It cannot be overstressed, the importance of knowing who your customer is, and why you should hang out with them more! Not only do they lead to more repeat business and referrals, but you also get valuable opportunities for business insights that you can use to improve your product or your service.

Outsourcing your sales, or giving other people the responsibility to sell for you, is not always such a bad idea. But before you do that! You have to be sure that you have already thought through and created your own ideal sales process. Until you do that, the people you delegate will go around making promises of offerings that you cannot fulfill. They might create liability and reputation issues for you because they could be a poor representation of your brand and your company. So before you outsource your sales, make sure you are thoroughly familiar with your customers, your market, and your sales process. When you have created your own ideal sales process that is suited to you, your business, and your customers, then you can outsource your sales.

This might not be such a bad idea! Marketing and advertising professionals bring useful “know how” when it comes to figuring out what your “core marketing messaging” should be as well as who your “ideal customer profile” or “target market” is.

Bank financing can be a handy way to get around “money” objections when talking to prospective customers. This currently doesn’t apply to those of us in the wedding and event space, but you never know! The scenario might not be as far fetched as we think!

Asking questions around the “value trinity” shows that you provide a valuable service. As wedding and event professionals we provide financial savings, physical comforts and psychological benefits in the way we conduct our services. Our discussions with prospective clients should reflect this. Unless we do this, there’s really not much reason to do business with us in the first place.

The finale!

Part 1 of the discussion!

Some people think it’s OK when talking to a prospective customer for the first Time to pretend like you had a previous relationship with them to get them to be warm and loosen up to listen to you. This is a bad idea because there is a little bit of apprehension when people are involved in sales conversations... this can be even more annoying when they discover that you are just trying to sell them something! Focus on being professional, credible, and appropriate when you meet total strangers for the first time before you try to sell them something. The friendship part of the equation will take care of itself over time.

Business owners in general and wedding industry professionals in particular need to start asking clients questions that show how valuable our products/ services are, and to help the client realize that the problems we solve are much bigger than they think! After all why should they pay top naira for someone to merely click the shutter? Or pay someone lots of money just to tell servers which table to send extra drinks to?

Asking the right questions is essential. We have to get to the root of whether they are ready to buy or not. This is an important skill because it’s going to save you time and money from following up on people who were never going to buy in the first place!

As with the previous episode, asking questions to gauge the level of the problem our prospects have, and any sense of urgency around making the decision is absolutely essential. This will save you time in the long run and avoid you talking to people who have no need for your service.

Not only is important to have the budget conversations to be sure our expectations aren’t too far apart, we also ought to ask about timeframes to get a sense of whether, and if they’ll ever make a decision. Sometimes they’re okay with things the way they are and your services might not be required after all!

The money conversations are key in the sales process... to be sure that both you and your clients have similar expectations as far as money and price are concerned. Skip them at your peril! You’re better off talking about money now, than after having had 10 meetings only to find out you guys were never even close to reaching a deal from the beginning!

More rants about the possible value of wedding fairs and how wedding social/ business network enthusiasts can get their apps up and running!

In order to make sure we are not wasting any time or momentum, we should ask questions of our prospects to be sure that we are speaking to a serious contender! The questions that we ought to ask should include, questions on money, finance, and the budget, as well as questions regarding any urgency and to give us a sense of timelines.

Before we get to the root of finding customers who can afford you, there is the question of how do we even find customers at all! Lots of new and traditional methods abound, and those might include; online and offline advertising, trade professional and networking shows, as well as asking for referrals from previous customers. These and a whole lot more options are available to you and will only be limited by your creativity when it comes to applying them!

The Transcorp Hilton hotel in Abuja has opened the first salvo in getting wedding expos back on the market since the Corona virus lockdown early in March this year! Whether you respond with excitement or trepidation, one thing is for sure! Where there's a will there's a way! and the wedding industry in Nigeria is already looking for ways to get back into the hang of things. More updates to come on the podcast in the following days...

All businesses no matter the product or service that were involved with, whether with wedding planning or the engineering space, we all have to run through a process which provides a ready mind map for how to guide the customer in our interactions together.

This is an introduction to the sales clinic sessions that I hold regularly with the Seed Builders tech Hub in Abuja. The next questions that will be treated in the series include, how to find customers who can afford you? and whether you should outsource your sales and marketing functions? Our first candidate and case study, is a provider of alternative energy solutions in Lagos.

Making assumptions in the sales and negotiation process could be a critical flaw. it is better to ask questions of the customer about what is pivotal to the deal rather than assuming and making unsolicited concessions. Ask questions, don't assume!

