Are Your Sales Targets Realistic? Plus, How to Handle Tough Objections

Hello and welcome. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I solve sales and marketing challenges and I'm making today's recording from my living room and my neighbor is working on his car outside. So expect to hear some noise in the background. Now, the goal of this podcast is not to tell you about my neighbour's car, but we're here gathered and focused on business education. So please spread the word so that your friends and family members in Nigeria and abroad can benefit from the questions that we tackle.

They can do that by subscribing on Spotify, YouTube, Apple or any player of their choice. And if you'd love to connect with me, then call SMS or WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Now today on the podcast is also going to be another diary session for a team that I'm working with, Rudolph, Shell and Elsie, so that you guys can listen to this in the future and remember some of the things that we spoke about and why and what it is that we have to do next.

So in one of the sessions that I had with this team of three, and they're involved in the Solar sails in Lagos, we looked at daily targets. And for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for the last week or two, you remember, you know, talking about 10 net new calls. Why that is important? You know, for any business, it doesn't have to be 10, you know, person because it depends on each business. But for them, we just came up with 10.

But the principle is that you have to be making a certain number of net new calls every day if you're going to keep putting people in the pipeline. Or else what will happen is over time, you will close some deals, those people have moved. Over time, you will lose some deals, those people have moved. And over time, you know, things will happen. You will get malaria, you forget to call somebody back and all these kinds of things.

And some people will fall through the crack. Those people, those ones have moved. Except if you have a system and you know, you're able to catch up with them, the bottom line is one day you're going to wake up with nobody to talk to you. And the problem with having nobody to talk to today is every business has a sales cycle. So like back in my wedding photography days, you know, sales cycle was like, you know, two months, three months.

So in other words, if I didn't talk to any bride in January, I will have no business in March or in April. Is that basic? So every business has that kind of thing built in with sales cycle. So if you're not talking to net new people every day, it's guaranteed you'll wake up one time in the future. Your bank account will be on zero and you'll be wondering why. So if your sales cycle is 6 months, the reason why you're broke in December is because you are not talking to anybody in June or July.

It's not magic. It's just a game of numbers and it's a game of probability. So that's the reason why we have to be talking to net new people every single day, figuring out the numbers. You know, it depends. You have to talk to the team. It depends on their experience, experience level, depends on how quickly they are willing to learn. It depends on their skill set, it depends on the industry. You know, different things like with this team now, Elsie, Shawn and Rudolph, because sometimes conversations can take anything between 20 to 30 minutes when talking to one person.

You know, they said that it's, it's unrealistic to assume that you can talk to 10 people in three hours and looking at things that way. OK, yes, you do have a point. So we have re reviewed, OK, not reviewed. We just extended the deadline. So instead of making 10 net new calls every three hours, we're now thinking by the close of business day you should have spoken to 10 brand new callers. But like I said, it depends industry to industry, skilled person of the, the skill level of the person who's calling and,

and you know, the nature of the product of the service. Because there's another client where we needed to get the salesperson on the phone on the phones. And in fact, you know, that's also a current client as well. And I spoke to Ogdioga and I told her that, look, you have this guy doing too many things. We need him to be hitting the phones, especially since we're working towards this program that is coming up. You have in your database 500

contacts that nobody has touched before. You start paying for brand new money for Instagram leads and everything. Let this guy call this thing. Let's give him one month and let him call this thing. Actually, I agreed. So now step one, Step 2. And I said we can't have him doing this, doing this, doing this, doing this. Let the guy just sit down and be calling people. When he enters the office 9:00 in the morning, let him just call until break.

We'll go and, you know, do whatever he does, you know, go and eat, go and watch Netflix or whatever. I come back and then continue calling. And the lady agreed, but she even went farther than I thought. She was able to delegate other things to every single member of the team so that all he had to do was nothing but call on the first day. I told the guy, look, we have half of their contacts. These are the number of days.

