Beyond the Sale: Nurturing Customers for Long-Term Growth

Hello and welcome to the show. Today's episode is going to be dedicated to Xena and all the other listeners who are online chefs or Instagram vendors. Yeah, folks like that listening to the show. And today we're going to look at how sales or personal selling is the easiest way to grow SMEs and by that I mean small and medium scale enterprises. So I'm not talking about people like Antonio Lumenu and Dangote and Oterdola and the likes.

So yeah, so today's episode dedicated to Zena and folks in the SME space. Now to know or rather to to figure out why I'm using them today is because it was my wife's birthday recently and I got a phone number from her for a lady who does small chops in Abuja. Now, my wife has a previous history with this Small Chops outfit because, well, that's just who my wife is, you know, parties, vendors, celebrations, gifts, you know, that sort of thing.

So if I ever need a number for something, I mean, even though I used to be a wedding photographer, if I need a number for something, Small Chops, caterer, you know, blah, blah, blah, I'd, I'd rather just ask my wife because she probably has dealt with a couple, she has relationships with them and she's going to be able to give me a better assessment than, you know, me just trying to call up some of my old contacts back in my wedding photography days.

So I got the phone number from her. Now I called up this vendor, Let's call them vendor one. OK, No, let's not give any names. So I called up this vendor and I ordered some, excuse me, some small chops and made the made so that we can celebrate my wife's birthday. And I ordered it to be delivered to her office because wife is a nice person. She likes to be cool with the junior staff in the office and things like that.

So I figured even though, you know, we're broke and conditions are not pure, I mean, anyhow, anyhow, shall at least let the let the people in the office let them see something eat. So that's what I was thinking. So I placed the order, had it delivered to the office. Now when I called up the vendor, I identified myself as wifey's husband and identified myself as. I don't want to use my wife's name on the air. So I identified myself as wifey's husband.

And I noticed a couple of things. Number one, this vendor, the small shops person, they didn't bother to confirm who wifey is. Now let's pretend that the person that gave me the phone number was not my wife. They didn't bother to confirm who the referral source is, and I found that kind of odd. But anyway, let me go on with the with the rest of the story. So I identify myself as Wifey's husband. Wifey is somebody who buys from them on the regular with this phone call.

Now you would have thought they'll put two and two together to now know that they have my wife's birthday and to do that. The reason why that's significant is because if you're someone in this sort of position, you're going to be able to achieve a couple of things. Number one, once you're done dealing with me, you can now call the referral source who is wifey in this case and tell the referral source. Hey, thank you very much.

Somebody just called, they said they got that number from you. Thank you very much for their business. Thank you very much for your giving our phone number out and for sending business our way. The second thing that you're going to be able to do in this case is to now wish this person who is a referral source, my wife, wish her a happy birthday. And of course, none of this happened because they didn't confirm who my wife is.

They didn't confirm who the referral source is. Then I also noticed at the end of the call that they didn't take my personal details, which is kind of odd because if you don't take somebody's personal details, how are you going to follow up in the future? Why should you follow up in the future? You've been listening to this podcast for any length of time. You must have figured out by now that the whole point of following up in the future so that we can get repeat business from this person who is calling you now.

Also so that you can get referrals from this person who is calling you now. Also so that you can maximize the customer lifetime value of this person who is calling you. Now, you cannot achieve any of these three ends if you do not take the person's contact details. If you don't take the personal details, at the very least take the person's name because the person is the one who called into you or the person who chatted you up.

How are you going to be able to call back to say what's up, how you been? However it is that you choose to develop the relationship, that is not going to happen. So in other words, when people call you up like this and you don't have a system in place for getting the person's contact details and storing the phone number, you have just wasted that lead because the only money that you're going to get is just that money that you have collected.

Now if the person happens to call back in the future, like how Wifey does repeat business for these sorts of people, it's not because you are good or you are skilled in business. It's just because you are lucky that a loyal customer has called up. Then I also noticed something else which I thought was odd because I'm not one for surprises if I'm I'm not romantic. Well, I was going to say I'm not very romantic, but my wife says I am not romantic at all.

