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Hello guys and welcome to the show. It's a very hot Friday morning in Abuja. OK, maybe it's not so hot, but it's hot because I'm outside and I'm sorry, but today is going to be a very noisy episode. And that's because it's one of those episodes that I'm recording from the fuel queue. So, yes, as at the time of this recording, for some reason, fuel queue seems to have cropped up in the central business district in Niger, in Abuja.
So we're having to queue for fuel. Just one of those things. Now, I know that you guys have been listening to the podcast for a while. You guys know that this thing really, it really chaps my craw. You know, this whole thing that I started off this journey because I was on fuel cues and I figured it was the whole point of wasting time. And that's when I started creating content that would eventually become what is produced for the show.
And yeah, so it's annoying that I keep finding myself in this situation time and time again. But I guess this is what we're going to have to contend with for a while, a while we Nigerians are trying to sort out these sorts of problems, you know, Anyway, so sorry for that rant, but just to say I'm on the queue. So, yeah, expect to hear people shouting, cars driving by, maybe the occasional quarrel or two, you know, when someone cuts through the line.
So let me head straight to the question for today. And just like I thought yesterday when I made yesterday's recording, it turns out that today's question is also tied into the Nigerian market because the question is on effective sales tactics for the Nigerian market. So I'm going to start this off by saying the same thing that I did yesterday, which is that business good sales and business development principles are universal.
So good sales tactics for the American market or for the UK market will also apply to the Nigerian market is just going to be contextual, depending on cultural differences, the industry, the products, the price, your ideal customer, ideal customer avatar, you know, the, the target base of people that you're chasing after. That's what is going to make us tweak things here and there. Now, the only change I'm going to make to the question is this.
For those of you who are thinking of effective sales tactics, sorry, the question is on sales tactics. So for those of you thinking of effective sales tactics, the only thing I'm going to recommend is that you tweak your expectations a little bit. Instead of thinking about sales tactics, you should be thinking about sales strategy first. Now, what's the difference between strategy and tactics? Let's pretend we're going on the journey.
Strategy would be, where are you going to? So if I'm travelling to Marco D because I have to go and see my mom because that's where she retired to, that's the strategy I'm heading to Marco D. The tactics will now be the the tax will now be the what will I say? The nitty gritty, the one-on-one, the everyday things that I'm going to do to get that go. So tactical questions will now be am I going to take a bus or am I going to fly?
If I'm going to fly, which airline, how much the airlines cost? If I'm going to drive, should I fill my car or should I go to the park and should I rent a bus for me and the family? So all those will be tactical issues. So that's the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the overall, the overall question that we're asking about where is this business heading to? What are we trying to achieve? All those big, big, big, big questions.
And then tactics are the small questions that OK, if we have decided now this is how we want to grow the business. This is where we're taking the business to. These are the kinds of people that want to attract. Tactics will now be OK. So what should we do? Should we print Flyers? Should we go to trade shows? Should we run Instagram advertising? Should we do promotions in in the market? Should we buy our advertisements on the radio?
You know, stuff like that. So the smaller questions, the everyday questions, the thing that somebody's going to do from a day-to-day basis, those are the tactical issues. Then strategy is the overall bigger issues, the bigger goals that you're trying to achieve with the business. So before you start asking someone what tactics should I be using to grow by business, you must have figured out the strategy 1st about where you want the business to go.
That is because the tactics that you will use. Let's go back to this whole thing of Flyers versus Instagram advertising. Whether you should use Flyers to grow your business or whether you should use Instagram advertising to grow your business or whether you should go and walk into somebody's office to grow your business. It depends on what the larger strategic question is that you are trying to solve. So please. Well, those of you who are going around asking for tactics or who you go to Google and you ask for best sales tactics or something,
no, you're putting the cart before the horse. Figure out the strategy first. What am I trying to do? Where am I going to? Who am I trying to attract? All these big, big, big questions. Figure out the big questions first. When you get the answer to that big question, you will now know what the small thing is to do. That is also the reason why there's no such thing as a perfect sales tactic because the tactic that will work for me and it's best for me in my own situation.
