Broke But Booming: Conquering Sales with Zero Budget

Hello and welcome to the show. Before we begin, the usual apologies because it's a wonderful rainy day here in Abuja. Some of that noise might spill into the recording. And then the kids are also home because, you know, it's that time of the year again, it's midterms. And so they're here, they're home and they're faffing about. OK. So today, if I remember correctly, what I promised you guys yesterday was that we're going to look at popular perspectives that you can find online on how to tackle the problem of selling while you are broke.

So essentially we're continuing from where we started yesterday on trying to conquer sales when you have a proper strategy or a shoestring strategy or whatever it is that you want to call it. Now, there are a couple of things that when I did a search over on the Internet, a couple of things that I found that were kind of implicit in the things that I said. And I wish I had stressed. No, not, not stressed. Yeah, stressed things.

I wish I had stressed a bit more. So let's just get into it now. One of the things that I found was that you should know your ideal customer. And that makes a lot of sense because if you've been listening to the podcast for the last month or two, you know that I've been talking about demographics and psychographics. That is trying to know the your potential customers, knowing their age, location, occupation, then psycho psychographics.

Those are things that they are interested in. And if you have an acute knowledge of these sorts of things, then that determines where and how you go about searching for those customers. So actually it should be the first thing that you do if you are on a really tight budget. So you have loads of time, but you don't have much a lot of money. You have to try and figure out who your ideal customers are. You need to know who they are,

where they hang out, what they're interested in, and then that way you can determine the best way to reach them. So in my example yesterday where I spoke about the artist individual who came by my son's school to promote to sell his, his clay products. So it's kind of implied in the example that I gave yesterday that someone like that knows who the ideal customer is. And he has a good sense of the demographics and psychographics,

which is the reason why he's targeting schools in the 1st place and parents of children who have parents who have young kids. So the person knows the demographics and psychographics. So yes, that was kind of assumed within the example that I gave yesterday, but it's something that I should have teased out explicitly as part of the whole process. So that you guys, if you're trying to work out a shoestring sales strategy, if you don't have a lot of money, this is the thought process that you go through as well.

So First off, you have to know your ideal customer. Then some of the stuff I found on the Internet was also about the power of leveraging content. And yes, I mentioned that yesterday because content marketing is cost effective way to get leads and to nurture leads. But remember what I pointed out yesterday that yes, it might be cost effective, but only if you're thinking in terms of naira and Kabul or dollars. But if you're thinking in term of in terms of the man hours or the woman hours, the hours and minutes that are going to be devoted to it, you say that you you still might be spending a considerable lot.

For instance, look at the podcast that I make. Luckily for me with my own approach, all I do is I whip up my phone and then I, I hit record and then I make the episode. I don't do retakes, I don't do edits, and then I just post. So if I make a 30 minute recording, then that's 30 minutes that has been devoted to content. Now, unfortunately, most of the other podcasters out there, OK, well, maybe fortunately for you guys, because they pay more attention to production value.

So they make sure that they, they're in a quiet environment. They make sure that they use proper microphones, the recording to the computer, they have to do editing. And so a lot of time and attention is devoted to pre production and post production. So for the average podcaster out there, the average Nigerian podcaster or any podcaster in any part of the world, you'll find that for them to make a 30 minute episode, maybe they have to record an hour's worth of content or maybe an an hour and a half worth of content.

Edit remove all the arms and the ARS, remove the spiking sounds, do noise, noise correction, noise reduction, whatever all those processes are. So you find, might not be surprising to find out that for the average podcaster to release 30 minutes worth of content, don't be surprised if they're actually putting in 3-4 or four hours worth of work. So sometimes that's the level of work that has to go into producing content marketing.

So yes, content marketing, putting out things on social media on the Internet is free in quote, but don't discount the amount of time that goes into these sort of things. So we should be creating informative blog posts, videos, what else? Podcast, if that's your thing. If you're an audio person like me, then podcasting is the way to go. Or OK, I hear that now on Tiktok, there's going to be audio content. But to be honest, I haven't hung out on Tiktok in I think it's definitely more than a year.

