Building a High-Performing Sales Team in Nigeria: Hiring, Compensation, and Enablement

Hello and welcome to the show. It's a lovely Thursday morning in Abuja over here and this is an out and about episode. So they're going to be some, you know, some sounds here and there. So let's get straight down to business. Today's question is also similar to one that I've tackled in the past and that is on how to build a reliable and productive sales team in Nigeria. Now, just in case the next couple of questions, you know,

have this kind of slant, you know how to do XYZ in Nigeria. I guess I might as well just go ahead and say it now that you'll find that sales principles, sales theory, sales practice, sales, whatever is universal. So the question is just a matter of in what order are you going to apply these principles or these tactics? But you'll find that essentially how to build a reliable and productive sales team in Nigeria is going to be the same as how to do it in Ghana or how to do it in Australia or how to do it in Afghanistan.

It's just that because of cultural differences and let's say what else cultural differences, business climate, because of the reality on ground, you have to do it through do some things in a different order in Afghanistan than how you might do in Nigeria or in Ghana, just off the top of my head. OK, well, I haven't been to Afghanistan, so this is me just guessing, riffing off of movies. I get the impression that some of those Middle Eastern countries, you know, countries that are close to, you know,

Arabia and the Orient. My assumption is that, you know, for Niger, we do a lot of rapport building and small talk. I'm assuming that in those climb, those kinds of climbs, that this whole sort of thing is going to be even more important. You know, the whole rapport building, sourcing people out, figuring out who they are, where they're from and all these sort of thing. So you find that the the answer is always going to be the same.

The difference is just going to be in which order are you going to apply the principle and what principles are you going to stress over and beyond others. So how to build a reliable and productive sales team in Nigeria? We tackled some of that yesterday when I spoke about the importance of hiring right, hiring the right people in the 1st place. So this your first time of listening to the podcast. Then when you're done listening to this, skip back listen to yesterday's episode where we spoke about the importance of industry knowledge, sales skills and coach ability or the ability of somebody to hear what?

Those were the three things. OK, I can't remember what else I spoke about yesterday, Biden. I know that I mentioned those 3 for sure when it came when it comes to hiring the right people, industry knowledge, sales skills, and the fact that the person is coachable. So those are the things you have to pay attention to to make sure that you hireright in the 1st place. So this is your first time listening to the show. You have a sales team.

You're thinking of putting together a sales team and that's why you're listening to an episode like this. When you're done, skip back to the other episode. There's some more there's some more Nuggets for you in the previous episode. So you can take that on board. Then I have done even older episodes. I think right now we're over 800 and OK, I have to check, but I think we're now over 800 episodes. So I've done even older podcast episodes on this and that's the issue of compensation.

Now I, there is this whole debate. I'm not going to get into it about whether you should sales people should have variable compensation or fixed salary. Now this is the idea. There's some people that are going to say sales are money motivated people. So therefore if you're going to pay everybody else, the cleaner, the general manager, the finance person, the security guard, if you're going to give them a fixed salary like OK, or guard manager, you come to work every day, your salary is 150 K.

That's why I'm paying you. For those people who favor viable compensation theories, then what you're going to do is you're going to say, look, orga sales person or Madam sales person, this is how I'm going to pay you. Yes, orga manager and everybody, I'm paying 150K. But for you, I'm going to pay you 50K base salary every month. And then for every, you know, one M that you bring or for every 200,000 that you bring or whatever, this is your percentage and blah, blah, blah.

So the theory being that the person will be motivated to sell more so the person can take the 50K base salary. And then if the person is able to bring in, you know, 2,000,000 naira in business to you a month. And what you guys agreed was that for, you know, everything above 100K, they're getting 10% then 2,000,010% on 2,000,000. Is, is that 200 grand? OK? My guess is that that's 200 grand if I got the math wrong. Guys, don't be angry with me.

I I studied law so I'm not a math person. Well, there's no excuse because my wife studied law as well, but she's currently writing CFAS, almost done with CFAS level 2. So I guess it's a myth that people who study law are not supposed to be good at math. Because apart from my wife, I also know a couple of other people who have legal backgrounds who are not just doing CFA that's chattered financial analyst, but who are also doing MBA in finance and things of that nature.

So where was I? OK, yeah, So that's the idea behind variable composition. Now look, August salesman or August sales woman, your base every month I'm giving you is 100K. If you're able to bring me business over 100 and K, you're taking 10 per 100K, you're taking 10%. So if you bring 2 Miller like how much I'm giving you is 200 grand and then so on and so forth. Now yes some of you are going to say OK, won't that lead to some unequitable hierarchies within the business because general manager is earning 150K flat.

