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Yesterday I promised you guys that we would talk some more about what does it mean to sell and how to go about selling. And I think it's because when we're doing yesterday's podcast recording, I remember the conversation that I had with a former client of mine. We did some work maybe two months ago. And so I had a check in call with members of the team, excuse me, just to find out how they're going. They're coming along and we discussed some themes around, we discussed some themes around selling effectively.
Well, obviously if anybody's going to engage me as a consultant or a coach, I mean, that's what we're going to try and do in their business. So essentially today we're going to be continuing the conversation. What does it mean to sell and how do you go about selling? Now? I'm making today's recording out and about. I'm in the parking lot, so expect to hear some noise in the background, you know, birds chirping, people driving by,
people talking, that sort of thing. And if you love these sorts of issues, how do you sell, How do you grow a business? Then this podcast is for you. It's your jam. So please subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, or any player of your choice. And if you'd love to connect with me, I'm the host of the podcast. My name is Tave Shima Ayede and you can call or send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. So today we'll continue the conversation.
What does it mean to sell and how do you sell? So like I said, I had a series of conversations with a former client of mine, the sales team and the production team for all of my clients in order to find out basically what have they been up to? Now, the companies based in Lagos, they are in the content creation space. They create content for, they create social media content in particular, you know, for businesses, you know, to help them increase their engagement and also to drive their revenue.
And when they engaged me, they were just getting the business going. And the the business is a subsidiary of a larger company. And basically the larger company wanted me to come in, train up the people and see how we could get the company going so that they could quickly get enough customers to pay the salaries of the team. Because the parent company was anxious to make sure that, look, if we get this thing going, we want this thing to be able to take care of itself so that the parent company doesn't have to keep sending money to prop up the operations of the new company.
So I had some questions for the team. Basically, I wanted to know that since the last time we were together about two months ago, I wanted to know if their current team structure was still in place. Because, you know, we did set up some team structure and our responsibilities for different members of the team. So I wanted to be sure that the team structure was still in place. Let's see what else and how do I handling leads and how do I
handling priorities? Oh, by the way, if this is your first time listening to the podcast, every single time you hear a lead, this is what the term lead means. A lead is someone who might be interested in your product or your service, and the person has done something that you can see, that you can vouch for, that gives you a signal that, yes, these people might be in the market. So let's say you sell real estate. You can't just hand out Flyers to 500 people and say that those 500 people are leads.
They are not leads. Even if they give you their contact details, they are not leads. They are contacts. A lead is somebody has who has done something over it, something objective, something that you can see, something that you can point to, to say uh huh, this person donde signal as if they are interested. So if somebody collects your flyer, it doesn't mean the person is a lead, but the person gives you their phone number.
It doesn't mean the person is a lead. The person is a contact. If you talk to the person and the person says I am interested or I might be interested or I know somebody who might be interested, now this person is a lead or the person has taken some action. Let's say you're chilling in your office, you're in your real estate office and then somebody comes and says I'm thinking of getting property in Metama. Do you have any available?
How many do you have? How soon can we go and start looking at buildings or plots of land? Now that is the lead. So some of you wonder why splitting hairs? It's not really splitting hairs. We just need to be able to think clearly when it comes to business. You know, a prospect is a prospect, A contact is a contact. A lead is a lead. A deal is a deal. Not all of them are the same and not all of them should be treated the same way because some of you have a deal on your hand, but your opportunity as if it's a prospect, you still they,
you know, laid back. They do anyhow. Anyhow, you're not following up on point. A deal is a deal. A deal is something that is close to being closed. Meanwhile, a lead, it's just a lead you get the way you follow, where you follow up on on a lead. So we need to be very, very clear about who we're talking to. Are we talking to a contact? Are we talking to a prospect? Are we talking to a lead or are we talking? Do we have a possible deal on our hands?
So it's really, really important that we know what all these terms mean. So remember, a lead is somebody who has done something overt, something visible that you can see, that you can point to, that you can discuss with somebody concretely, excuse me, to say, they might be interested in your product or your service. So I wanted to find out if the processes were still in in place for the team on how they handle their leads.
Then of course, the goal of the engagement was to make sure that they got 12. I can't remember it was 12 or 17 clients because we ran the math and if they had 12 clients or 17 clients back when we worked together two months ago, they'll be able to get enough revenue to pay the salaries of everybody on the team. So in other words, 12 clients or 17 clients a month was not profitable per SE. It was just break even as per we can pay office rent, we can pay everybody's salary, we're not collecting money from head office.