So I'm not sure what's going on in that part of the world or that part of the Internet, but I hear that audio is coming there soon. So if you're an audio person like me, then those are things that you can consider. Then e-mail marketing, yes, that's something that I forgot to mention yesterday. E-mail marketing can be used as a powerful sales tool if you are broke, but you will have to invest the time to build an e-mail list.

And the typical way that that is done online these days is you put out some valuable resource, maybe like an e-book or you conduct a webinar. So back to the example of the fellow who is trying to sell clay products. OK, so let's say he does a webinar or he or she does a webinar, they promote it on Instagram or whatever. Then you click the link, you go to the webinar and it's for parents who have children between the ages of let's say three and five.

And maybe the seminar is about how to use extracurricular activities to keep children engaged during the holidays. Yes, since the holidays are here. So you can do that kind of webinar. And then, of course, to register for the events, you will have to, you know, mom and dad will have to put their e-mail addresses. And you know, this is a way where the fellow, the chap or the girl who is promoting selling the clay products would now start getting e-mail addresses for their e-mail list.

So the addresses of mummy and dad that the fellow is getting right now is going to be a nice treasure trove that he can send messages to time and time again. Every time there are new products, new offers, new programs, things like that. So that's the idea behind e-mail marketing. So give a valuable resource, use that to capture e-mail and then hopefully that people, those people are going to be a captive and loyal audience that you can keep marketing to time and time again.

Although for someone who is in this kind of space, you know, you're selling clay products or educational things for kids, you'll have to bear in mind that your target audience, the people on your e-mail list are going to age out over time. So for someone like me, what I'm, since what I'm doing is I'm consulting services, sales consulting services, it will be expected that once I have someone on my e-mail list, I don't have an e-mail list now,

but when I do, will be expected that people are going to remain with me for a considerable length of time, so long as they are business owners or until they reach the profit range where my services will no longer be useful. Because right now, my current focus is the SM ES. So I have lots of interesting things to say, but I doubt I might be able to help Dangote move the needle on his business any further because my focus is SM ES for now.

That's my focus, that's my knowledge base, that's my skill set. So people are going to e-mail me for a while. But back to the person who is selling clay products or educational, educational stuff for kids. If you get, if your ideal target market is parents who have children between the ages of three and five, you know, of course the kids are not going to remain three and five forever. So if you get someone who has a three-year old now, then in another three years ideally possibly that that parent is now aging out of your ideal customer base.

So for someone who's trying to use e-mail marketing in this, in those sorts of businesses, you know that you have to refresh. Is that the word and you get the picture. I'm not sure what the word is, but you'll have to be bringing people a whole. You have to do a lot of work to keep people coming into your e-mail list because lots of people are going to be flowing out. So that's a problem that I am not going to have because for me, it'll only happen when people's profits increases and they go beyond the SME thing or maybe they give up and they decide to Joppa and they move to Canada or America and they're now 95 US.

So they don't need the services of folks like me anymore. But for people in that, in that space, you're selling clear products or selling education products, it's going to be like clockwork. You know, every year children will reach a certain age and parents no longer interested in certain kinds of things, they interest move on to other things then something else. I've also found online webinars and online events. Yeah, I forgot about that.

So if you're broke, webinars and online events, the philosophy is the same as e-mail marketing. You're hosting a free webinar, online workshop, you know, stuff like that. You're trying to demonstrate your expertise. You get to showcase your product, show the value and I guess and you'll allow you to connect with customers in real time. Now, even though it's webinars and online events, my advice, the philosophy is the same.

So you might as well apply that to Instagram Live. So think of Instagram Live as a webinar or as well. So think of Instagram Live, think of LinkedIn audio, think of LinkedIn live events. There's also Twitter Spaces. I'm not sure what it's called now that Twitter is X, so I don't know if you say X Spaces, then people also use Telegram and WhatsApp trainings for similar purposes. But the philosophy, like I said, it's the same.

Don't think in terms of the platform, think in terms of the utility that you are trying to deliver. So go online wherever the platform, host the webinar, some online thing, showcase your expertise, the value that your product or service provides. Now back to the Tiktok thing. I also heard some gist that for Tiktok, for people who are who have an audience of a certain size, you are going to be able to be doing Tiktok lives.