But then if Madam salesperson takes 100K fixed salary and then viable compensation, she earns another 200. So August salesperson is now earning, she has now earned 300K in a month while her orga has only earned 150K. Well, it's just, it's just the nature of the industry. So that happens, it happens all the time in sales. It is typical that whoever is the supervisor is the person who is earning the least of the sales team because the supervisor can't go out and hustle because his job is to stay and to manage everybody else.

So typically the team does earn more than the more than orga manager, orga supervisor or you know, whatever it is that you call them within your own organization. So that's the idea behind variable compensation. There is also an extreme above variable compensation, which is to say put the sales team only on Commission. So January 1st starts, I'm not giving you any salary, go ahead and sell whatever it is that you capture above 100K, we give you 10%.

If you capture anything above 500 K, we now increase that to 20%. If you capture anything beyond this, we increase it to, you know, whatever. So you can see the variable component there, how it is staged. And you know, in this case you don't order me a fixed salary. And then there are people on the other end who say, you know what, just pay everybody a a fixed salary. So, you know, cooling account is being paid 150 K.

So all the sales staff, everybody is just going to get 150K. You know, regardless of whether you bring in the three M or whether you bring in 50,000, everybody gets paid the same. So I'm not going to go into all the theories which one is better, which one should you do 'cause these things have to be applied on a case by case basis. But I just want you to go, you guys to know that part of building a reliable and productive sales team means that you need to have some sort of answer when it comes to this compensation thing.

You have to have thought it out. I would say the most important thing on the compensation front is not really whether it's variable or not or fixed or not, but most important thing is pay as and when it is due. Don't break your promises. That is the thing that breaks the morale of sales people. If you tell sales people that look 23rd of every month, your account to be credited 23rd of every month, whether it was variable compensation or fixed salary credit, the account sales can be sales is more stressful than office work, than desk work.

So it's really, really demotivating when you run out, you hustle, you take Orkada, you, you're in a hot sun, you take bolts, you do this, you do that. You're out of pocket, you're stressed out. Customers are shouting at you. You're you know the whole thing. And then Orga promised that he'll pay by 23rd, 23rd reach nothing. 27th reach nothing. 2nd of next month reach you now credit the account. It it does it, it is not good for it's not good for motivation.

So if you told them 23rd every every month your account be credited, whether it's viable or whether it's fixed, then credit on the 23rd you start breaking your promises. You are messing with their motivation. Then the final leg of how to build a reliable and productive sales team in Nigeria. Remember we've looked at how to hireright that's what we did yesterday higher right in the 1st place, looking at industry knowledge, sales skills and coachability.

Today I spent the last 8 minutes talking about compensation and whether it's variable or fixed. But bottom line is pay. When do you don't break your promises? Now the third leg is sales enablement. Sales enablement is that function where you, how will I explain it enablement. Well, you guys understand now how you enable something. So if you're going to do sales enablement, that's basically training and coaching to help them do their job better.

It's a sales management to make sure that they have some direction because, you know, we're human beings and even the most disciplined person, whether you're a monk or a ninja or a salesperson or an athlete, we do need some form of direction. We do need somebody to say, hey, look, your personal best is OK. Yeah, for those of you who are athletes, your personal best is 9 seconds for one hundred 100 meters. But you've been, you've been running 10.1 seconds.

You know, you're sleeping behind. Let's go back to our fundamentals. Let's do the drills. So it's the same in sports as in business. There has to be someone to say, look, Olga Frank, last month you are calling about 1010 customers every day. Look, this month you, you, you've been sleeping. Yesterday you only talked to four, today you've only talked to three. You know, if last month you were talking to 10/10/10 and this is how much you made this month you're only talking to three or one to four.

How do you think the the month is going to go? So let's get up on the calls or let's do it like this, let's do it like that. So that's what sales management is all about. S training and coaching, sales management. And then really, really important, you have to adopt the CRM in your business. And that's also something I keep talking about time and time again over here on the phone. CRM is just an acronym for customer relationship management.

Although I have done lots of episodes to show how if you don't have money, if you don't have dollars to pay for all these things because most of the options that are available Zoho, Zoho, what else? Zoho begin. I'm currently having a client with begin HubSpot sales force. You know, all these are the foreign companies. So if you're paying, you're paying in dollar. So if you don't have dollar dollar, you know to be paying for your sales staff.

I was talking about how you can use your phone as a how you can use phones for record keeping and scheduling, how you can get in principle get people to start adopting good CRM practice before you start paying for the CRM. Then there's also African alternatives, free alternatives. Like some fellow, I'm going to be speaking at the artificial Intelligence Business and Business and AI conference or something like that. That's going to be in August,

OK? We're currently in July. That's going to be in August of 2024. So I've been just in with other panelists and there's somebody there who's been fooling around with not just CRM solutions, but HR solutions. Yes, human resources. So there are some companies, you know, Niger companies, Kenyan companies. So the guy put me on Ordo. I think it's Ordo ODOO I've had to look at. I've had to look at it. I've not started using it, but that's a free alternative.