So that was the goal. Now unfortunately we were not able to achieve the goal before we stopped our engagement, you know, for a number of reasons. The parent company wanted to change The Wanted to change their strategy for acquiring clients midway and usually is not a good thing, but you know, I'm used to it. It's just part of the the normal. It's just part of the normal way of doing things. You come in, you're working with a company, but the company is a subsidiary.
So definitely know how know how every once in a while head office go on say one or two things like what are people doing? You know why I do it this way? So I came in, I gave my recommendations, we started and I head office say, no, we are changing, we're going like this. And I told head office that look, you know that we tried it like this, this is more work, it's less chance of success. But then head office says, no,
this is what we're going to do. And of course, in our case, what I go do now I had said my own, that is what we should do in my own professional opinion, that's what we tried. So strategy was changed midway and and yeah, weren't able to achieve our goals. So I wanted to know that, OK, in the last two months since we've been together, how many clients did you guys sign up? The change in the strategy was when I was, when I came there at the beginning, I wanted us to do direct outreach.
Let us go out, let us come up with a hit list. Let us start targeting companies, let us approach those companies and let us try to get them to become paying clients from the start, from the beginning. But then the strategy that head office wanted to do was to use free promo to enter the market. By the way, here's a warning for you Nigerian companies who are listening. This strategy of free promo to enter the market, it sounds easy but it's a lot harder than any other thing you can do.
This idea that if you put your product or service app for free, a bunch of people will hop on and then maybe a month 2 or month three, you now tell them why I pay me money and then you get clients that way. It is hard and this is the reason why because conversion rates on these sorts of things are typically around 0 to 3%. So listen carefully. Those of you who are thinking of this free, free rollout strategy, it is possible for you to start your business, roll out your app, your product, your service or whatever, and you say we are totally free and 100
people will jump on board. In your mind, you'll be thinking that next month, if you tell them, Oh yeah, it's no longer free, you should pay me 55K now to access my product. You, you people have happy years and you're very optimistic. You're thinking that when you raise that price, 20 or 30 people will stay. It is possible that all 100 people who came for this free show, because they're all show free, it is possible that once you put the price, all of them will evaporate and then you are back to 0.
So it is zero to 3%. And then if 100 people jump on in the beginning and then at the end of one month you say well more that they pay me 55K, it is possible that 97 of them will fade and only three people will pay. So if you've tried this in the past and you got zero conversions, conversion just means people willing to take the next step. If you got zero conversions, it's normal. If you only got 3 out of 100, it's normal now.
So it'd be, in other words, for a business like my client that wanted to get 12 to 17, what they needed to do was they needed to reach out to, I can't remember, we did the math about 300 and something or 400 and something clients on the assumption that three people will convert. Now can you see why I'm saying that? This free thing, it looks easy, but it's not as easy as you guys think and it's not a good idea. But you know, you could advice clients, but it's not always a safe client to listen.
So if you are thinking about this sort of thing free promo and what you're looking for is you want three paying clients at the end of the month, then make sure you talk to at least 100 people to get those three clients. This is something I know first time from experience because as a wedding photographer, there were some of us, Yeah, I didn't do that, but there were some people who tried to get into the game by offering free portrait photography in the hopes that you will get clients.
If you are thinking about that, I'm telling you now, conversion is typically between zero and three. So in other words, if you want to get 3 clients at the end of the day, three people who come and patronize you and pay you for wedding photography or portrait photography or whatever, you should aim to talk to at least 100 people and give them. Imagine now free shoot, you go and do free photo shoot for 100 people. Imagine the time and the expense that goes into this thing.
So you have to give 100 people free shoot in the hopes that three of them will become customers. So please, all this free promo, free promo, free promo, because I did see I'm everywhere in Abuja, any Lagosans are sharp. I don't think Lagosans will be doing free, free, free, free, free. This free thing. It sounds easy to say the execution is hard, very hard. Now sales is already hard as it is. So consultants like me were in the business of trying to make this thing easier.
There's no easy way to grow sales, none. Any which way you want to grow your sales will be hard. But because sales itself is hard as it is, we try and make things easier. And honestly speaking, this free promo thing, you think it is a good way to sell, but it is very hard work, especially for SM ES, it is very hard work. Some of you will look at companies, big companies that have scale, try to do this strategy. You know, it's a different thing.
