Why you can't sell expensive products using spam

Hello and welcome to today's episode. Apologies because I'm out and about. I'm making today's podcast recording in the parking lot. I'm actually at the airport because I'm supposed to pick up someone. And anyway, the flight got delayed and I figured let me not let this time get to waste. So I just pulled out the microphone and let's see what we can get done. Now today I want to look at some random ideas around prospecting for those of you who are listening to the podcast for the first time.

Prospecting is what prospecting means is any activities or any planning or any strategy that you do around looking for people who are looking for people who might be interested in your product or your service. So once you identify who those people are, you figure out a plan for how you're going to approach them, whether online or offline. And essentially that is what prospecting is all about. South, eventually we go past the planning stage and we have to get to the outreach stage.

Outreach is when we actually start taking action. So whether it's phone calls, whether it's office visits, whether it's WhatsApp messages, whether it's Telegram messages, whether it's Zoom sessions, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to do, eventually we have to start trying to reach out to our potential customers. Really sorry about the noise here. I hope it doesn't come in too much through the microphones. OK, now, now what inspired this session was before I got to the airport, I had a meeting with one of my clients currently, and they are in the tech space and they sell some fancy software that is supposed to help with customer acquisition costs.

So we're supposed to help you advertise much more effectively to your customers. And it's a product that is aimed at people who are in the business to consumer space. So that is big businesses that are trying to look for retail customers, you know, like me, to open accounts with them. So the prospecting activities that we've been doing, we're reaching out to fintechs, we'll be reaching out to banks. What else? Betting sites, you know,

different people in the financial space, you know, that have to try and advertise and get customers. So OK, now one thing that crossed my mind, there's this software called Apollo. Oh, OK, well, not a software. How what would I call it now? Well, anyway, Apollo is a service that you can use. So you can use it either by going on the website, I think it's Apollo dot IO, or you can download the app, or at least there's an app available for people who are on Android phones.

I can't remember if there's one for people who use iPhones. So Apollo is a website that you can use to look for details of your prospects, you know, to get their names, to get their phone numbers so that you can do outreach much more effectively. Because remember, like I said, part of prospecting is we're trying to figure out who are people that might be interested in my product or my service. Then where do these people hang out?

And then where can I reach out to them in person or where can I reach out to them online so that I can engage them in a conversation, see if they have a problem that my product or service can solve. And then after that, I can make a pitch to show how it is that my product or my service can help. So the hard part, actually trying to get these people's details. Now I must confess that I have used Apollo in the past, but I

didn't do a good job at it. And so I did the Nigerian thing. Now, you know, I used it, it didn't work. So I just said the software doesn't really work. But apparently the problem was not that it doesn't work, the problem was that I was bad at it. Because now that I'm working with this client of mine, he has a member of his team who is a specialist in Apollo and that's all she has been doing. And so far the thing has been working like magic.

Well, to me personally, she has been able to get like 4, let's let's say about four details, 4 customer details, that's names, 4 number and e-mail addresses. And so far on the four, on the four accounts, it has worked. It has worked quite well. So I must admit I'm impressed. So now I know that the problem was not with the service, it's not with Apollo, but the problem was with me. So what I am going to do So what I'm going to do is I'll just try and learn how to be much more effective at using Apollo.

But anyway, on this one, the reason why I'm making this podcast episode is just to let you guys know that sometimes the problem is not with the tool. Sometimes the problem is with you. So it's not that the tool doesn't work. It's just that maybe perhaps you haven't figured out how to make the thing work correctly. So for those of you who listen to any podcast episodes where I may have said bad things about Apollo, I take that back.

I just have to learn how to use the software correctly because now that I've seen someone who is an Apollo specialist, I've seen her using it to good effect. Oh, by the way, Apollo, just the same way that we spell Apollo in Nigeria. But of course, you know, when we say Apollo is not Apollo like in, you know, that eye disease, it's not like conjunctivitis. So Apollo. Apollo. Yeah. So that's what they've been. That's one of the tools I've been using for getting customer details.

Now, I mentioned that I had tried Apollo in the past, but I wasn't happy with the results. So what I started doing was to use LinkedIn instead to get company details. So let's say I wanted to reach out to someone. OK, I'm in the airport now. So let's just assume that I'm trying to do some business with the FAAN. That's the Federal Aviation Federal, I don't know, Airport Aviation Authority and whatever FAN stands for, they are the body that regulates aviation in Nigeria.

So they make sure that airports are safe. They make sure that airports are properly scheduled, properly managed, you know, things like that. So let's assume now that I was trying to do some business with the FAAN. Let's assume that I'm trying to do some business with the FAN now. Before I was blown away by the Apollo specialist work using Apollo, what I would have done was I would have gone on to LinkedIn and I would have done a search for FAAN.