So for those of you on Tiktok who have garnered an audience, that's something that you have to look forward to. Well, like I said, social media, Tiktok, not necessarily my thing, but I'm just putting it out there. So if you're interested and you already have a bunch of followers, I want to see how maybe if you've been doing Instagram Live and you've been doing, it's been good for, for the success in your business and you wanted to see if you can do the same thing on Tiktok.

So do your research. Some of those tools are going to be coming soon to social media near you. Then something I also forgot to say yesterday, which was referrals. That's also something you do when you're trying to boost your business while you're broke. Although some ideas around incentivizing existing customers, getting people to recommend your products or services, basically by offering discounts and referral bonuses.

If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I'm not a discount person. I say use discounts, but only when you have an overall strategy of using it to move inventory. But that's a podcast episode for another day. Or if you're listening to any of the episodes that we have here, over 855 episodes so far, use the search function and anything that has discount in the title or free in the title. You, you will get to be exposed to more of my ideas around this whole things and why we should avoid this whole thing of discount and free and blah,

blah, blah. But in principle, we should be getting referrals. So if people are happy with our product or service, we should be having our conversation. So you know that whole thing of oh, hello, ma'am, thank you very much. I'm glad you showed off at our last clay moulding session. I hope you and your husband had fun. I hope the kids had fun. Have they been using the product? Hope there are no problems. The different colours, the whatever.

Is it drying well? Is it baking well? You know, you have that whole conversation because you want to be sure that mom and dad are really happy and that the kids enjoy themselves. And then you cap off the conversation by saying, you know, do you know, do you have other friends, children of a similar age, you know, who might like these kinds of fun activities? And then the lady says, Oh yes, yes, actually, so fine, OK, hope you don't mind.

Can I have their phone number so I can be in touch, blah, blah, blah. That is the whole spirit of what we're talking about here. We should get referrals going. I'm not saying that discounts and free whatever, whatever are bad. I'm just saying we have to be deliberate about it. But then again, that's the topic for another episode. Then there's some stuff there around free trials and demos. And sometimes these are the reasons why I don't like people relying too much about advice from the Internet because you just give all these things that are low hanging food that seem to make sense, but at the end of the days, sometimes end up damaging your prospects for business.

Because a whole bunch of people that you're going to try and invite because of free this free, this bonus, this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah are people who are just looking for a deal. And the problem with all these deal hoppers are they are not your ideal customer. The person comes in, the person gets what they want for free. And you know, it's like, it's like a one night stand. You know, they get what they want and then they're off.

And even if they're going to refer you, they're not going to refer you to quality clients. It's going to be people like them who are also trying to, well, what's that word? Is it fleece? You know, as they're just trying to you, you get what I'm trying to say. They're just trying to come take their own pound of flesh, you know, and then leave. But we should be looking for quality clients, people who find what we do valuable, not just back to the, the clay thing.

We're not looking for someone who's just looking for cheap clay to just throw out the children. We're looking for someone who sees value in what it is that you do, who sees how maybe the tactile experience is good for children's creativity or maybe for family bonding, you know, things like that. So that they will invest in these sorts of activities and then you can make some good money on the back end. Not just somebody who's all passing through.

Because the person is looking for cheap clay. Maybe the person has been looking for clay everywhere. They see the clay is maybe 5K your own clay IS3K5. And so that's all they're after. They're just here for the free clay and you know, and then they just leave. So yes, free trials and demos if you're trying to get people in. But remember, there has been an overall strategy about what you're going to do once the people are in.

Matter of fact, let me just spill into that a little bit. Now, the whole thing about my philosophy about discounting is this. Retailers use discounting because it is a perfect part of their strategy to offload inventory at higher prices. Let me give an example. Back when I was in the UK, me and my wife, what's it called? Marks and Spencer's. Yeah, I think was Marks and Spencer's. Is it? I think was Marks and Spencer's.

Anyway, so they were doing some discounts and also they had this underwear, the Brazilian, Brazilian underwear. And at the time I told my wife that look, this Brazilian stuff, like it looks nice. You look real good on you. Like, you know, you have a nice behind. If you wear this sort of thing, you know it, you'll be nice. And she didn't quite agree, but went anyway because after all, there was a sale those they're doing this a sale, you know, all these, there are things that they do, you know, 10% off this percent off, you know, whatever.