They have inventory, they have volume. So markets, supermarket chains like Grand Square for instance, Grand Square can come and say buy 2, get one free or bottle of Coke free for the 1st 100 people. They have scale, they have inventory. There are other things for people to buy. People can come in for the free Coke and on the way out they'll buy a loaf of bread. They're using this free offer to try and sell some other things.
Those of us who are starting off new in the SME space, we can't play these games. We don't have scale, Scale, meaning we don't have multiple locations, we don't have hundreds of products, we don't have the scale, and then we don't have the inventory. So like Grand Square, they sell tissue paper, they sell frying pans, they sell plates, they sell chicken, they sell cups, they sell sandwiches, they sell children's juice, they sell school bags, they sell biros.
There's even a pharmacy in the place. They sell TV's. They sell all kinds of things. So they have the inventory. They can afford to say the first 100 people who come here, you'll get a bottle of Coke free because there's other things to sell. There is no hope that people will shop for a free bottle of Coke. Somebody will buy a loaf of bread. Another person will say pharmacy day here, they'll go and buy Panadol. Another person will say they get TV for this place.
Somebody might buy ATV. So please, fresh people coming into the game, new entrance, small and medium scale people. You want to sell? Well, I beg this free promo thing. I'm telling you for free. This free promo thing. Tread wisely. In my own opinion, avoid it outright. There'll be a time and a place where we can say free. Free promo 25% discount 75%. There'll be a time for that. The time is not now. We're better off doing the hard work as per your fresh into the space.
Just come and sit down and know that you know what, let us try and get people to pay BAM from the beginning. All right, so sorry, forgive me for that free rant. Anyway, don't mind me. You guys know I don't like anything free. Well, when it comes to growing business, I don't like anything free. If you give me something free, I will take it. But you know, as a business owner, I I beg anyway, So I also wanted to I had submitted a report to the team.
I also wanted to know how people at the parent company took the took the report. Any feedback on the report? Because unfortunately I didn't have OK, politically it wasn't possible. Let me say it wasn't possible anyway. Let me just say I wasn't able to get any good contacts in the parent company. So all my contacts only in the subsidiary company. So I always had to go through a middle man. So I need to know what did the people in the parent company think about the report?
So the conversation now that I had with the guys, they were still doing outreach and thankfully they had taken my recommendations in the report and they had stopped this free promo. They stopped it because the team that I was working with was a six man team. And honestly speaking, if you're going to run Freeman promo and what you guys are selling is content creation, you can't use a six man team to be doing a free promo market entry.
You can't because there's also the matter of fulfillment, you know, creating the content, servicing the accounts. So first of all, we need to talk to about 300 or 400 people. And you can't use a six man team to talk to 300 to 400 people, especially since especially if those six people are supposed to be the ones who create the work at the end of the day. So from the beginning I told him, look, this thing is not possible.
It's not going to work. It's a matter of mathematics or it's a matter of physics. We have to talk to 400 people and people that ones are going to do the work. The six of you that how you go doing. You're not you're not human beings, so you're not superhuman. So they they scratch that, they stop with the free plan. And what they were doing is they started talking to specific accounts and trying to get them to buy. Now, although they decided to give samples for specific accounts that seem to be promising prospects.
And I said, OK, that's not a bad idea. But then I asked them what was the criteria and they said no criteria. And please, that is a problem when you are trying to sell and you're trying to come up with a new strategy. We need to be absolutely clear on what the strategy is. If we're going to offer some people samples because they look like promising prospects, we need to decide who is a promising prospect. That's the number one thing.
Are we only going to offer free samples to a promising prospect? Because it is a big company that has 15 employees and puts out 10 pieces of content every day? So therefore by the time we sign them, we expect to be getting, you know, let's say 300K in revenue a month from this specific account. So excuse me, I'm recovering from a gold, but we need to be clear what is the criteria? Because when you have 6 guys who are out in the field and who are trying to sell a product and you say we'll give samples for promising prospects but you don't tell them who is a promising prospect.
Wahala, good day. Somebody will offer a free sample to a prospect that he thinks is promising by the time you look at it, you say, but these people only post once in a month. Now even if we charge them 30K per post, that's only 30K that we'll get from this from this person. Why are you offering them? For example, you will find a wide variety of of prospects coming in. So if you want to try something like this, you need to be very specific.