If you try it because you're in a different industry, different product, different price range, different target audience, if you tried, it would totally mess you up. Likewise, the sum, the tactic that is best for you in your own given circumstance. If I tried that tactic, it would totally screw me up because of all these differences. So strategic concerns first. Only after you answer those questions can you now start asking people, OK, what tactics will work?
Which tactic works for you? How do you do these tactics? How do you optimize those sorts of tactics? So summary for what we've said so far, strategic concerns first and then you the, when you get the strategic concerns down, your actual tactics will now depend on what industry are you in, what product do you do, what price is your products? Who are the ideal customers that you chase? So let's say industry, if you're in the wedding and the event,
OK, let's say you're a caterer. If you're a caterer and you're trying to sell products to people online and you're trying to sell it to the everyday average man and woman, the tactics that will you use will be different. For somebody who is in the automobile industry. You sell cars, but you only want to sell high end cars like let's say Range Rovers, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, you know, stuff like that or whatever the latest car is these days.
So you can see how the tactics that you're going to do will be different depending on whether you sell food and you want to sell it online or whether you sell cars and you want to sell the cars to Abuja big boys and to Lagos big boys, big boys and big girls because girls buy cars too. So, OK, let me see. I was like, I lost my train of fault. OK. Yeah. So, so sales strategy, that's what we should be trying to figure out now.
Sales strategy is also tied to marketing strategy because we try to answer the same questions. So people who are looking at strategy from a marketing standpoint, they're trying to answer these questions. Who is my target audience? How can I reach them? What is the best way to communicate with them? How do I let them know I exist? How do I let people know what I can do? How do I show people that there's benefits to doing business with me?
Those are the larger kind of questions that we try to figure out in sales and in marketing. So those are the questions that you should figure out first before you start working on the tactics. So now if you start looking at things from this larger strategic concern, you are depending on the the way you look at it, you're going to boil down essentially to two options. There's what we call outbound and then there's what we call inbound.
Those are two different methods for growing business, two different business philosophies, things of that nature. Oh, sorry, it looks like the queue is about to move. So let me crank up the car, all right, so that nobody cuts in front of me. As usual. When these things happen and we have such long queues, we have people acting a fool, you know, people trying to cut the queue. And that's where all the commotion comes from.
Sorry. One moment. OK, It looks like the idiot in front of me. His car has broken down South. Try. OK. Well, anyway, let me try and continue. All right. So I was saying that, so excuse me, I was saying that. Where was I? Yeah. So the options available to you are outbound or inbound. Those are two different business methods, two different business philosophies or approaches when it comes to growing your business. So if you're looking at things from a strategic point of view,
I might as well just turn off the engine. I don't think we're, yeah, I don't think we're moving. All right. So if you look at things from a strategic point of view, those are the two main channels that you can take. Those are the left and right that you can take. Remember the metaphor that I use? Let's say you're travelling to Makudi. So if you're travelling to Makudi, the options are, you know, car or flight. So you see, we have two big options.
So in this case, two big options for growing your business. The kind of sales tactics that you can employ this either inbound or outbound. So let us define. Oh, OK, all right, finally we are moving. OK, so let us define what inbound and outbound mean. Sorry about that. I'm parked in a really awkward corner because we're having to go around someone, the idiot I mentioned earlier whose car just broke down. OK, well, I should be more charitable.
He's not an idiot. It's just unfortunate that we have problems with our cars. So I was like, Oh yeah. So I'm trying to define outbound and inbound. Now, since I'm here fiddling with the car, I won't be able to do it justice if I want to give it a full treatment. And then plus, I've already spent 10 minutes of your time. So my suggestion is that you guys check out the older episodes on the podcast because right now we have over 820
episodes where I have devoted a lot of time and effort into explaining the difference between outbound methods of growing your business and inbound methods of growing your business. This is your first time of listening to the show. What you can do is there's a website that I keep promoting to people. I'm not affiliated with them. So this is not an advertisement. I don't think it's a good learning resource. Now the website is called Listen Notes. 2 separate words, Listen as in LISTEN and then notes as in NOTESI can't remember the URL
for the website, but if you just hit Google and you type listen Notes, I'm sure it's going to come up now. This is the reason why I recommend you guys use Listen Notes because it's a very good study tool. Listen Notes is a podcast catcher, podcast player podcast, whatever it is that we call it. OK Oh, looks like the car is moving. Sorry, one moment. OK, the queue OK, we're finally moving. I just hope another idiot hasn't broken down on the sorry one moment.