So on average, if we're doing 33 every day, we should be cool on the first day he did 38 and you know, that was not bad. So the challenge now is reviewing the calls that he's been making to make sure that they were qualitative calls and that the level of conversations that he has been having is good. But The thing is, because I was able to get some buy in from Olga and we removed everything from his plate, all he's doing is just making the calls.

So he will call. He's not in charge of sending the proposal of doing e-mail, follow up, nothing like that. He's only just to make the call, put all the notes in the diary. Somebody else would take it from diary and continue from there. So it depends. So for your own industry, it might be two, it might be 3, you know, it depends. There was somebody that was talking to last year who is in the construction space and what he sells is heavy duty equipment.

Now we didn't end up working together for somebody that sells heavy duty equipment. I doubt he can be talking to 10 people in a day or 38 people in a day because anyway we didn't end up working together. So I haven't done research in that space, but you know, how many people buy heavy duty equipment, you know, tractor, crane, digger, you know, that rolling thing that you used to roll quota when you're making roads and things like that, you know, So I doubt that there are those many companies.

And then like I heard from someone else who's in the airplane space, you know, renting aircraft and things like that, by the time you are into that space, I mean, how many airplane companies are there? I mean, there's Boeing and then who again, Boeing. And then there are not many, you know, they're not up to 10. So there's some industries that, yeah, realistically speaking, you can't go and be calling 10 people every day.

But bottom line, the truth is still the same. The math is still the same no matter your service, your product, your industry, you have to be talking to a certain number of net new people every day or else one day you wake up and you'll be broke. And the reason why you're broke is because you are not talking to people a certain whatever beforehand. So let's say for airplanes now for instance, I hear the airplanes that the sales cycle is like 3-4 years.

So if Nigerian, OK, there's no more Nigerian Airways, let's see which airplane is there now Airpiece. So if Airpiece wants to buy, if somebody wants to sell airplanes to Airpiece and you call Airpiece today, you're not going to sell that plane to Airpiece today. Airpiece is likely going to buy that plane 2 years from now, three years from now, four years from now. So if you're in that space where you're selling airplanes, if you're broke in 2025, it's because you didn't talk to anybody in 20 in 2023, Abby,

2025. Yeah, it means you didn't talk to anybody in 20/22/2021. That's the reason why you're broke today. So and let me move on. I think I've overflowed the set net new calls thing. So we reviewed their numbers and then next thing we went into handling objections. Yeah, that's what I wanted to make today's podcast episode because I think there's some good objections here. Now, Cheryl, who's the newest member of the team, he called somebody and then the person said, where's the office in Abuja?

And then of course, Sharon broadly said, yeah, sure, we have an office in Abuja. The guy said, where's the address? And said, no problem, I'll get that for you. And then he caught the call and then he went to go and speak to his colleagues and then they said, ah, sure, we don't have office in Abuja. What we have is we have our network of engineers there. So you know, we're sorted. The engineer can always go outside, you know, diseases that that, you know, So we cover Abuja virtually.

We cover Abuja. Where else they say Kaduna, I can't remember. But anyway, the cover Abuja virtually and they have people on ground. They just don't have a storeroom. They just don't have an office, you know, things like that. So of course they have to go and call by the guy. They say, bro, you know, we actually don't have, no, we actually don't have an office in Abuja. But you know, and then he explained the situation.

So that's the first learning from the situation that we who man the phones and who talk to customers that does not say what we do not know for sure. There actually is no problem with saying, with saying, how do I put it? We're saying, oh, I'm not sure about that. I know that we have service clients in Abuja before. Please let me confirm from my colleagues. I'll call you back in 5 minutes. There's actually nothing wrong with saying that rather than telling the customer we can do this, then you call the customer back later on to say actually,

you know, when I said we can do this, no, we can't. But this, but this but that. But that, you know, it just comes across somehow. So only say what it is that you know, If you're not sure, say you know, I'll take responsibility for that. I'll get back to you. Give me 5 minutes, give me one hour, give me 30 minutes. And then get back to the customer when you say you can. So please, when we're on the phone with the customers, only say the one that you know.