That is fun. And then of course it is going to give me a number of results. It will show some posts that are relevant to FAAN. I'll have a look at that because it's possible that maybe the author of the post or maybe some of the people who commented on the post might be relevant people that I could look at. Then I would also narrow down the search to people, people on LinkedIn because LinkedIn has LinkedIn has an advanced search feature that allows you to search according to people,

locations, organizations, different topics, you know, things like that. So I would have toggled the the LinkedIn feature afterwards to limit it to people only so that I'll be looking at people who either work with FAAN. Again, that's the body that regulates airports in Nigeria. So I'll be limited to looking at people who work with a FFAAN. Let's see what else, OK, People who work with FAN or people who have some relationship to someone who works with the FAAN.

So that is one of the tools that I would have been using to find customer details. Then of course, you guys already remember the episodes where I spoke about how I use Truecaller, Google and then AI tools, you know, to find information about potential customers. Then I'm about to go and, you know, have a visit with or call or send a text message or have a chat with. So those are some ideas around prospecting, but I just want to say I take back any bad thing I

said about Apollo. It's a correct tool. It's a nice tool. It's a very correct tool and if you know how to use it well, you can get some really fantastic results because I've seen someone use it to get the correct name of the correct e-mail address and the correct phone number for about let's say four or five people in the banking sector in Niger. So I won't like, I'm impressed. So I'm going to reopen my account and then see how I can learn how to work with that.

And it also goes to show that you learn new things everyday. So I'm a specialist in the sales process. It doesn't mean I'm a specialist when it comes to individual sales tools like Apollo. Then another thing that we discussed with my client today was they wanted to use automated messaging for reaching out to prospects and I had to tell them to match break seriously that I had to slow down. And that's the reason why now using automated messaging is not a bad idea.

That is when you know, you set up your, you know, now you fancy e-mail marketing people, you set up all your computer programs, you collect the e-mail addresses and then messages all start going out automatically to people. You know, whether it's every day or whether it's every two, two days or every three days or every five days or every one week or every two weeks or whatever. But it sounded like they wanted this to be a high volume campaign where messages be going out repeatedly to people every number of days.

So I have to tell them that, look, you guys need to match break because what you're doing is you're selling an expensive service that's denominated in dollars and it's sophisticated piece of software that's supposed to help people with customer acquisition, that's supposed to help people get customers affordably and more affordably than than Google and Meta and TikTok. Meta is the yeah, Meta Facebook. So I told them that look, this approach of high volume is not going to work because automated messaging, especially high volume messaging, usually works when you're dealing with low cost items, you know, cheap,

cheap something. Then while you also need high volume of people to close the sale, of course, if it's cheap, cheap something, you need plenty of people to buy it so that you can make money. Like TomTom, for instance. I think TomTom now is about, I think the last time I checked, TomTom was like maybe 10 naira, maybe 15 naira. So on the 59 item, you know, you need millions of people to be buying before you can make good money.

Or like when you're selling fancy expensive software, you know, where license licenses can be anything like I don't know, maybe 10 thousand $20,000, you know, something like that. You know, for that one, if you get a few 100 people to buy from you in a year, it's not bad as a start, you know, in year 1 because it's my customer that currently in year 1 of the business. So low volume something then If it's a low volume, then yes,

please continue to blast people with those emails. And you know, people either buy or they die, you know, but shadow must buy from you just be blasting the thing out with a high volume. So when it's low cost, you need a high volume. They're sure go on with the automated sales campaigns. And especially if something has a short sales cycle, you can harass people until they buy because of your sales cycle for something is, is let's say, 2

weeks or three weeks. OK. Like, let's say, OK, school holidays are here now. So let's say you go to Jumia and you look at bicycles because maybe your kids want bicycles. And so you add to cart, but then you don't finish your transaction. Now, a bicycle is the kind of thing that somebody will buy, you know, sharp, sharp, one week, two weeks. So if Jumia decides to pepper you with emails because you looked at bicycles, you know,

you looked at a couple of bicycles, you put one to cart and then Jumia decides that they're going to be blasting with emails, you know, every two, two days for the next two weeks. You know that one. It makes sense because in a bicycle you want to buy. So now you know, no problem. But then if it's an expensive item that you're trying to buy, maybe like you walk into a car dealer and you look at a Tesla, for instance, a Tesla cyber truck, because the guy gets your e-mail address.

You'll be somehow, if that guy starts preparing you with emails every single day, it's a Tesla cyber truck. You know, for a big item like that, for an expensive item, you can't be harassing people every day with their e-mail. Come and buy it. Come and buy it. No, you know, your e-mail will be a matter of relationship nurturing. You know, let them be seeing you every once in a while. You know, you might be dropping message, I don't know, maybe once a month.

You know, I'm not in the car space. So I don't know what's an acceptable cadence, an acceptable flow to be using. But it will be peppering somebody with emails every single day on top of an expensive item that cost 400. And I think last time I checked was like 430 million naira or something like that. You know, it's, it's somehow. So if you're, if you're also thinking about prospecting, doing business, outreach to people, I want to start blasting them.