Some folks here have the personality of of how to say it again, the personality of a cardboard. Yes, I've been told that that I have the personality of cardboard. So I'm not a romantic chap. So anyway, since I was trying to hook this up, I was kind of nervous. I wanted to be sure that it arrives on time and it has the intended effect. Also because I needed to get there before wifey and the people in the office step out to eat.

Because if they step out to eat and then the small chops and the media media arrives, kind of defeats the purpose. I mean, they'll be small surprise, but I need to get there in time for lunch. So where was I? So I noticed that they didn't. I was the one who was how far? Don't forget, this is the phone number. Don't forget, are we good to go? This is the person you're supposed to call, you know, stuff like that. And then after it was ordered, I

was in a meeting anyway, so I couldn't check my phone. But when I came out from the meeting and I saw the call from my wife, I was like, oh, OK, cool. Everything is there. But I didn't get a call from these people and I didn't get a confirmation SMS from these people, not even the usual. Thank you very much for thank you very much for your business. We delivered at so, so, so and so PM, you know, that sort of thing. And also, I didn't receive any texts or a phone call to be sure that Madame was happy with was happy with the order.

Now, some of you are wondering, why am I sitting here today bad mouthing these people or tearing them down? Is there any point to all this? And yes, there's a point. In order for you to understand the point that I'm making about this particular vendor in this scenario, I want you to consider another vendor about a year earlier. No, let's say two years earlier. And was the same thing, wifey like this person because this lady makes mad seafood.

You know, you grill, what's it called? You grill snail. You grill shrimp, you grill that big one. What's it called? Is it lobster or oyster? Be something you grill all that, you know, all that every, every. And then you make coconut rice and what else then? Like these meatballs, but instead of it being made with meat, they make it with the crab. So crab balls and you know these fish, fish, fish things that you fish people like.

I don't eat fish, by the way. So whether that other vendor, whether her food is good or not, I have no idea. But wifey says it's the bomb. Her friends say it's the bomb. So that's our wifey. And this sort of person, you know, they are following themselves like that. Like that wifey ended up referring this lady to four people in the office. That's people that I know. Because when when wifey thinks you're legit and you're the issue, she sends out your contact details to a couple of people.

By the way, if you have any customer like that, know that this is a gem and hang on to that person. Because for me, back when I was doing weddings, I had done almost 20 weddings before somebody referred me. And that's when I decided to think about my business and I said, Kai, something is not right here. How can I have done almost 20 weddings and only one person has referred me? That was the beginning of me learning about things like sales, personal selling and all what not because I realized that there's a problem in my business.

So anyway, you have someone like this who's referring you to two, 3-4 people. Hold the person close. This is a good relationship to have. So with the four referrals I heard from wifey because wifey was impressed with how this lady was handling her business. Now this person called up to say thanks every single time wifey sent out a number. So if wifey sent out a number today, the person called tomorrow, this person will call next tomorrow.

They say thank you very much. And this happened so much that this lady, I think was due. I think it was almost like Christmas time. The lady sent to us small something just to say thank you to wifey. But of course, it wasn't stuff I could partake in because it was the usual fishy, fishy, you know, stuff, you know, shrimp, this, octopus that catfish this blah, blah, blah. You know, all that messy stuff that you cat, you fish.

People like to eat. Anyway, So what happened eventually was this. There was stuff going down at the office and they needed to find a vendor. And so somebody was like, hey, babe, you know, not your person. She's not bad. How far Let's look out for this thing and wifey say, hey, yeah, no problem. I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't want to be as if I'm trying to bring my own people inside. My person said no, no, no, that she does good work.

So how far are we cool? Everybody said, yeah, we're cool. So they called that Lady in. And then that's how they're able to hook up this vendor for, to cater for BOD was called board of directors, board of directors meetings and blah, blah, blah and all these sorts of things. So that was a very profitable relationship for that vendor. The 1 from 2 years back. That's the fish lady, the grilled fish, the, the grilled crabs, the everything.

It turned out to be a really profitable relationship for her because she was handling not just the board of directors catering, but then you know, different things that were going on in the department. And that relationship remained in place until the board was retired by the government because you know how this government work is now the government comes in and then you know, bra, they just dissolve everything. So that's just Nigeria for you.