Only say the one that you are sure you know. Don't guess. Then another reason why I want to bring this up is because, you know, he did the usual thing which was, oh, I'm sorry about that Sir. No, we don't have office in Abuja, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So is this No, but combination. Now when we're in sales, we're trying to move people along, we're trying to move an agenda along. We're trying to lead people somewhere, we're trying to influence people somewhere.

We're trying to maintain a certain groove, maintain a certain module, we're trying to maintain a certain motion. You understand what I'm saying? We're trying to move things in one particular regard. And so it helps when we use lots of positive assumptive language and avoid negative, what's the other word, negative language. So as much as possible. In fact, Grant Cardone says that a salesman should never say no. That doesn't mean you should lie, right?

So there's some people who are that harsh who would say a salesperson should never, ever, ever say no. I won't go that far because I think there are some situations where actually you do have to say no. But The thing is, we have to look for ways of being affirmative, being positive and carrying on the conversation. So instead of saying if somebody asks you where's your office in Abuja, instead of saying no, we do not have offices in Abuja,

but we have a team of dedicated engineers. You know, the problem with that is you are now on the back foot. You are now on the defensive and that is not a good place for any salesperson to be, for any business person to be where you're on the reactive on the defensive is not good. So I told him and the team that this is how we're going to handle it next time. So hold on. Let me just scroll through the notes. I want to use the exact phrase that we came up with, by the way, this exact phrase.

Yes, it sounds very formal because I am the one who crafted it and I tend to speak very formally when I'm with clients. But you don't have to use the exact words. Just take the principle and then apply it to your situation. Say it how you want to say it. It doesn't have to be in English. If you like to flow in Yoruba with your customers, then you know, use the principles. Flow in Yoruba, flow in Igbo, flow in ethic, flow in pigeon.

However it is that you want to do it. So this is what we came up with that the framework would be something like this. So somebody asks, young man, where's your office in Abuja? Well, yes, you know, sometimes that's the attitude like young man, because they can tell that you're young and, you know, they're trying to, you know, shake you, you know, fill you up, fill you out. And you know, now, Nigel, everybody likes to feel like they're a big man.

So yes, we do have some of those young man situations. So the president says, young man, where's your office in Abuja? So the response is not, no, we don't have an office in Abuja, but we have a team of engineers that what you say is we have, I'll put it where did I write it? OK. So we have a team of engineers in Abuja readily available to visit any site in the FCT at any time this week. Is there any particular reason why you're asking?

So that's how you answer. Now you notice I didn't use the word, No, I didn't use the word but and I didn't quite avoid the question. And another thing is I put in a follow up question there because we're trying to get to the root of why these guys asking this question. Because if you listen to yesterday's episode or maybe the day before yesterday, remember I said that lots of us when somebody give us small objection, we assume we know the reason why somebody is asking.

And then we now deal with that, our assumption, but we need to figure out exactly what it is that the person is thinking. So if somebody says do you have office in Abuja, Where's your office in Abuja? Now Shell assumed that the guy was trying to size up the company. And I agree with him. I think he actually was trying to size up the company. You know, do you guys have national spread? Maybe he'll drive by and see whether the office is a butcher or whether it's an impressive mall or something.

Then from there, you now know how to rate the company because these things happen. In fact, there was this time I was, she knew my guy Corey. But Corey has left now he has he has Jackpot. He carried his whole family and he said to blazes with Nigel to blazes all of you. So the guys left and he's now in Canada and he used to make documentaries and music videos for very popular artists at the time. I think he even worked on one MI

project. So funny thing is, I think people like Corey, they actually signed a better chance of blowing here in Nigeria, blowing in Canada. But anyway, the guy has gone Ghana Jackman. So I was encouraged to his office. Now I was just chilling, you know, just just because we went to the same school. Then somebody called him and he was like, yeah, I'm in the office. You can come now, Cory D, you know how your web boys can be know he was a very package,

package kind of guy. You understand that's the high packaging. So he he was in Popsy's house because Popsy was a military man and built some properties in Abuja. So the house was divided into two. Upstairs was family unit, downstairs credit just converted the whole thing to studio. So the place that should have been the garage, you know where you park the car inside, you know? Yeah, fancy house like that. Yeah, real fancy.