And that's an Afghan company. I can't remember if it's Kenya or Niger, but some of these alternatives are there. But yeah, good adopt, get your people to adopt. Good CRM practice. Now CRM customer relationship management sounds big, sounds technical, but bottom line, CRM just means good record keeping and it just means good scheduling. Let me repeat, when you hear CRM customer relationship management tools, yes, there's a big technical definition.

But remember over here on the podcast, I like to keep the definitions simple so that you remember. If it's simple and you remember, you will do it. So every single time that you hear CRM in business from now on, I give the permission to just think record keeping and scheduling. Whatever the technical definition is, CRM just equals record keeping and scheduling. The reason why CRM equals record keeping and scheduling is this.

You cannot grow your business. You cannot be good in sales if you do not remember who you contacted yesterday, who you're supposed to contact today, who you're supposed to contact tomorrow, and what it is that you promised these people and what you're supposed to do next. Let me repeat, we cannot grow sales in our business if we don't have a way of keeping track. Who did I talk to yesterday? Who am I supposed to talk to today?

Who am I supposed to talk to tomorrow? The people that I spoke to yesterday, what did I promise them that I'm supposed to do? The person that I'm supposed to talk to today, What did I promise him that I'm going to get for him? What did he or she promise that they will do for me and the people that I'm going to talk to tomorrow? What is the next step that I'm going to do to move that deal forward? So if you want to run this whole thing by memory, it will get complicated very quickly, except if you're a Carpenter or you're an artisan, because the artisan talks to maybe one or two people every day.

It is easy to remember that I went to this madam's house. The door is 21 inches by whatever fits by this. And if I buy one trampoline, if I buy one box of gum, and if I buy one box of screw, it will finish the job. It is easy to do it if you are artisanal because at most you're talking to one or two people every day. You can run it like that if you are not artisanal, if you go beyond this in any way, if you have a bookshop, if you're a wedding photographer, if you do tax accounting services, you advise people on how to file their their taxes with Abuja minister.

No, no, no municipal council, that's different. What is it called? Inland Revenue Service. You teach people how to file Inland Revenue services or you're a coach or you're a tailor. You cannot be running these conversations from your head. It's not going to happen. You make mistake, you will talk to Kemi and in your mind you'll be thinking OK, chemist specs, that's for the tailor. You'll be thinking chemist statistics are 361272361272.

You'll be thinking like that. You will now go and use chemist fabric and you will make the dress with the statistics of 361272 only for chemist to show up and you now see that you took the figures for another chemist who has another different body type and you switched it. That's because you don't have ACRM, you don't have a way of keeping records and scheduling and so you are not able, you are not able to remember that chemi adigun is different from chemi Ogung Bemi and so you just switched up the two.

So that's the rubbish that ends up happening when you want to run these things from memory. So you want to build a reliable and productive sales team. Make sure your people adopt the CRM or good CRM practice, whether they use their phone, whether they use auto or other free tools, or whether they use Microsoft Word or whatever. There has to be something. And remember, CRM just equals good record keeping and scheduling.

That's all. If you can do those two, you can get your sales people to do those two. You start making progress. Of course, things have to get more tidy and more professional as the business becomes more complicated. But for now, for those of us in the SME space, let us just start with where we are. You don't have dollar dollar. You don't have to be paying for HubSpot, Salesforce, begin, all of them, them, them look for Niger alternatives.

All those Kenyan companies, South African companies that are starting up stuff, look for all those free alternatives. Start if you think it's too much stress, if you think it looks too complicated. Even if you use Microsoft Word, you create a, a file, you put everybody's name down, you record what they do, you know, stuff like that, and you start writing down things in the Microsoft Word document. It's better than nothing.

You cannot, I repeat, you cannot run this thing from memory. If you're an artisan, fine. If you are one step above the artisan, you cannot run things from memory. So why are these things important? Especially the sales enablement aspect? Because obviously if you haven't picked up my emphasis, I'm really hitting hard on this sales enablement thing. The reason why, especially in Nigeria, this might not apply in the UK and in America where sales enablement, sales training, sales coaching is expected, you know, is the culture.

Well, even in those places, they complain that not all sales people are trained up as they should be, but there's a greater awareness of these sorts of things. So sales people are attending conferences, reading, reading blogs, listening to podcasts, you know, things like that. So there's some sort of sales enablement already going on in Niger. It is not a culture yet. That means sales enablement is something that your competition is not doing.