So that's how that contract ended. But The thing is this, the older vendor from 2 years back, because she was able to do relationship building with wifey and four others, that's the ones that I know. And because she was doing multi threading within an organization. Multi threading is when you're trying to settle into a space, but instead of having only just one contact, you have multiple contacts. So because this lady did relationship building and she was doing multiple multi threading, she was able to get hundreds of thousands in small,

small, small recurring contracts. Now think about it, what brought her in was initially small, small stuff. You know like 10K order, 15K order, 20K order. Small small things. But because she played her game right, because her phone game was tight, she was now able to get to the level within the organization that if they call her, what will enter her account is 800 K, 901 point something M that was from 10/10 K. Now the moral of the story is this the reason why I've gone over vendor one and vendor 2.

If you're on Instagram vendor or you're somebody in the small and medium enterprises space, the difference between making one M profit in your business this year versus making 1.5 M next year or maybe two M next year. I know for big boys and big girls, 1M for the whole year. I know it's small, but you know, we all have to start from somewhere. You know, there are people that are actually that are doing like, you know, two, 203, three,

300K per month, you know, that kind of thing. By the time you remove expenses, you're not going to be up a whole lot. But The thing is trying to grow your business sometimes is not this masterful secrets, whatever, whatever. Sometimes it's all these small, free, simple tactics. So people in this space, this is something that you guys should be doing. Before you start wondering whether you should hire a coach or look for a mentor or start doing Instagram advertising or start doing Google advertising.

Here are some small, free, simple tactics that you guys can do in this space #1. When people call, you get the personal contact details. You need the person's name. Certainly, it might not be important, but at least for now, to begin, you need the person's name. You need this for relationship building and you need it for follow up. Just like vendor #2 the fish woman. The seafood woman was able to end up catering for board of directors, and it turned out to be an annual thing.

Where was I Yes. So get the contact details. This is how you do. That's how you're going to get referrals. You're going to be able to hook up repeat purchases, and you're also going to be able to maximize the customer lifetime value. Now, this is what customer lifetime value means. I first spoke about it on the podcast after I had left and I spoke about it on on the podcast about my experience while I was in Carnal about the bread vendor.

So let me use that example again. So excuse me. So excuse me recovering from a sore throat. That was I Yeah, cost of my lifetime value. This is what cost of my lifetime value means. Right now bread in Abuja is 2K. Now some people that sell 15, I've not seen 1-2, but bread is like 152K. I've only seen 22 for one loaf of bread. Now let's say your profit on one loaf of bread is 600 naira. If I walk into your shop and I buy one loaf of bread, the profit you have made from me is 600 naira.

If I don't come back into your shop next week and for the rest of the year, you might not think it's a big deal because after all, you made 600 naira. Well, think about if I come into your shop today and I buy one loaf of bread and you make 600 naira, but then I come back into your shop 100 times over the course of the year, and each time I come, maybe I buy two or three loaves of bread. Each time I take one loaf of bread, what you're making is 600.

If I take two, you're pocketing 1002. All that small, small 6600 naira starts to add up. If you don't believe me, you can do the math by yourself. I'm not good by doing about doing rough math on my head like that, but just think about it. So 600 naira every time this guy enters your shop, he enters four times in a month. That is 2400. If my math is correct. If my math is wrong, sorry, my math teacher, I hope she's not listening to this episode.

So if that 2400 per month, so let's multiply 2004 a month times 10. And what is that 2004? Is that 24 grand? So that's 24 grand. Let's just stop at 10 because that's easier for me to manage. So that's 24 grand on top one customer. So you can see how the magic is not that somebody bought from you now, the magic is when somebody buys from you now and the person comes back next week, next tomorrow. And then the person tells wife you can go and buy from here.

And then they tell moms you go and buy and then you know, they hook you up to more people. That is the magic and that's what we should be going for. For those of us who are in the SME space, for people who are playing in the big boy space, some of sometimes these things are a bit harder to rig up by the SME space. These ones are quick, quick, quick, quick, easy wins that you can just be hooking up like that. It doesn't take too much, too much you think about.