I mean, which Nigerian parks a car inside the house anyway? So the place that should have been the garage, that's what he converted to green screen. He painted the place out. They just green the top. Then they had different backgrounds, then they also had different shooting areas. And then he also bought this massive Apple, this massive Apple screens, you know, big, big screen like that kind, you know, 30 something inches, 50

something inches, like massive computers so that people can do editing. Then for him and his editors, everybody had MacBook Pro, you know, everywhere, just Apple, Apple, Apple, you know, of course, you know, ACAC has an AC tight, you know, very whatever I have. So the guy called now he said no problem in the office, you can come. He didn't know that Korea understands how Sir. So the guy came into the office because Cordy was an Abuja boy.

I mean I you can say I was an Abuja boy because my family came here in 801983. But I don't speak outside. So the guy came into the office now spoke with Corey for like a few minutes. I just said one more, he wants to make a phone call. He now called his guy. The guy now said is speaking in house. He was calling his business partner. He told him that, look, we are going with these people that you know, from what I have seen here, everything is complete.

This person is the truth. This person has everything. If you come and see all the equipment, like this person is on point, honestly, like Gaskier, this is the person that we're going to use. So I'm going to start negotiating money with him right now. You just be on standby so that when the time comes to transfer the money, excuse me, That's what the guy said, the answer. Then he now switched back to English and then started talking with Corey.

He didn't realize that Corey understands how. So when the guy left, Corey now told me that OK, this is this conversation that happened. So this thing is happening is normal people are always trying to size us up. You know, this is the correct guy. Is this guy capable? You know, so people try to size us up. So that kind of thing. Now where's your office in Abuja? Do you have office in Abuja? Normal. The guy can be sizing you up,

but we don't assume. We pull out that assumption. And that is the whole point of that second part. The follow up question, which is, is there any reason in particular you're asking? So we have engineers in Abuja who are readily available to visit any site in the FCT at any time this week. Is there any reason in particular why you're asking? And then you hear what the person has to say when the person gives answers and he's like he's a matter of sizing up.

Then Elsie, who has been with the team for a very long time, she told us that they actually have videos of finished projects, completed installations in Abuja, different parts of the North. Then they also have what do you call this thing, brochures and you know, blah, blah, blah. But we agreed that the photos and the videos of the finished installation sites in Abuja and other places, that's the one that will really give more or was the word give more oomph,

give more, more haste, more power, you understand, to show that OK, yeah, these people can do this job because me, I have a six bedroom mansion on Ministers Hill and here they are, they have done an installation for a 30 bedroom mansion on Ministers Hill for whatever. So that's the kind of thing that will inspire the confidence or inspire the credibility. So that's the whole point. But remember, like I said in yesterday's episode or the day before yesterday, whenever somebody throw you a small objection, it's not OK to just react.

But we need to try and ask questions and figure out exactly what is on their mind so that you can address it. You can address it adequately because sometimes maybe it's not sizing you up. Sometimes maybe it's just availability and responsiveness. And if that's the case, the first part of what you said, which is we have engineers in the FCT readily available to visit any site at any time, day or night this week that might meet the person's concerns.

So, but ask first. So that was the response to where's your office in Abuja or do you have office in Abuja then? OK, This one was some from from Rudolph. OK. Somebody said basically the scope person was saying that look, you're too expensive, you'll be on my budget. I'm a retiree and I still want, excuse me, I still want KV-10 kva. And Rudolph was trying to educate the guy that look, you say you want 10 kva but you can't be saying that your budget is five M, It's not going to cut it.