Navigating through awkward situation here because we're having to drive around cars that are parked in front of the road. So we are also causing obstructions in traffic. OK, so listen Notes. Yes, that's where I was. So for listen Notes. Oh yeah. So it's a it's a website that's sort of like a podcast catcher. But the difference that listen Notes has with other kind of podcast catchers that since it tries to curate all kinds of So one moment, let me attend to OK,
no, no, someone's trying to call my attention. He's he's trying to move on my car is in the way. OK, where was I yes. So listen notes yes. So the reason why I recommend listen notes is because what they do is that they curate all kinds of podcasts. They also provide transcripts and then they they also allow you to search within podcast episodes. So that is why I recommend that you guys use that when you're trying to consume podcast because it allows it to be a very helpful learning resource.
So you can take a podcast, like my own podcast, for instance, look for it on Listen Notes. And then you can now search within my own podcast to find episodes where I've spoken about stuff before. So that's why I recommend Listen Notes now. It doesn't just have to be my own podcast. Let's say you're trying to grow as a Christian and you're one of these corner Corona people. What's his name? I can't remember his name about the Corona guy.
So let's say you're one of the a fan of his, you can go to that coin an ear podcast and you can search specific episodes where he discussed maybe prophecies in the book of Isaiah, for instance, or something. So you can go and search specific episodes like that. So that's why I recommend listen notes. OK, we have a problems here. OK, so anyway, that's why I recommend Listen Notes. So when you're done listening to this episode, go check out Listen Notes.
Look for my podcast there. And then you can search within the episodes to see where I discussed outbound and inbound business philosophies, different business approaches for growing your business. But summary, what outbound and inbound are is this. Outbound is the philosophy of growing your business that involves you going out to go and chase customers down. If you've been listening to my podcast for any length of time,
you know that I'm an outbound guy. For me, if there's any business that you're trying to get off the ground for me, the first thing I think about is, OK, who is? Who are we chasing? Where can we find them? Let's go and see them, let's talk to them. Let's say we can get a sale. The reasons why for me, that is my preferred, but outbound doesn't mean that is the best. It's not the best. It's just the best way for you to build relationships with your customers and start getting qualitative and quantitative data.
As in you'll be able to know because you can see your customer face to face. It gives you a sense of this is who the person is, this is what they're dealing with. This is how I should be vibing with them, you know, blah, blah, blah. Not too much guesswork. So that is outbound. Now inbound, on the other hand, it's a different business philosophy. That business philosophy means you want to stay where you are in your office and you want to do things that will make people come and start chasing you.
So back to the wedding photography example, outbound means like I used to do, I'm going to wedding shows. I book a space, I get a table, I dress it up. I beg some of my relatives or friends to come and stay with me. And we're talking to people like, hello, you're getting married, blah, blah, blah. When's your wedding date? This is what we do. Look at albums, you know, when can I come to the office? You can come to my studio.
You know, all those conversations that's outbound. I'm going out into the world and I'm doing stuff. Inbound now means I will stay in my in my studio back when I had a studio and then I try and see how I can do stuff to get people to hunt me down. So in the old days that would have involved billboards and Flyers and things like that. But nowadays inbound has migrated mostly online. So that means content marketing. I'm trying to put out pictures,
put out blog posts, put out YouTube videos, put out all these sorts of things. And the goal being that people will see what they will like, they will engage and then they'll be motivated to pick up the phone to call me. I say, hey, boy, how far I saw your something, something, something. Are you free? How much does it cost? So that's the difference. Outbound means I'll carry my two left legs and I'll walk out into the street and I will see how much business can I generate.