Who is a promising account? And in this case, I think promising accounts should not just be a matter of how sweet the conversation was, but it should be like, how much money do we expect to make at the end of the day? But you have to define it. Promising prospect. How big is the company, number of employees in this case, since they're in content, in content production for social media, What kind of social media assets do they have now?
What's the potential size of the account? If we do something for free, We give them a small sample and then they sign up. How much do we hope to be making? 300,400 thousand, 500,000? You know, people will play all those games. In fact, myself, I play those games too. I won't lie. That's how I get some of you to become clients. You guys call me, we have a conversation. This is me already talking to you guys for free. And then some of you realize that boy, will I say this guy get sense or this service is very, very valuable and that some of you take me up.
So there's some people who that's how we start the conversation and so far nobody has taken me up on my. My most affordable offer, I'll be my cheapest offer. I didn't put it that way. Nobody has taken me up for my cheapest offer because eventually you have a conversation with me and you're like, hey, this boy tight. And then people usually end up taking the more expensive packages. But you can see that I have to, I have to gauge like, you know,
is it going to be worth it or not? So offering free samples for specific accounts, not a bad idea. Just make sure that you decide on who a promising prospect is and you make sure you inform your sales team because you don't want a situation where six boys go out to settle on your behalf. And then when they come back, all the contact details are looking at that. If there's no rhyme or reason, then I also wanted to find out if they came up with a new prospect list.
I'm really big on lists because so many people try to sell from idea or sell from memory or just sell from motivation. As far as you wake up today, you're on fire. Then you go and start talking to people and then you wake up tomorrow and you know the spirit is weak and so you just relax. But you know, come up with a list. Let there be a plan that we are following. This is the list. There are 500 people on the list. There are six of us.
More share the list equally. So how many people will take what or who will take what and then we'll start working. So I need to make sure that they didn't fall out of that list habit because people stopped the list habit very easily, very quickly. So yes, they had a list and I was very happy. And over the last month they had approached 100 clients. Now can you guys hear what I'm talking about? Because there was a list over the last month they spoke to over 100 clients.
If you're going to wake up and sell based on theme, sell based on Ginger. I can assure you 6 of you won't talk to over 100 people because on some days motivation will be high and you talk to plenty people. And now some days you wake up and be like Kai, what the hell? A big man sleeps more. Or I get that film with you on Netflix, I will finish it. You know, Netflix and chill. Well, because there's a list. You don't, they streamline some things.
You don't they, you know, make some things official. It's a process. That is why six boys were able to talk to 100 people. However, even though they spoke to 100 people that were hitting the wall, they hadn't gotten one paying client. They had dropped a couple of proposals, they had done some physical meetings and they had made some phone calls. So basically what I was doing now was I started going over, OK, what did you guys try?
What could we have done better? So I've tried to try to map out the outline of what they were doing. See, this thing is very, very important. Technology is important, but honestly, pencil and paper, people don't know what pencil and paper, pencil and paper common by roll and paper. A very, very good tool to grow your business. When something is on paper and you can see it or you draw the thing out, you will now make sense.
Like so it is along this part of the chain that we are fumbling. So please, it is nice that we all have fancy phones, fancy computers and everything, but please don't overlook common pencil and paper. It will improve your life, it will improve your business. So pencil and paper will begin in Mapper. So what they were doing was they were sending proposals. So to send proposals though, first they would research clients online and then they would note down some suggestions that they had for the clients to get sales and business growth.
Then from there, some people were interested and then some people now started saying, ah, you're too expensive. So that is what they were doing. But I drew it out on a sheet of paper outline, sending proposal, research stage, come up with suggestions, reach out to see who is interested. And then the outcome, which was people saying that they're getting back on price now, joining it out on a piece of paper. We could now see that where the problems were.
People are saying you're too expensive. Let me get back to you. We can see that that's where a problem is. So we now know that we need to do some work when it comes to setting expectations when it comes to money and then handling money conversations. And I reminded them that look, I told you guys before, when we work together two months ago, these money conversations, we need to have this thing upfront. This is the rationale of having money conversations upfront.
It is a waste of your time and it is a waste of your prospects. Time for you to spend 2 weeks building relationship with somebody. Then they will now say you are too expensive. Now listen, if you are too expensive, this is the honest truth. You have been too expensive from day one. It is better for both of you to own up to that fact on day one, on day three, than to wait until day, you know, 35. So it is a matter of respect for yourself and for your prospects to have these money conversations early.