Now you start doing those things. Now you already start standing apart from the competition, which is one of the podcast I've been talking about how good sales practice in Nigeria is a good way of setting yourself apart from the competition. In Niger, people still freestyle when they sell. If your folks have run through some form of sales enablement, you've given them some training, you've given them some coaching, you've told them listen to this podcast or subscribe to this newsletter.

You have a sales manager who is all trained up, who is on their case and then they are adopting good record keeping and good scheduling. Whether they use the CRM or their phone or Microsoft Word or Excel sheet, your folks will sound remarkably different from other people. So let's say, OK, let me use stationary because I'm parked in front of a stationary shop right now. So you sell stationary. You want to sell your stationary to.

Oh, sorry. OK, Sorry about that. I set the alarm 20 minutes. I'm trying not to keep the podcast episodes long. OK, so where was I? So you sell stationary and you want your staff to go into Axis Bank to sell stationary to Axis Bank, you know, sell. Printer ink, sell paper, sell stuff like that. And you also want them to. OK, let's say you're next to. OK, let me just use the business around me. So the stationary store is here in the middle, Access Bank is to the left.

And then to the right we have custodian, Custodian wealth management. That's wealth management. That's like investment banking. And then next to that, we have a government regulator that is audit house. Audit House, Yeah, Auditor General of the Federation. OK, So the the people that sell stationary, they're in the middle. You look to the left, you have Access Bank. You look to the left of that, you have the Office of the Auditor General.

Then you look to the right, you have the custodian, custodian, wealth managers. So if you send your people out every year to go and sell stationary today, enter Access Bank, see if you can talk to office managers, see if you can talk to MD, see if you can talk to whatever so that we can be supplying them ink, we can be supplying them printer paper. We can supplying them by Rose. Then after that, enter auditor generals office, see if we can be supplying them tissue paper,

printer ink, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then we enter into custodian, the wealth managers. Let's say we can be supplying them with custom branded envelopes with their logos and stuff like that. So that's your business. You're into stationary, rest assured, you're not the only people, you're not the only person in the stationary business in this local government. So definitely other people are in the business and other people have come up with this brilliant idea that you know what, instead of sitting down here in the shop and expecting business to flow,

flow to us, how about we get some some really entrepreneurial guys and girls to go out and sell on our behalf. So the other people that are doing this thing as well. If you have taken the sales enablement function seriously, then when your people show up to all these businesses, because definitely other people who do stationary will approach them stationary and supplies, your people, they will sound different because they've been trained and coached, because you guys have good sales management and they're also adopting good record keeping and scheduling,

they will sound different. They will look different because of course a sales manager will point out that like, you know, Abdul, that you know you're wearing palms. Like why, how, how are we going to get business? If you're going on wear palms. No, don't wear palms. Wear loafers or wear this one. Wear that one. Or if you're wearing palms, make sure that you're wearing kaftan. Let the whole thing blend so they'll look different.

They're going to sound different. It is going to reinforce your brand positioning because you can't just get a stationary shop in the central business district in Abuja, your next Access Bank, your next next to what's that place called Auditor General and your next to custodian wealth management. So of course you'll be trying to form one kind of packaging. You know, you're trying to brand yourself in a certain way. So you put all this in place,

your folks sound different. You reinforce your brand positioning and ultimately you're also going to be more profitable than your competition because rest assured, if you're adopting good CRM practice, your competition is not adopting good CRM practice. Most likely the system that you have in the office, people come, they pay. So it will capture people's information and things like that. But that is not really CRM. That is more of an accounting and inventory thing.

So you know that this is how much came came in, this is how many customers we we had, this is how many tissue paper that we sold last month. So we're supposed to buy new tissue paper again, you know, update our inventory. So you end up being much more profitable because your people are doing good sharing practice, good record keeping and good scheduling. So summary, how do you build a reliable and productive sales team in Nigeria?

Make sure you hireright. You want to know how to hire the right people, hire the right talent. Listen to yesterday's episode. We need to have a good answer when it comes to compensation. What is the good answer? How much your people be paid? I'll leave that up to you. Most important thing is don't mess with their motivation. If you say you want to pay them on 21st, pay them 21st every month. If there's going to be a problem you can't pay on 21st, then might as well let them know on the 14th that hey guys, you know what I promise you guys 21st,

but you know, this happened, this happened, this happened. I beg you guys should give me like one week, no message or motivation. You promise them pay them then sales enablement really important will help your crew stand apart from the park. So that's all for today folks. Remember to connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064 662140, and the country code is +234. Then you can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show, and you can confirm the spelling of my name from the link. We're currently listening to this episode, and my e-mail address is there as well for those of you who are e-mail people. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next recording.