Inbound means I will stay in the coolness of my studio under the AC and I'll think, how can I get people to see me, find me, like me, get attracted to me, and then we end up doing business to me. Oh, sorry, the line is moving and Oh yeah, the idiot was finally able to get his car up and running, so we have to adjust accordingly. Man, this sucks. It really sucks. You know what, if I was making a YouTube video, I think this would actually be really good material for the YouTube video,
you know, for you guys to see me stuck in traffic and trying to handle all this madness. And so yeah, that's the difference between outbound and inbound. So like I said, scroll past the over 820 episodes that we have on the podcast so far. You'll get more details. If you're up to it, go and check out Listen Notes and you'll be able to use Listen Notes as a study guide, not just to study my own podcast episodes, but any other person as well.
So if you're like Grant Cardone, you can use it. Study his episodes if you are trying to grow spiritually and you want to listen to Professor Sam Ademi and maybe some Adami. Yeah, some Adami. He's a power store, but he also talks about productivity and things like that. So if you want to hear what some Adami has to say about time management, just go to listen notes, open listen notes. Look for some Adamis podcast. Find it and then search within some Adamis podcast for episodes dealing with time management and productivity.
And then only those episodes will show up and then you listen and it's a good study episode. So that's difference between outbound and inbound. Outbound I use my legs, I go and chase market. Inbound, I sit down, I try and see how I can get other people to use their legs and come to me or pick up the phone and then come to me. So which is better outbound or inbound? The big question everybody likes to ask, but like I said and I
hinted at at the beginning of the show, which is better? There's no better. It's contextual. It depends what is your industry, what is your product? What is your price range? Who are the people that you are trying to chase? If you're a wedding photographer in Abuja or Lagos trying to enter into a high end market, you're trying to get a high end clientele. It will determine the kind of outbound or inbound you do and whether you do outbound or inbound or not.
But you're waiting photographer in a small town like Makudi where Momsi is. Makudi is the capital of Benguin state where I'm from. So you're a small town photographer in in Makudi or in Lokoja or in Lafia or you know, all those, all those towns are on our side. Then the quality of outbound that you do will be different. If I can those places, I wonder if you can do any kind of inbound. OK, yeah, you can do inbound because Instagram is still inbound.
Yeah, brides in Makoode and Lafayette and local Jar and all those places. Yeah, they will still use Instagram. So you can also do inbound strategy as well. So which one is better? It depends on your context. So how do we decide on whether we're going to do outbound or whether we're going to do inbound? Now remember, the reason why this strategic question is important is because if you lock down the strategic question first, outbound versus inbound,
after you've answered the other larger questions of who is my customer? How can I reach out to them? What's the best way to communicate with them? You're not able to figure out the individual tactics that you're going to do. So whether you should do outbound versus inbound, it depends your products, like I said, or your service is going to help you to decide. So there are some products now let me guess. Oh, OK, we're about to move.
Sorry. Let me crack up the engine. Hopefully another idiot is not going to break down in front of the road and cause havoc for all of us. OK. All right. So we are moving. So I was, I was. OK, let me park properly first. It's not a good idea to keep driving with only one hand, even though it used to be a cool thing to do back when I was in university, you know, driving one hand, you know, reflecting like you're a big boy.
Yeah. OK. Yeah. So I was talking about how to decide on whether outbound or inbound. Now the product is going to help you to decide and I was going to give an example of TomTom, TomTom and Choco Milo for those of us who were born in the 80s and let's say 80s, nineties. I don't know if those of you who were born in the 2000s, if you guys experienced the the wonders of chocolate Milo, but chocolate Milo was this little sweet confectionery type thing was the cube like cubes of sugar but nice and brown.
So it's like you take milk and Milo and mix it together and then you just make a cube out of it. So that was Choco Milo and Oh my, my son, they did old school day in their school and somebody bought Choco Miller as an old school snack. So I had to educate my son that Choco Millo is not old school. Like old school is actually 70s disco ended in like 60s after disco was now like old school. I know Richie uncle. So I'm trying to educate him that you can't say Choco Millo is old school because Choco Millo is, you know, late 70s,
eighties. That is not old school. That is actually a different kind of culture. That is 80s culture. But for some reason you have youngsters these days. OK, the queue is moving again. So for some reason you have youngsters walking around thinking that 80s is old school. And then they tell me I'm old. I'm like, no, I'm not old school. 80s is 80s. That's his own culture. Old school is old school. Old school is is different.
