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Business
Tavershima Ayede
️Are you struggling to connect with customers in Nigeria? 🇳🇬 Join me for real-talk and turn sales principles into actual results for your business! We'll get straight to what WORKS for building relationships the Nigerian way. Ready to make confident connections? Let's make relationships your strongest sales weapon!
Innovation in product and service delivery
Innovation in product and service delivery
13:4809/05/2021
Marketing and innovation
Marketing and innovation
07:5307/05/2021
What’s the purpose of a business anyway?
There’s more to the money, social impact and the sense of personal growth and development that we get from running a business. There’s something more fundamental to the equation!
12:2006/05/2021
Professionalism, business communications and networking II
These three are important because they give us not just internal focus, but an outward focus as well in dealing with our publics, stakeholders and customers. They are the basis of effective client relations.
07:4404/05/2021
Professionalism, business communications and networking?
This trifecta is necessary for business growth!
17:1202/05/2021
How should you use your contracts?
Contracts are best used as a map to lay out agreed outcomes, timeframes and obligations. Contracts can only be “protection” in an environment that regards the legal system and it’s protections. Also contracts can only be sufficient protection when the naira amount in question is worth the hassle of fighting over in court.
14:1801/05/2021
Trust and rapport rather than litigation!
Regardless of the documents you signed at the contracting stage, resolving disputes would be made a lot easier between you and your potential customers if you have established a high degree of trust, Rapport, and you figure out exactly what it was that they need.
13:1630/04/2021
Questions will get you all the information that you need!
Using questions when interacting with prospective customers will help you flesh out what they want, when they want it, the timelines you will be working with, what the general obligations are, and the level of cooperation you guys are expected to have to make everything pull through.
08:2028/04/2021
Dress to impress! And to be rightly addressed!
How you and your business premises come across are important to how professional and credible you appear. Start the consultation process of right by making sure you have the right look.
11:3726/04/2021
Are you sure you guys are on the same vibe?
It’s important when first meeting with prospective customers to find out if they have a need that you can meet in the manner and style that you can deliver it. If you don’t do this, you might run into issues later on.
10:5825/04/2021
Do you trust me?
Trust is essential to greasing the wheels of business! How do we establish trust? By building commonality with our prospective customers, and by showing credibility and competence!
15:2124/04/2021
How will get they get warmed up to me?
It’s tempting to stick to “low hanging fruit” and deal with those customers who already seem interested in doing business with us. However we can raise our results and our quality of life by taking the initiative to guide people through a sales process that gets them “bought in” and “warmed up” to doing business with us.
11:2823/04/2021
Why are they holding back?
Not everyone is ready to whip out their phones and send you that deposit to secure your services. That’s because there’s a natural process of sales aversion and sales resistance that people go through. Not everyone likes to be “sold” or hassled even when they have a genuine need!
13:3622/04/2021
Contracts first? Or clients needs first?
Should we lead with our contract templates? or settle into a conversational approach that helps us tease out what they want? Which approach seems less dispute prone?
12:1421/04/2021
Stop calling!
It’s not a good idea to blow up someone’s phone. A follow up text message after the call might be more useful than you think.
17:1620/04/2021
Worry about contracts later!
Sales contracts are important but are of very little use if you haven’t optimized your sales process in the first place. Your problem isn’t the documentation. The problem is a process which fails to set out expectations.
12:5619/04/2021
Fish in the right pond!
When speaking to potential customers, it is important to make sure that you are speaking to people who already have an interest in what it is that you sell.
10:0731/03/2021
How not to look for customers over the internet!
Don’t randomly scour the internet! Go where “your people” are! Make no assumptions about what they need! And “go with the flow” when someone responds.
16:4930/03/2021
It’s not time to employ a salesperson yet!
As has been said here on the podcast before, handle as many customer interactions as you can in the beginning until you’re totally familiar with your customers and you come up with an optimal sales process. After that you can outsource or delegate your selling and marketing functions because you have clear expectations and yardsticks to delegate and measure progress from.
15:3429/03/2021
How should you handle sales and customer service?
In summary? Be customer centric and make sure you’ve thought through and created all your processes ahead of time!
11:0025/03/2021
So they’re angry! Now what?
What is the best way to get to the root of the matter when we have angry customers on our hands?
19:0224/03/2021
Why do you have angry customers?
Problems usually occur with customers when there is a failure in Expectations. They might’ve been expecting one thing, but you mistakenly delivered something else because you didn’t have an appropriate understanding of their needs. This podcast episode looks into the possible causes of the state of affairs.
