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

When people make referrals on pre-agreed commercial terms, the best way to say thank you is to stick to the terms faithfully! On the other hand, when people make referrals to you altruistically or in genuine support of your business... A thank you note or call would suffice. It would also be good practice to let them know along the way how everything went with the referral.

Passion, vission, and personality and not necessarily key ingredients you need for starting a business. Having a basic investment thesis that you're trying to validate, and being focused on acquiring the learnable skills that people often confuse for personality will take you much farther than the popular ideas about what people have for starting a business.

It pays to have a well-thought-out sales process before you get a random phone enquiry from a prospective customer. Don't freestyle to improve your odds for sales success on the call! plus it aims to play for permission marketing where you're not able to close the deal. That you are not a suitable match today, doesn't mean you're not going to do business together tomorrow.

Chasing down customers in the flesh or over the phone doesn't have to be such a bad thing! Yes it can be more time and labour intensive than growing leads over the internet, but it also forces you to gain some social savy and interpersonal skills that will come in handy for dealing with "walk ins" and people who find you on your "social" or the internet.

Establishing trust and the customer needs are both essential to reducing any resistance or apprehension that people face when talking to you in a sales conversation. Whether you should probe for a need or try to establish trust and credibility would depend on whether the prospective client has heard about you prior or not!

Trust, Need, Help and Hurry represent the fundamental stages a customer or buyer has to run through in coming to a buying decision. The philosophy behind the framework is that all sales situations are the same, and that all our customers migrate through the buying process in the same manner. Also critical to this approach is the idea of reducing sales resistance when talking to potential customers...

Tom Hopkins' Trust, Need, Help and Hurry framework is an easy map to internalise and guide one through the sales process and Customer Conversations. This episode is a skim through the key areas the philosophy preaches.

Trying to persuade and Influence either at home, work, or with potential clients should be process driven. This gives us the best chances for repeatable success and to readily diagnose the problems that arise when speaking with potential customers.

Customer Relationship Management tools are very handy for keeping track of conversations, maximizing customer lifetime value, and getting insights to improve the overall customer experience. Ignore these at your peril! Especially when you start growing a book of business 🙂

No matter how prepared you are during a sales conversation, unforseen circumstances can negatively affect the outcome! The only thing we're in control of is our sales process. Be faithful to your process and don't get emotionally tid to outcomes. Easier said than done, but worth remembering!

Closing the sale means you've opened up a relationship! Keep in touch with former clients not only to be nice, but also because there might be possibilities for repeat business and referrals either from said former client, or from friends, family and associates.

Not being straight about your intentions when you run promos via Instagram and email can risk you losing some personal and business credibility. We should always have opt in options and set expectations if our promos are intended to bring people into a prospecting chain.

Hitting the phone to drum up business first thing in the morning is the best way to ensure you have a steady stream of business all year long. This is a useful habit to have to get away from the "feast and famine" cycles that the average solopreneur faces.

Knowing the difference between these terms sets us up with the right level of expectations to have when dealing with them, as well as the right way of thinking about advancing our relationships with them across these different stages.

Customers have bought from you before and provide repeated business. That's the end goal of the sales process when we take a "prospect" whom we're currently chatting with to see if we can do business with them in the future!

No the customer isn't always right! But they do have a right to be listened to and validated at all times by us 🙂 the professionals with the expertise they trusted us with in the first place!

It's not a good idea to initiate cold text interactions focused on only what you need, where you're only what you can gain and at the end of the day, you have no follow through on agreed courses of action! This episode is a rant so listeners beware 🤣🤣🤣

FOREX might not be for you if your idea of an investment opportunity is something passive with steady returns over the long term. Think of FOREX more as "active trading" rather than an investment opportunity. Also tread with caution if you lack the drive for frequent technical analysis of market positions, the use of leverage, and if you lack the emotional resilience to hold your position while th...

Genuine multilevel marketing companies bring with them training in sales, distribution, business and personal development. What about other businesses of the sort that seem mostly concerned with growing pyramid consumption chains? This episode explores my personal opinions on the matter, and it's hopefully more nuanced than a "yes" or "no" answer.

Popular ideas about networking assume building personal relationships with the hope of doing business in the future. I argue that networking ought to be business, value, or "other" centric relationships focused on advancing other people's interests. Possible payoffs don't have to be immediate! We can settle for a status as a keen connector, and useful resource person. This expanded personal influe...

When clients say no or "ghost" us, it's not personal. It's more likely that we weren't dealing with a properly qualified client in the first place! Run through your qualifications check list to confirm that there wasn't a mismatch in our understanding of their needs, their budget, and any sense of urgency with their timelines. Rejection doesn't always have to lead to heartache 🙂

Stop worry about other entrants in your space undercutting the market with lowball pricing. Focus on things within your control like your sales and marketing processes with an emphasis on how to distinguish yourself and your services.

The typical qualities we're exposed to in the wedding industry are also essential to growing sales; communications, professionalism, networking, etc... The most important skill or attribute is to always have good outcome in mind. This will be the fuel needed especially in the early days when we're seeking the momentum to get things off the ground.

The reason why we're in business is to create customers. We do this through the marketing function of our businesses. Since customers are worth more over the long haul, we also have to look for creative ways to keep in touch!

When photographers think of expanding their business, they focus on gear and lenses, retouching theory, and they try to promote ideas around price uniformity. Time would be better spent focusing on improving the marketing and sales related aspects of the business to better promote and distinguish themselves. This is a cautionary tale to other professionals/ vendors in the wedding space!