamentals before taking the leap.

Yes I talk primarily to wedding industry professionals, but anyone can and should listen to this podcast because the business and sales principles we discuss here are universal. The concrete application of the principles might differ depending on what business you are in, but you’ll be better of learning alongside this business community.

Apparently risk management isn’t just something for Other sectors of the economy. Small business owners and wedding industry professionals can profit from asking the question ”what could go wrong” or “what is the worst possible scenario and how can we plan for that?”

...the final comments on the topic since the first recording was interrupted by a phone call.

Calling up a referral doesn’t have to be hard. You already have some commonality with your mutual friend. Take up the conversation from there.

Taking the initiative is essential not just when you’re dealing with customers and prospective clients, but also when we’re dealing with fulfillment partners and other vendors we have to work with to make sure we have a happy client. If we don’t maintain the initiative when dealing with our fulfillment parters, the customer experience and other deliverables might suffer in the process.

With a clear course of direction for our clients to take, it’ll be a lot easier to move the sales process along.

Calling to debrief after you lose the deal is a worthy thing to do. You could learn about why you lost the deal in the first place (besides price) and learn about ways that you can improve your product or service delivery in the future. So yes you may have lost the deal, but make the call nevertheless.

The meeting of minds is a necessary prerequisite for getting into a business relationship. You shouldn’t get into one unless you’ve asked the questions to figure out if you’re in agreement when it comes to personality, goals, personal and corporate style and culture, budget and money and the overall vision for the project or the problem that is to be solved. This is another reason why it’s importa...

Unless you’re skilled at handling sales conversations, you’ll find yourself only dealing with low hanging fruit every time someone hits you up on the phone or via DM. This is a case study using online retail to show how we increase our chances for closing the sale from radon contacts online.

The benefits of asking a lot of questions of your customers and prospective clients is that you get all the intel and insights that you need to improve your business delivery and the very nature of your product or service. So remember to ask questions!... the focus should be on the right kind of questions to ask!