There's nowhere in Abuja or in Lagos or Port Accord they'll be able to get 10 kva for this disease. I can't even remember the kva anyway. But even me that I'm not in the business, the first time they said it didn't make sense to me because they called the KVA. The KVA was big. The guy was saying that his budget is five M And I'm wondering like, you know, because I have one small inverter in the house, we've done solar from Mumsy.

So even me as another person I think was not making sense. And I've told you guys before that there are people who are coming to buy from you. And to be honest, they have no realistic price expectations at all. None. Their price expectations are unrealistic because they've not done any single research whatsoever. So when I was in my my wedding photography days, I was used to throw those people back into the field. Somebody will come and tell me that you want wedding photography, you want to do video, then you want four books,

you want 5 frames, you want 6 DVDs, you want all the soft copy and then you want them to print 300 hard copy and all of that. You only want to pay 150 Ki used to have those people who straight up like, oh, so I hope you don't mind me asking, am I the first person you're talking to? They'll say yes. I'll say, oh, OK, no wonder because with all these things that you said, like there's no way all of that can can work with this budget.

This is actually what obtains in Abuja. In Abuja, you're going to find different kinds of professionals. I'll even call some names of the competition. You have these guys like this, like this, they charge between this and this. You have these guys between this and this, they charge between this and this. And you have the low class people, which I won't say low class, of course, because there's no need for me to insult my fellow compatriots in the business.

And you have much more affordably priced individuals who are within this and this. So for the affordably priced people, this is what you can expect to get for the middle range. This is what you can expect to get for the high range. This is what you can expect to get. So you know what, I think it will be best for you to actually go out and talk to some other people. Just do some research. I'll call you again in about a week and then we'll take the conversation from there.

How does that sound? Most people will say, oh, yeah, sure, no problem. And sometimes you would call the people back And now that they've gone out and the eye house open small and they've seen that their budget is unrealistic. Now you can have a realistic conversation. But however, to be honest, there were those situations when I'll call back and like joke, like joke, the person has found somebody that will give him exactly what he wants at exactly that price.

What my own response to them was, oh, so you found exactly what you're looking for. Oh, congratulations. Best of luck in your wedding. You know, I'll call you, I'll call you after when you're to say what's up because, you know, I like to keep friendly with people. You never know where this life is going to. And then plus when I'm running for president, you know, the more people that I know the better. So I'm always trying to expand my network and that's how I'll just leave it.

But by the way, just know that those kind of clients, they will stress your life. So if you meet somebody who is asking you for the sun and the moon and the earth, and the person wants your left leg and your right testicle, please avoid those people. They will not be worth the trouble. The thing that you will see in their hand anyway, the word is enough. Otherwise, all you have to do is to fall inside that mistake once.

You will not make that mistake again. When I meet those people and I'm broke, I tell myself that this poverty I'm going through right now is better than me collecting this money and entry into this person's hand. I look for a way I weave those people. I say jump and pass. I say tell the devil you did not see me. I say get behind me, sit up, I'm not doing business with you, so where was I? So it's normal. Some people have unrealistic price expectations.

So when somebody tells you I'm a retiree, the price is too much, this is what I want, blah, blah, blah. OK, The reason why I bring this up is this Now Rudolph judge correctly that these people, they're not gauging the market correctly. All Rudolph did was he just assumed that, OK, because of that, this person is not my priority and this is a lost deal. I'm not going to be in touch with the customer. So he wrote the customer off.

So I just told Rudolph like, no, no, no, it's not like that. Yes, we deprioritize the person, but the goal is this. You tell the person just like you did, because Rudolph tried to do a good job of explaining to the person that, look, this is what obtains. If it is 1015, you know, 10KV. If you think EV20, whatever KV that you need, you should be looking at this, like this, like this, like this. These are the different permutations.