And if any of you try to engage me, it is a conversation that we'll have early. Now, OK, I've heard based on what you said, if I understand the situation correctly, this is where we are, this is what we're trying to achieve and this is where you're trying to go. Am I correct? You say yes or you say no. If you say no, no problem, we'll go back to trying to do need analysis and discover what needs to be done. But when I understand it correctly, I was OK based on this da, da, da that to achieve these aims, we need to have a working budget of anything between, you know, 400,000 to maybe about 650,000 naira for the next 4 weeks.
Is that correct? By the way, I'm not saying I will charge you 650, just call me first. Let's have the conversation. No, they fear that I said 650. I'm not saying I'll charge you 650, just call me first. But we'll have the conversation that we're looking at anything between 400 to 650 for the next 4 weeks. Where do you fall along that scale? I will ask you. Or is that beyond what you're willing to invest? I will ask you and we'll have this conversation early Day 2.
Day three, we'll have this conversation because if you're A20K person, I want to know early so that you disappear from my inbox. I want to know early. I'm not going to invest six weeks with you only to find out you're willing to spend 30K. No, we will have this conversation early. Day 2. Day three, we already done the talk. AM. I've not given you a specific amount, I've just given you a range. You could cost anything between this and this.
Where do you fall along that scale? How does that sound? Is this beyond what you are willing to invest? What expectations did you have in mind? Now it is when somebody says that 300, to be honest, it's a stretch for me, but I'll see if I can make it happen if somebody say something like that, OK, there's hope. I can budget on some things. The person can budget on some things because there's hope. There's some people say, ah,
300, Bao, you know that there's no room. Then there's some other people who say 650. If we're looking at 650, what can we expect to get for those kind of results? You now know that, OK, you're dealing with somebody where they're reasonable, but either way, we should be having these money conversations early. You don't give a specific price, you give them a range. You say based on what we have discussed, based on what you're trying to achieve, to achieve these outcomes, we're looking at anything of a budget between X&Y, then get feedback from them.
Get feedback. We're looking at a range of between X&Y. How does that sound? This is what you're willing to invest? What did you have in mind? Like anyhow, should I get some feedback and then you let them know that, OK, what I gave you was a range, I'd have to ask you a couple of questions, more questions so that we can narrow down to a specific price. That's the price that will now be in your proposal. But either way, money conversations, have money conversations early.
There is no point in investing 6 weeks, 4 weeks, 12 weeks in building relationship with people. Only at the end of three months, somebody will now come and tell you that you're too expensive. You will now be angry with the person. It is not the customer's fault. It is your fault. You didn't bring up the money thing early. How you be talking to somebody for four weeks? You didn't bring up money. Don't you have anything better to do with your time?
You guys stop being afraid. Stop being afraid. What's the worst that will happen? Somebody will say OK and they will say bye bye and they will leave. That's the worst that will happen. Then you will stand up and look for somebody else to talk to, but stop being afraid. Bring up money conversations early. Respect yourself, respect your time and respect your prospects. Respect them and respect their time. If this thing is not going to work.
No, from the beginning, you know this guy made this skit. What's his name? This guy, they did a 111111 challenge. What's his name again? Brain jotter. He did this video where he woke up to a girl and he was talking to you together and was smiling and everything I said he said wait, wait, wait, babe, no, no, they talk too much. What's your genotype? And she said they said no, no, no more. They talk to no more, no talk too much.
What is your genotype? The girl said a yes. And I said OK, I don't go. I mean, it's this kid, you know, and it's funny and it's comedy, but you understand the guy is a yes. He's looking for a wife. He's looking for marriage. He doesn't want to marry any babe that is a S because if a S marry AS they go born sickle cell and he doesn't want to have any child that has sickle cell. So it's a joke, you know, but you know, it's it's the same thing in business.
It's the same thing as in relationships. It gets on babes that you'll approach and after a while that the feeling and everything she'll ask you outright that have you given your life to Christ. She'll ask you because she know I'm marrying Pagan. Excuse me. So I'm not saying that you know, if you know born again that you're a bad person. Well, for her it's very simple. I know I'm marrying Pagan. Therefore she'll ask you have you given your life to Christ?