That's the goal. So get their contact details. It allows you to hook up a whole bunch of this stuff that we've been talking about here today on on previous episodes in the podcast #2 call referral sources to say thank you because this leads to more referral business. It blows my mind how many people do not call to say thank you for the referral. I currently have a client I'm consulting with right now and it's one of the things I'm trying to drum into the the sales team's heads.

They'll say, oh, this person came from so, so, so and so. And I'll say, OK, did you call Madame Drama to say thank you? No, I'm like, why haven't you called Madame Drama? Madame Drama did business with us. The money that we collected from her was two point something. M, doesn't it make sense that if Madame Drama says, OK, Chuku, call these people, should you call Madame Drama and say thank you very much? We spoke to OK Chuku.

Now we appreciate your business. I don't know why this thing doesn't make sense to to a whole to a whole bunch of you. If somebody makes a referral, call the person up and say thank you. Mahami Drama, your brother just called. Thank you very much. Blah, blah, blah. Small talk how the children has business. OK, thank you. I'll let you know how things go with with your brother. When everything is over and the brother is happy, call up again.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the business. This is what we do to hook your brother up. Thank you very much. Thank you that we have now become your family provider. I really appreciate it. God bless you, Ma. That's not a hard call to make. You don't want to spend too much money making those sorts of calls. Call up referral sources and say thank you. When you say thank you to someone who has done a referral before where things happen, they start referring you to more people because people like being valuable in their network.

So call up and say thanks #3 call up when you get these people's contact details and after you've called to say thank you for those people who refer, call up around birthdays. Madami Drama, how now are you there? Congrats as always your birthday. I saw it on the ground. God bless you. Long life, prosperity, a basket full of children, plenty of money in Jesus name. Amen. Simple phone call. Call up again around naming ceremonies.

Madami drama gives birth. Call up. Ah Madam, we thank God though. I saw the good news. Just call to celebrate with your family. How's your husband, blah blah blah. Call up around promotions. Call up around what else? You know, stuff like that. Some of you might ask, how am I supposed to know this information? It's very simple. If you got the contact details and you got their names and you store the number, every time this person does WhatsApp status update, you will see the you will see the update.

That's how you know when Madame Drama gets promoted or when she has just given birth. That's how you know to call and say Madame Drama, what's up? Are you there? I just saw this update. To God be we thank God. To God be the glory. He has done great things for us. That's how you know how to handle those conversations. It's from watching WhatsApp status. Apart from that, eventually you and Madami, you begin to flow. After a while, you know her name and surname and you'll get her Instagram handle.

You'll now be watching her things on Instagram and that's how you will see when she has been promoted, she has moved to a new house or whatever. Also, there's LinkedIn. LinkedIn, that's where I like to play most of the time. So I make sure that I follow everyone on LinkedIn. In fact, office promotion on when she goes to a new organization, that's how you're going to know. Most likely you'll see it on LinkedIn. I don't think people put office promotion on Instagram.

So yeah, LinkedIn, Facebook, that's how you're going to know all these things. You don't have to be a mind reader. Get people's contact details, call them up once in a while. Eventually you get to know more about them, follow them on social media and then this is how you're going to be able to know all the stuff that's going on in their lives. Now the whole point of all this WhatsApp status, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, blah blah blah, it's all relationship nurturing.

The whole point of relationship nurturing is that Madame Drama will send you more referrals. Apart from that, that you do more repeat business, she will call you up again. The whole point of relationship building is also to maximize customer lifetime value. You're going to make your biggest chunk of change not if Madame Drama buys from you one time, but if she buys from you. This year she bought three times in a year.

Next year she comes five times. Maybe the after that she only comes twice. If each year she's referring you three or four people. Like do the math in your head. Another thing, call people up, those of us in the SME space to confirm delivery. Madami Jumma, how far? I sent by Okada rider to your house. He was supposed to have been with you at 3:30. Did you get the order? Oh, OK. Well, thank you very much. I just called to confirm enjoy your meal or enjoy your whatever and then call later on to confirm that the customer is satisfied.