We e-mail, it doesn't work for everything. The quick, quick e-mail every two, two days, every 3-3 days. It's only if your item is low cost, your item is cheap. Then because of that, you need high volume. You're looking for hundreds and thousands and millions of people to buy. And then it's a short sale cycle. If what you have is an expensive item, you don't need, you know, millions of people to buy, you know, per SE. And if the sales cycle is long,

then take it easy with the emails. Now, any kind of outreach that you do in this situation, that's in a situation where you're dealing with an expensive product, you know, like my client software, what you have to do in this case is your outreach has to be personalized. Your outreach has to be custom. Even if your outreach is high touch, high touch just means you're buzzing people all the time or calling people all the time.

Now, whether you do high touch or soft touch or low touch, the most important thing is this kind of outreach has to be personalized and it has to be custom. It has to be tailored to this unique individual. Every phone call they receive, every WhatsApp message they receive, every text message that they receive, It has to be clear that the message is personalized to them, is not created by a bot, it's not created by some automated e-mail, something,

even if it's created by a bottle automated e-mail, whatever, it should be customized in such a way that the person receiving the message will think that the message was intended for him or her and only him or her or nobody else. So that's a few words on this automated emailing. Then for this client of mine, we'd had some trouble trying to reach some of the senior executives of the bank because one of the people that we tried to reach was the head of our brand management and experiential marketing.

That didn't work out. Then we also tried getting in touch with the brand marketing and corporate communications manager. That also didn't work out. Well, for this one, I jumped in on the phone and I tried to reach this particular executive. He didn't answer my call, but we ended up having a very brief WhatsApp exchange. Oh, by the way, that's another thing. If you're trying to reach out to people and you're sending emails and sending emails and sending emails and it's not working,

then don't stick to the same mode. Because when it comes to sales, sales is multimodal. It means you go try them any which way. You try different things. You know, you go to the person's office today personal day house, no problem. Tomorrow you send e-mail, nothing, no problem. Another time you will try phone call. You know, if he clicks good. If he doesn't click, no problem. Then from phone call you will try WhatsApp.

From WhatsApp you could try e-mail. You know, from there you could try find personal introduction as in different modes. Any which way, you don't know which one will click. So if you've been trying e-mail, e-mail is not working. You know, my voice said that was all right, pick up the phone. Like, and you know my client, the the sales member for my client, of course she knew she was going to call eventually. So I was saying that look, you know what, it's not be sad they wash you.

I was just trying to get you to call quicker than you normally would. So you sent 2 emails, no response. Pick up the phone. Let's see. So anyway, so yeah, that's also another thing. Selling is a multimodal when you're doing outreach. So don't just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. If you've been sending WhatsApp, sending WhatsApp, sending WhatsApp, no response. Pick up the phone, you've been calling, calling, calling,

calling, no response, OK, send SMS. You've been sending SMS tire and it's not working. OK, try and walk into the office, but you're selling, especially when you're selling complex, expensive services. Selling is multimodal. So any which way, Multimodal just means different modes, many modes. So you're going to try many. Which way? Do one way, click, go, click, then let's see what else? What else? OK, yeah. So eventually, since we're not able to go in through the senior executives, we were going to try a different approach by approaching some of the account officers who are responsible for executing specific campaigns.

And that's the next thing that my clients are going to try out. And it's something that I had suggested earlier and it's something that I endorse because the thing with people who how would I put it now, should I say account officers? The thing with account officers is whenever you're trying to reach out to them, if you ever get through to any of these kinds of people, usually because you, you and them are on the same level, you know, you, the salesperson and the other person who is the account manager or the why would I call it off?

When you understand what I'm saying, then, you know, they're not be Olga Olga. They're on the lower rung. So these people on the lower rungs, you know, sometimes if you do a good job, they have absolutely no problem making introductions to the relevant person. So that's also a good approach that we are that we're going through with this. My, my client. So let me see. So I'm just looking through some of the notes that I scribbled.

I think I have gone through most of the main issues I wanted us to talk about today. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's it. So if you'd like to connect with me, then call me, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 0806466 2140. And then applying these things to your particular circumstances can be tricky. So if you'd like me to have a look at your situation, just call me, send me a text message or send me a WhatsApp message on 08064662140.

If you're interested in a sales audit or want me to look at some of your business processes, then just send me a WhatsApp message on the same number. And if you want to be a part of my WhatsApp channel, that's not a problem, then just send me a WhatsApp message and I will hook you up. So you get to see updates every now and then on a new episodes, what I'm up to and things of that nature. So that's it. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Really sorry about the noise in the background, but I figured while I'm here, let me not waste time, let me just get one or two things done. So don't worry, the next episode is going to be much quieter. I'll wait until I get home. And anyway, you'll hear from me at the next episode.