13:5022/03/2021
Islamic finance! The end of the adventure
This takes off from prior episodes where I discussed my attempts to source financing for my wedding photography business. This episode might be good news to folks considering sales contracts and lease type arrangements as a way to grow their businesses in 2021.
13:1221/03/2021
Be diligent in your follow up!
This episode runs a hypothetical on the kinds of opportunities and personal interactions that we miss when we do not follow up adequately with our sales process and the current potential customers that we are chatting with.
09:2320/03/2021
Following up and relationship building!
This episode looks into tips for “following up” that can be used to nurture relationships with our past clients.
20:2918/03/2021
How to handle customer service conversations
This episode explores how to handle customer service conversations, and how they can be useful to ensuring that you have repeatable, sustainable, and long-term profits over the course of your business.
17:0317/03/2021
Should you pressurize them to buy more?
This episode looks into whether you should pressure customers to buy more from you and what the best ways of going about that might be.
10:3316/03/2021
Authority! Are you negotiating with the right person?
There’s no point in spending all your time with people who can say “no” but they have no real ability to say “yes” to you.
10:1914/03/2021
What’s the situation?
This episode examines another questioning framework that you can use to get to the root of where your customers are, what problems they are trying to solve, and if indeed they feel strongly that there is a significant problem that you can help them with.
11:4313/03/2021
A pretty face isn’t enough to grow your business!
This episode is a rant about why we should have a well thought out process for engaging with customers and not just stick a pretty sales girl behind the counter!
15:3812/03/2021
Don’t just quote. Have a conversation first!
It is tempting when you’re in a sales situation to answer the question “how much does it cost?” And then furnish a document with packages and pricing. Slow things down, engage them in conversation, and try to tease out who they are, what they need, and what their motivations are. This gives one a better chance of closing the deal.
13:5511/03/2021
Selling without pressure!
If we are in agreement that it is not a good idea to exert influence when trying to get someone to buy your product or service, then the main question is how do we get people to buy without using pressure? The answer is to use existing buyer motivations to move the process along. You have to become adept at finding out if you’re speaking to the right person, and if there is a match between their needs, wants and what it is that you provide. It also would help if you can discern any sense of urgency in the situation, And that everyone is in sync when it comes to budget and money expectations.
08:1508/03/2021
Should you apply pressure in sales?
It is not always a good idea to apply pressure, or to be excessively forceful when it comes to persuading potential customers to buy from us. This can lead to situations where our customers think they have ended up with products or services that are unsuitable. Either way it leads to reduced chances for future businesses for us, and for referrals. This is because our customers will now be dealing with either buyers remorse, or buyers regret And might not want to face the prospect of dealing with us again.
14:2605/03/2021
How to wrap up the phone call! Ask for referrals!
Whether you’re able to achieve your agenda on this call or email, you should ask as often as possible for referrals and recommendations for other people who might be in need of the services you offer. This is a nice way of expanding your contact base and making sure you have some personal credibility with someone the next time you pick up the phone to “call a stranger”
12:1701/03/2021
How do you end the call? Agreed follow up items!?
After you call up a total stranger as a potential customer, it would be most unprofessional to have those follow up calls where all you say is “I’m just calling to check in”. Always have specific agreed to action points during this call... agree to what the next action items will be... whether that’s for you to email material, call to schedule an inspection, or to schedule a meeting. Don’t waffle! Agree to a future action plan today.
10:5726/02/2021
When should you stick to the script or get to the point?
It’s best to get to the point when you’re dealing with a sophisticated customer who has done some research and is pressed on time. Provided that you’ve come up with an outline for the conversation, you’ll find that it’ll provide a smooth and easy way to move things along.
12:4622/02/2021
Should you freestyle when calling folks for the first time?
Free styling when talking to total strangers leads to more anxiety on your part, and lack of direction for the conversation... without any clear sense of outcomes. You should always have a clear thought process guiding the call...whether this framework is written out or not.
14:3921/02/2021
Should you identify yourself from the beginning?
When you’re calling a total stranger for the first time, it’s more important to establish that you’ve indeed reached the right person and then move on quickly to why this call is relevant, and then ultimately you’ll rest on how suitable your product or service is for them. After that it’s a simple matter of agreeing to next actionable steps so you don’t take up too much of their time.
15:4317/02/2021
Should you be calling strangers?