The reason why this step, step four and step five, call to confirm delivery status and then call to confirm customer satisfaction. The reason why it is very, very important especially in Nigeria is because in Nigeria nobody is doing this. Being frank with you guys, your competition is not doing this. Your competition will call your Carter guy, give the order, send out the order and then that's it. If the organization tries like like the bus companies, if they try, they'll send you a text message saying dispatch order sent to so, so, so, so, so pram they'll send the order.

So people who are trying, that's what they're doing. Dispatch order. You don't just send that automated text message call. Okada was supposed to have been with you. Delivery guy should have been with you at 3:30. Didn't get there. Hope everything was complete, nothing was missing, hope you're satisfied, blah, blah blah. Do it because nobody's doing it. It will set you apart then schedule all these things we're talking about schedule them on your phone put notifications because people forget if you delivered to Madam E drama today, today was the party.

Put a notification on your phone for two days later, ping him call Madam E Drama agenda customer satisfaction phone call and they call up my name E Drama. How was the party? I hope my people showed up on time. I hope there was no problem, blah blah blah. Have that conversation and then finally, those of us in the SME space, make sure that you qualify all opportunities. This is what I mean. Qualification is a process where you're talking to somebody,

you're trying to figure out who is this person, what do they do? What are they're about? What's the problem they're trying to solve? What's the vision that they're working towards? We need to find out all these things. The reason why we should find this out is because all these small small 10K orders, 20K orders can actually lead to bigger engagements in the future. Like I told you about the older vendor, it is from small small orders.

Why few calls order 10K, somebody else will call order 20K, another person will call order 5K. That all those small small ones is what led to other 100K1M kind of business. It's a lot of work to be calling people. We shouldn't just be building relationships with everybody up and down. We need to build relationships with people who are worth the while. The only way you will know who is worth the while is if you engage in the 1st place.

It is when you engage in the 1st place that you now know that, OK, this person is a Tacheria customer, let me delete this person, not worth my while and you will think that OK, this or that customizer, no, they're going to come up. Let me keep this phone number. It can turn into something in the future. Engage with everyone when you know who they are, you know who to delete, you know who to put your rotation and you know who to escalate.

That's how it works. Now the answer to the question, is this about below on my part? No, it's not. It's just that I've had an interaction with a vendor. And I think that this is a relatable case study that shows you guys the reason why I make the episodes that I make and the kind of topics that we talk about over here on the podcast. And to show you how sometimes business growth does not need you to call a consultant and be paying hundreds of thousands of naira.

They're just some small, small things that you can do that you hear on this podcast, that you hear on other people's podcasts or that you hear on YouTube. Just take it wrong with it and it can boost your business small, even if you grow from one M to 1.5 is something that 500K extra is something if you go from one M to two M, you know, to God be the glory. Dublin is actually quite good. Dublin and tripling. That's quite good.

So Oh yes, finally, another reason why I made this is because when I run into some of you, especially those of you who are Instagram vendors, you complain that everything that I say on the podcast is really geared towards people who do stuff in the real world who go and talk to people and blah, blah, blah. And I don't talk to online vendors. So today's episode was dedicated specifically to Xena and the rest of you who are online vendors.

Since I don't talk about you guys all the time or talk to you guys all the time, here's one episode where I've given you guys seven or eight simple things that you guys can do to boost your businesses. So the next time I run into one of you, I say I don't say anything about online vendors. I'll say, hey, it's a lie. Refer back to this episode and there's some juicy Nuggets here. So thank you very much for your time and attention.

Let's call it a wrap. Connect with me on WhatsApp. My phone number is 08064662140. The country code is lost 234. For those of you who are not Nigerian and then connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Ayede. That's the you check the link where you're listening to this episode so you can get the correct spelling of my name so you can find me. My e-mail address is going to be there as well. So thanks for your time and attention.

I'll catch you guys at the next episode. And please, online food vendors online, you sell pyjamas online you sell children's math sets, or you sell small shops, whatever. These are simple things that you guys can do to grow your business for free. It requires you to have nothing else but the mobile phone that you already have. So I'll catch you guys in the next episode.