This is how the thing can work. So after that, send the person back into the field. Like, you know what, don't just take, don't just rely on my word. Go and talk to other people. I'm the first person you're talking to, so you won't understand. Go and talk to other people. When you talk to other people, you know, all things the person will say, OK, it's OK, right? So would it be OK for me to call you in about 2-3 weeks?

Just find out how you're getting along. Of course the person will say, sure you can. You will now call the person back in that 2-3 weeks, maybe one month to find out. Oh, yeah, this is the young man Rudolph spoke 3 weeks ago. You said I want to do some research. Ah, yes, I remember you. So how's the research coming along? And then keep quiet. And then you hear, you might hear that the man says, well, it turned out to be just like you said.

I got other quotes. And yes, things are looking much more expensive than I thought. And then you now engage the person in conversation. Oh, really? You found other quotes? What exactly did you get for what kind of setup you see? And then you might be able to rescue that kind of thing because now the person has a realistic price expectation. However, if the person says, I told you I found exactly what I'm looking for, congratulate the guy and say, oh, OK, good.

I'm really happy for you that you're able to find what you're looking for at the price. And then you end the phone call politely. And after that, you say a prayer. You say, thank God I did not fall into this person's hand. Because if you're a professional and you know what's up and you know the certain kinds of effort or quality that needs to go into certain kinds of projects, you just know that some things a horror movie waiting to happen.

You don't like how those things they put on Instagram when they will say what the client wanted, then they will show picture of Rihanna on the red carpet looking all bejeweled and everything. And then they will now say what the client got. They will now put a picture of the client looking, you know, somehow, you know, the reason why Rihanna looks the way she does on the red carpet, all bejeweled and all be dazzled, is because she paid for the actual bejeweling and the bedazzling.

But you, you want to have the Rihanna look, but you want to pay Taylor, Taylor around pricing. Yeah. When I was in secondary school, that's what we used to say. There was I was an Oscar de la Renta and you know, all these what are big, big, big designers. So some boys now used to say that's nobody. They'll say what are you when you say is Taylor, Laurent as you know, Taylor now normally Taylor, Taylor, Laurent. So doing myself, that's what we used to say in in Greg's, you know, balance day back then.

So you want Oscar de la Renta, Luke, you want Joe and she something, something, something. Look, but you want to pay till on our own price. So you get what you're asking for. So if you find that kind of client and able to find it, just thank God, OK, Thank God I didn't fall into this person's hand and they move on. So yeah, that's what you do for people who say you're too expensive, blah, blah, blah. This is what I want, let me go and do research.

So yeah, that's your response. Yes, I agree this is beyond your budget, but for this specifications that we've discussed, this is a much more realistic budget. However, is it OK for me to keep in touch to see how you're getting along with your research? The person will say, sure, no problem. Now, another reason why you ask this kind of question, can I keep in touch in the future is that allows you to now put the person in relationship nurturing sequences.

Relationship not showing sequences are the phone calls that you're going to make to find out how the person is getting along with the research so that if he's now on the same page, we can continue the conversation. But apart from that, you know, all those messages that you send once in a while, you know, happy new month, happy new days promo available, discount available. New financing, this available new model of this available new version of this available new upgrade that, you know, all those messages you don't have permission to be sending the person that kind of message and you know you won't be a pest because you did have that conversation like can I be checking up on you, you know,

once in a while? So that's it. So of course, we discussed other things in the meeting with Elsie, Rudolph and Shell, but these are just some of the main domain that I think we can talk about over here so that you guys can get some value from. And then hopefully, I really, really hope that Sheryl, Elsie and Rudolph, you guys listen to this episode later on and get some value. Yeah, get some, get some value from from that.

And anyone need to say something, but let me not say it's not appropriate for for public consumption, at least not yet. So that's it. And that is all for today. Remember, if you'd love to connect with me, you can call, you can SMS, you can WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you next time. Same place in your headphones or in your speakers.