It’s not a bad idea to call up total strangers in the hopes of drumming up new business. The challenge is to make sure that the strangers you’re talking to are qualified to hear your message. They should’ve done something in the past to show they could be possibly interested in your product or service. Best case scenario? You get some business! Worst case scenario? The person isn’t interested. In either case, you’ll be fine.
13:0916/02/2021
Should you close the deal now? Or later?
There are situations where you can get the customer to commit to making a deposit on the first visit. These are situations where you are dealing with a simple sales context, or where the customer has so much money that the deposit is of little stakes. For other situations where large sums are involved for complex goods and services, the right approach is to have incremental conversations with little commitments along the way before going for the jugular.
15:5614/02/2021
Are you in a complex sale situation?
It’s important to ask yourself if you’re in a simple or complex sale situation because if it’s complex, you have more room for nuanced conversations, and your negotiation techniques have to be more refined than just “take it or leave it”.
18:0913/02/2021
What is a simple sales situation?
You know you’re in a simple sales situation when you have a low priced commodity product or service, and if neither you nor the buyer care about long term relationships and prospects. Why is this important? Because it has implications for how you price and negotiate!
19:2012/02/2021
Is sales truly a conversation?
Whether we think of sales as an event or a long term process is important. If you think about sales in a more long term fashion, then you’re continually trying to leverage present contacts and opportunities for future mutual gains between you and your prospective customers. If you think sales is a “one and done” event then you’re constantly dealing with people in a transnational manner with loads of burnt personal capital and credibility in the wake! Come over to the right side. Sales and selling is a series of long term, mutually beneficial conversations.
10:5911/02/2021
Client questionnaires? Why are they important?
Client questionnaires and questioning frameworks are important not just so that you have all the information necessary to give an accurate quote, but also so that they help with what you should anticipate when coming through on delivering what you promised.
22:3507/02/2021
Why you should ask questions about budget, and who’s paying?
These questions are important because they help you figure out what other people or factors you should accommodate and take into account as you try to negotiate that sale.
14:1805/02/2021
Why you should find out what they want and need!
It is useful to ask questions about what your customers want, what they need, what they can afford, and when they will be ready to pull the trigger. This is because, if you don’t run through this exercise, you’re on the risk of giving a quotation that is not accurate and is not relevant to their needs. It also may cause problems in the future when we run into scope creep. This is when due to miscommunication there are disagreements about what the actual breadth of the contract is! All these problems can be solved by asking questions that focus in on this key criteria; want, need, afford, and urgency!
13:5801/02/2021
Whose feedback do you need? And when should you rely on it?
Feedback is essential to developing our products and our services. And the feedback of our various stakeholders is very important because we do not have a 360° perspective to account for all the eventualities and facets of our businesses. But who’s feedback is important? And what kind of feedback should we seek? I think the people that we should pay attention to the most, are those who actually use our product or service... and are paying customers. They will have a much better sense of where all the crinkles are, and on what we can do to smoothen the customer experience out.
10:3730/01/2021
Should Google reviews be a part of your sales process?
Yes! Google reviews and other “back end” processes and avenues should be a significant part of your sales process. Reviews, recommendations, referrals and repeat business are easier and more viable forms of future income. They are definitely more easier than having to go out and chase folks afresh at wedding fairs or wherever it is that you drum up business. Google reviews make you look more professional, customer focused, and make the job of closing future sales easier. Start sorting out your Google reviews today!
15:1329/01/2021
Stop your premature presentation syndrome!
Most people are anxious to get a sale from the moment they meet with a prospective customer. Because of this they immediately launch into their presentation trying to convince the poor customer that this service person is the right professional for the job! Don’t launch into a sales pitch right away because you haven’t discovered what the client’s ideal vision is, what he or she wants, needs, and is trying to achieve. Ask questions first or run the risk of saying a mouthful of irrelevant stuff. After some gentle questioning and conversations, you’re going to get all the information you need to show how your product or service is perfectly tailored to satisfy the desire at hand.
08:4628/01/2021
Should you be spec driven in your business?
Spec driven industries like software, engineering, etc require a proper understanding of the technical specifications that have to be met for the success of the project at hand. The rest of us who are more “artsy” and service oriented ought to take the same approach to figuring out what our clients wants and needs are; as well as the outcomes and vision they’re aiming for, and which will allow us to boldly declare success at the end of the day. Besides! If you don’t know what the specs are, you can’t deliver a reliable quote :)
14:2227/01/2021