The answer is either yes or no. If the answer is yes, uh huh. Should be looking forward to it next day. If the answer is no, she'll say I beg are they go that you're a fine boy and all and I like you and you get prospects, but no feed one. It's the same thing in business. Some boys too. Get some boys where you will be approaching the babe. You're flowing with them everything. And then you now hear that the baby's from Onicha.
Say Onicha. Yeah, and then the boy will just evaporate because as far as he's concerned, you know, he is from Emily or whatever. And the guy, no, am I anybody from Onicha, whether for spiritual reasons or cultural reasons or financial reasons or whatever. So if we do these kind things in personal, on the personal relationship front, we supposed one for business as well. And one way of qualifying straight from the beginning is we have these money conversations early.
Anyway, let me just move on. I have taken up too much of your time because radio enter like 30 minutes. So and you see why you map out the process. So let me check my notes. Let me just go straight to the point. Let me hit them so we can wrap up. So this reason why pencil and paper are very important. You map out something. You now see that, OK, this is the area of the chain where they think they're weak, we suppose, reinforce I'm here.
Then for the physical visits, there were dropping Flyers and business cards and then trying to schedule calls. So we spoke about that thing again. I told them, look, two months ago I told you guys that you do not lead the sales process with dropping proposals. You don't because this is the honest truth, whether in Nigeria, in America, Australia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, you know, anytime people don't read proposals, people are busy, they get work, they have families,
people are busy. You come and drop a 12 page brochure, you know, they'll just skim it. Ah, this thing looks nice. They'll skim it and then they'll close it and they'll go about their work. People don't read proposals. So you cannot use your proposal to be the driving force of the business. You can't. There's a stage for proposal and that stage is not in the beginning. The stage is not in the beginning. I repeat proposal, it works, but it doesn't work when that is your opening salvo.
You don't start with the proposal. So I reminded them. Now look, when I was you guys, we discussed that this is the traditional prospect process. Oh, sorry, remember I'm in the parking lot. That's why you're hearing people starting cars and driving off. So I reminded them, now look for people in your own space. The traditional process when it comes to sales would be prospecting stage. Prospecting stage is when we're deciding who are we going to talk to.
You guys already don't know who we're talking to. People in fashion and in real estate so that we can create content for them. So that's stage 1 prospecting. Who are we going to talk to? Where are they online or offline? How are we going to approach them? How are we going to start off the conversation? That's the early, that's stage 1 prospecting stage. Then stage 2 is the actual outreach. Outreach is when you go out as per you see now outreach out plus reach.
You have gone out to reach out to that person. So that's where if it is online, you don't they slide into their DM or if it is a physical something you're going into the office to try and get appointment. So stage 1 prospecting, stage 2 outreach. And I reminded them and I'm telling you now listening to on the podcast, when you're doing outreach, the goal is not to sell on the spot. Very few people are that good now. They'll enter the office now and then.
They'll sell on the spot now and walk away with a paying client. Now, very few people are that good. It's a hard job. Don't give yourself that kind of job. Slow things down, especially for those of you in a complex sale. When you go for outreach and you go and you talk to people, the goal that you're trying to achieve there is you're just trying to figure out, is this person interested? Do they have a problem? What is the nature of the problem?
That is the focus of your initial outreach. So that if they are not interested, you will say thank you very much for your time and you will leave and you will drop a flyer and you'll never come back again because they're not interested. Or if they have a problem, but the nature of the problem is not of a serious nature for them or it's not something they're willing to spend money on, you say thank you very much for your time, and then you will drop a flyer and then you will leave and you will not come back again.
Because even though they have a problem, they don't think the problem is that that big of a deal. So prospecting stage 1, stage 2, outreach. When you get to outreach, you're not trying to sell, you're not trying to figure out is this person interested? Do they have a problem? After you figure out whether they're interested or they have a problem, the next stage is meeting you now call for meeting now. OK, based on all talks spoken about so far, looks as if you guys have issues around this or this or it looks as if my product or service can help you here and there.
So this is what I'm going to recommend. Are you guys free for Wednesday next week? Me and my team can show up again. Let us discuss in depth so that we can come up with some proposals on how we can help. Can you guys see how proposal is beginning to enter the picture? Can you guys see that this is the natural order of things? You know, a child is born, you crawl from crawling, you walk from walking, you run. It's like that in business too.