And my wife, she believes in retail therapy, as she calls it, like if you're having a bad day, just enter the shop, you know, look around, try one or two things even if you don't buy as it just makes her happy. Unfortunately, my mom is the same way and my sister-in-law is also the same way. So whenever three of them were in the same town, there will be an absolute terror and, you know, because they will say, oh, sales on this, sales on that.

And then we'll leave the house at 8:00. And before you know it, 12 in the afternoon, one in the afternoon, we're still in shops. And they're thinking about how, oh, shops are closed at 4:00. If we leave here on time, we can go to the shop, we can go to that shop. I mean, my back is just aching because I'm carrying bags and I'm just walking up and down. And how many kinds of shoes and bags can you look at before you get tired?

Anyway, that's just Misha. Anyway, where was I? So, yeah, so discounts. And then we went there. My wife had a look at the Brazilians and then she tried them and she liked them. She was like, oh, cool. Now my plan was that we're going to buy a couple of Brazilians because I saw one that was like, what's this color is this color that is like red? It's almost like red. It's like it's in between red and purple. I don't know what it's called.

So there was that one. Then there was like a greenish, like greenish emerald one and I had like four or five that I wanted us to buy shop. And then when we went in there and we took it and we got to the counter and we're about to pay. The lady said, oh, fantastic, you took advantage of the discounts and blah, blah, blah. But do you know that they are matching bras in the same colours and something, something, something.

And at that point my wife's eyes was like really matching bras. And I'm like, yes, would you like me to show you? In my mind I'm thinking, oh drats, I'm the one who has caused my my own downfall here because I came and I wanted us to buy Brazilian underwear, only wanted us to buy four. This lady has now spoken about how there's matching bra and the marching bra is upstairs. So they pull us out of the queue because my wife wants to see the matching bras and they walk us all the way up to the store.

And then lo and behold, it was just an ocean of bras and my wife was having fun. She was looking at this bra and then that bra and then balconette and then this type and then that type. But of course the bras are not on discount as I was selected a few, a few of them. And then next thing ladies also talking about matching this matching that. And we came in there because I wanted us to buy 4-4 maybe 5 Brazilian underwear.

That was what I wanted. We left there with 4 Brazilian underwear, 4-5 with marching bra of the same colour with pop socks I think was like 2. Is it pop socks? You know those like sheer netting things was like 2. We also carried earrings and what again, you know, I can't remember, excuse me, but bought a whole bunch of stuff. And that is the idea that retailers use when they say 50% off and blah blah blah blah blah. So average.

Niger people like us, we see that it's a tactics that works in the UK and so we just assume that if we do that here, then you know, we're getting people to come in and to see us and to know us. But no, that's not how it works. The reason why they say 50% off on Brazilians is because they know that if you come and buy Brazilian, except if the man came in alone know how know how you get the Madam to also pick bra as well and why she's looking at bra.

You can say, Madam, that this bag, this bag is also cool. This earring is also nice. This pop sock is also nice. This scarf is also nice. This this is also nice. That that is also nice. So you put 50% on Brazilian underwear and then everything else in the store, you now mark it up small, maybe 2% or 3%. And you see how at the end of the day, they say 50% discount, but at the end of the day, they end up being profitable.

It's because you put 50% discount on one item to lure them in and then you upsell and cross sell on other items that the price has been marked up small and then at the end of the day, you end up profitable. So this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about when I say let us be careful when we're doing free this, free that 50% off, blah, blah, blah. If it is part of an overall plan like Marks and Spencer's and these other big retailers, you know, if it's part of that kind of plan, you know, like even in Nigeria now Grand Square in Lagos and in Abuja, they do these kind of moves.

They will say end of year sales, blah, blah, blah, 10% off on the Indomy or whatever. And you're thinking, oh, okay, Indomy is currently 10,000 per carton, but if I buy it from Grand Square, it's going to be 8K per carton, no problem. You go in because Indomy is discounted. But then on the Maggie, on the milk or on the bread or on the everything, they raise the price small, you know, 1%, maybe 2%. That's how the whole thing works.