Whatever the medium you use to gain attention, provoke interest, and build some engagement, the tactic should be focused not on talking about you! The focus should always be on the chief benefits that your clients will get, knockout features that are relevant to them, and a focus on your understanding of the situation and how you can help.

whether you want to be a hustler or a business owner is important to your potential for growth and how much scale you can get in your business. We have to be open and honest about what our current trajectory is, and what our future business ambitions are.

Once we get past the public appreciation for certain goods and services, the key determinant for how viable a business industry is, isn't the market per se! The key determinant becomes how good you are at sales, marketing, and distinguishing yourself from the competition.

As a general rule, the more personalized and relevant our messaging is, the better. the same principles apply for our use of WhatsApp messaging for business!

The "know, like and trust" framework is essential for enhanced credibility and achieving a "trusted advisor" status. However it still leaves something to be desired because even though it lessens the apprehension involved in sales conversations, it doesn't give the business practitioner any tips for how to move to customer over the goal post.

Have all terms and conditions up front and centre when having the money conversation with potential clients! No one likes being baited with low prices in the beginning, only to find out that much larger sums are required at the back end of the transaction! It also doesn't help that this practice ruins the personal Goodwill we have struggled hard to cultivate during the negotiation phase.

Mistakes in networking often arise because we have a poor understanding of, or a poor framework for how to network in the first place! Networking should be "other" focused, shouldn't be "tit for tat" and excessively focused on reciprocity. With a few of these changes in paradigm, networking should be a fun and effective exercise which will lead to business growth.

It pays to switch routines up regularly. I've learned this recently learning to explore and relearning how to play guitar in open D tuning. This can serve as a metaphor for how we approach life and business in general.

Customer service, communication, money management, collaboration, and delegation are essential skills that every business owner should have. However, all these skills won't matter very much if you don't have a business with a healthy bottom line. Getting and improving sales is the primary skill of all! Without the vital bloodline of sales in an organisation, there won't be anything to manage!

How you feel about the prospective client sitting in front of you isn't the best gauge to determine if she or he is your ideal client or not. Even when it seems as if both of you might be butting heads together, it still is a good idea to ask questions to get to the root of why you are having that conversation in the first place! You might confirm that the deal is indeed dead. You might also confirm that you have other avenues through which you could help the prospect! You can't truly know which way is north or south unless you keep asking questions!

Business auto response prompts are ineffective and can be jarring if they are used with every single message that your prospective customer sends you. The better way to use this would be; thank the enquirer for reaching out, provide alternative contact details if they need an immediate response, and also provide a reasonable promise of how soon they can expect to hear back from you.

It's not a bad idea to build your business using tips, tricks, and hacks to maximize profits on individual transactions. However it could be a more profitable way over the long term to use sales and business frameworks that you can scale profitably overtime. Apart from the benefit of being more sustainable, it is also going to be easier mentally because you don't have to tax yourself everyday about how to be more creative in each individual sales situation.

There are many lessons that can be learnt following the breakdown of law and order in certain parts of Nigeria during the recent protests. One of them is about how the use of empathy and affirmation could be powerful tools to build commonality and rapport between authorities and protesters in times of crisis. These and many more are the contribution that the discipline of sales and personal selling can bring to matters of public policy. Whether we sell wedding event services, the reasons for protest, or we are pushing a treaty for peace, in either case a sale is being made.

Some business people move straight to asking for a referral or recommendation after the deal is over. We would improve our chances of actually getting one if we were to find out how satisfactory the experience was in the first place! That would also give us a chance to resolve any outstanding problems, assuming any did in fact arise. Don't assume that everyone was happy at the end of the transaction! Ask first and then resolve any outstanding issues! After that we can make a play for referrals, recommendations, and online reviews and ratings!

In times of chaos and social upheaval, it is the responsible thing to do as a corporate citizen to reach out to your customers and stakeholders to be sure that everyone is doing okay. A blanket messaging approach is not the best way to go about this however! Using templates that can be personalized with a personal touch, sprinkled with hints of personal concern would be the more ideal way to go. Even if it turns out to be more time-consuming in the end!

This is a departure from our regular scheduled programming. this is in honour of those who lost their lives on the 20th of October 2020 in Lagos Nigeria. The protest was against police brutality, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights issues. May the souls of the dearly departed rest in peace, and may those of us who are still living not fall into the sin of despair! May God grant us all the will and intellect to improve our societies, especially when it comes to social justice issues.

This episode explores a slightly different framework for answering the question; should you do what you love as a business? Or should you try to fill a market need? It's a recap of some of the opinions expressed on KISS FM Business show... Useful ideas on peer related issues in business, industry and market gaps, as well as market research as a means of validating your business idea.

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.