There's a natural order of things. You don't walk into the door and then slam a proposal on somebody's table. The time for the proposal will come. So when you call for this meeting now and you get all the information you need now, you can create your proposal now you create it. And this is when somebody will read it because the things that are in the proposal will come from things that you discussed in that meeting. The things that are on their mind, the thing where they took them, the thing where they bond them, the thing that is really,
really, you know, firing them up, then they'll read the proposal because your proposal is going to be answering specific questions that they've been asking you in the meeting, specific issues that have been raised and addressed during the meeting. You can see now that is the genesis of the proposal. Some of you are just going to drop proposal on the table. The proposal you're dropping on somebody's table. The information in the proposal,
where did you get it from? You just used your idea and you think they'll read it. You're just using an idea. No, Slow down to sell well, slow down to move fast. Go through the normal process. It is only when you have gotten a sense of what their burning priorities are that you can now create a proposal. And in fact, you can see now that in this case, your proposal won't even be thick. It won't even be a 20 page proposal.
Your proposal will now be slim. It will be two or three pages because it is answering very specific questions that they want to answer. This is how your proposals are short, they're effective. They're straight to the point and you increase the chances that it will be read because your proposal is answering two or three main questions that came up during the meeting. Simple. And then of course, you know, you put in there that you know for option A, you know this amount, option B that amount,
option C that amount. Then after the proposal, you now try to close, which is where you try and get people to take action on the issues that you have discussed so far. But I hope you guys can see when it comes to selling, see the flow, right? But for some reason, this proposal culture, they don't enter Niger. Everybody wants to sell. The first thing you do is you create proposal. Now understand that when it comes to government power status like Ministry of Finance and all or not, they want you to prepare proposal and buying that first.
But I'm not talking about selling to government. So yes, if we selling to government, I play that game. Create the initial proposal and send and just drop. You use that one to get into a DG's office or into minister's office. Then from there you can now start talking in serious business. You can always amend the proposal later. But outside of those kind of situations, maybe you're selling to Ministry of Finance or you want to propose something to CBN.
Outside of that, relax. Proposal is not the first thing. The first thing, prospecting after that, outreach at the outreach stage, are they interested? What's the nature of the problem? Then you propose a meeting, secure a meeting. At that meeting, discuss in details, find out what the problem is. It is then you'll now be able to give an effective proposal saying this is how my product or my service will help you and it will help you.
Based on option A, this is the amount. Option B, this is the amount. Option C, this is the amount for option C, this is what we give you. Option B, this is what we give you. Option A, this is what we give you. So yeah, that's a conversation that I had with the team. Basically. There's some other stuff that we discussed, but it's already 14 minutes. I don't want this broadcast to get any more longer than it already is.
Excuse me, but you can see why I said I wanted to share with you guys the conversation that I had with the team because there's some repercussions. I mean, repercussions have been implications, some implications for how we sell. So 1 moment. OK, sorry, I'm back. I was about to sneeze. I don't want to sneeze into the microphone and turn some of you off. You know, I feel as even Muko is hitting your eardrums. So yeah. So that's why I shared the conversation because it has implications for how it is that we sell.
So if you're discovering the podcast for the first time, I hope you're having fun. I hope the things that I'm saying make sense. And if you love these sorts of things are big, subscribe. It's not for my benefit. Actually, it is for your own benefit because when I drop the next episode, you'll get the notification and you come and you get that goodness to learn about how to sell, how to promote yourself, promote your agenda, promote your business,
promote your career, promote your whatever. So that's it. And that's all for today. Thank you very much for listening. Again, I'm your host, Tavishima Ayede. If you'd love to connect with me, call, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 6466 2140 and No Fear. I called 650 doesn't mean I would charge 650. There's some people where you would charge 650. There's some people where you would charge 1.7. There's some people where you would charge two 5300.
So during no, they fear. And in the beginning, I'm not trying to collect money from anyone. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, is there a problem here? Can I will help this person solve the problem? And you know, for the people we know who you know, you don't get money, it's not a problem. I will always point you to one or two resources where you can always find some help. So don't worry. So far, I have only turned away one person and that's because that *** was trying to hit me up after midnight and like what the hell, You know Niger, we did.
What are you calling after midnight? Like I don't know you. So I've only turned away one person so far and it's been five years, so reach out. I love meeting listeners of the podcast. So that's it. I'll catch you guys some other time.