So if you must be trying all these free, free, this free, this discount, that discount that you know, all these ideas you're seeing on the Internet, that's how it works. And that's what I mean by if you must do this, make sure that there is it's part of an overall strategy so you can come out clean on top. One, by the way, when these people do these sorts of things, especially in the UK, in Nigeria, the other side are doing it yet it Marks and Spencer's when they're doing this, as people are leaving,

they'll collect your e-mail address. They'll collect wifey's e-mail address so that the next time they have new stock of Brazilians or bras or pop socks or bags or whatever it is that Madam bought, the next time a new one, a new set comes in, they will send the e-mail to say, oh, coming in summer edition, spring edition, that edition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then now there's something new that Madam has to look forward to.

And for husbands like me who don't like to shop, it means that there's more stress ahead because you're going to be walking up and down from 1 shop to the other. But then again, that's the benefit of living in Nigeria now because there's no retail therapy in Nigeria because we don't have those sort of outlets. I mean like we have them, but the culture is different. It's not like you can just go to what's it called Mango.

I think Mango is in, in Lagos, like Ikeja City Mall and some other, some of those places. Now you can go there and then just be looking around for free and trying for free because you know, Nigerian sales attendance now they'll be looking at you like a big stock. Come stop trying all these things. If you're buying something, buy. If you don't want to buy, just go. You know that kind of attitude. Anyway, let's see 20 minutes.

So let me just wrap up to a close. So these are some of the ideas I will find out online. These are all the things that you can do when you are trying to come up with the sales and strategy and you are broke so you have more time than money. Let's see. OK, yes, one more thing, make sure that you're analysing and you're tracking. I did this. Did it work? How well did it work? How many customers? The customers that came, were they good quality or bad quality?

How much did they spend? Did they spend plenty money or were they just time wasters? Track and analyse because you need to know what's working and as a general rule in sales, if something works, we do it more. If something is not working, we do less of it or we try and optimize what is the reason why we need to track and analyse if it's working, Do it again. I did it this week, it worked. Next week I will do double. And hopefully if you don't do double, you should get double the results.

So that's the whole idea behind it. So like I've been saying this episode and the episode that came before, in summary, if you don't have money, no Allah, no problem, no money, then your focus should be on building relationships. It should be on providing value and using all these free or low cost tools that are available. But then if you have plenty of money, then please by all means promote and advertise a way and focus on getting as many meaningful impressions as possible.

When we say impressions, we just mean eyeballs. So try and get as many eyeballs as possible on the Instagram handle, on the website, on the everything as in pay and promote. But make sure you work on your conversion skills. Conversion basically is the art of talking to people to get them to take the next step. So back to the example of Brazilian underwear, where the counter, the lady who, unfortunately for me, the lady that we met at the counter was a pro.

So getting us out of the queue and getting us to go upstairs again to the brass section, that is conversion. Yeah. With someone, you want them to take a next step. Being able to handle that conversation so that they take that next step. That is conversion skills. So for those of you who are promoting and advertising, work on your conversion skills. Because I get the impression that people who promote stuff or advertise stuff on Google and things like that, they expect that the advertisement is going to do all the work.

And yes, the advertise, the advertisement might get people to buy, but there are some people who look at the advert, advertisement, walk into your store and then walk out and not buy anything or go to your website and not buy anything. So the website should be set up right. For those of you who believe in using bots on your website or the chat functions, you need to make sure there's somebody who knows their stuff or that the bots are well optimized so that they can work on conversion,

getting people to take the next step. If the advertisement is for people to come into the store, you need to make sure that the people who are at the store are properly trained. Like that sales lady that was at the till when we're about to pay for the Brazilians. So yeah, the people have to be good at conversions, getting, you know, building rapport, establishing a relationship and then trying to get people to take the next step.

So that's it pretty much. I think I've, I've flogged that question because we've devoted more than an hour in two episodes. So go forth and sell whichever way that you can. If you have time, go forth and sell with as much time and effort as you can. If you have money, go forth and sell with as much money as you can because your business, your product, your service, for those of you who are in the NGO space, your cause or your agenda is not going to sell itself.

So you have to sell it eventually because there's nothing that sells itself. So that's all for today. Thank you very much, guys. Connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 080, 64662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian or for those of you who jackpot maybe a decade ago and you've forgotten the country code, then connect with me on WhatsApp, sorry on LinkedIn. My name is Tabishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show and you can confirm the spelling of my name and e-mail address from the link.

We're currently listening to this episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.