Old school is 60s into 70s. So Lionel Richie, N.W.A with attitude, you know, hardcore, the real hardcore, gangster rap and all that stuff, you know, so that is that is old school. So so how did I went to old school now? Yeah. TomTom So seeing how the product is going to help you decide if what you sell is TomTom Sweets and what you sell is Choco Milo, then I don't see how in the world you can do an inbound strategy. I don't think you can use Instagram engagements and targeting people online and stuff like that to get people to buy your TomTom sweet or to get people to buy your Choco Melo sweet.
So if the business you're trying to get into is that you're trying to launch a new suite into the Nigerian market. So let's say I'm trying to invent my own suite and I call my own suite Tav Tav or Tavi sweetie. So if I'm watching Tavi Sweetie into the market, I maybe I'm not using enough creativity, but I don't see how I can do any inbound strategy. I don't see how we can be doing e-mail campaigns, advertising campaigns and stuff like that.
So if I'm launching Kavi suites, launching Kavi Suites, my new branch of suites will have to be an outbound thing. I have to first of all manufacture the suites, be sure that the suite is nice and everything, get my NAV DAC approval. Then when I'm NAV, DAC, Top and CAC and the Ministry of Health or whoever it is I need to get my permissions from, the next thing is I have to use my legs and I have to hit the streets. I have to go into the shops and they say hey spa will you stock tap tap suites, the newest, the latest, the greatest.
This is how much it costs, you know, blah, blah, blah. Then after I leave spa, I now have to enter Wuse Market or Kara Market and talk to individual people. These are my suites. Will you sell them? These are the terms, you know you take 1005 for everyone that you sell. Recommended retail price is 10 naira per suite. For everyone that you sell, you keep 8 naira. You give me two naira, you know, whatever. But you see that for this kind of business, it's going to have to be outbound.
I'm going to hit the streets, enter shops, enter market, talk to distributors, try and get people to sell my stuff. Sorry, the queue is moving, so I'm going to have to try and get people to sell my stuff. So that is what I mean by your product or your service. It's going to determine whether you do outbound or inbound. So with my uneducated guess, because I'm not in the confectionery space, in the sweet space and all that.
So with my my guess as a layman, if you want to start a new sweet brand, I don't think inbound is an option for you. It will have to be outbound. So those are one of the things that help you determine. Then your level of comfort is also a significant factor because there are some industries where you can use an outbound. Sorry, let me crank the engine off. So there are some industries where you can use either an outbound or an inbound approach and wedding photography, that's an example.
Being a cake Baker, that's an example. Both approaches will work. So if you want to bake cakes or you want to sell food or you want to or let's see what else, or you want to be a tailor, a fashion designer or whatever, both approaches will work. Using your legs, going to people's office, it will work. Going to business Expos, it will work. Going to go and book appointments, it will work. Going to go and talk to your cousin and your auntie that yeah, I mean business as a fashion designer will work.
Well, an inbound will also work. You staying at home in your studio, open up an Instagram page, try and put up fancy designs, try and run advertisements, try and whatever, it will work. So for some people outbound, inbound, either of them will work. Now, what will determine whether you choose one versus another in this case will be your level of comfort. Some people, like me, are more comfortable going out and talking to people.
That is why I always start with outbound, no matter what it is I'm doing. It's just because it's an area of personal comfort. I go out and I talk to folks. If you don't like talking to strangers, you can try the inbound thing. But here is something that we need to pay attention to. For those of us who love outbound, we also need to do inbound because there's a limit to how many people you can walk, how many offices you can go to,
how many trade shows you can go to. Eventually you have to start running those advertisements. The good thing is if you spent a lot of time doing outbound talking to people, when is now time to run the advertising campaign? OK, queue is moving again. So the good thing is if you have been doing outbound and doing outbound very well, talking to people very well, when it's time to do inbound, you now have the the skills to determine what kind of advertising copy should we use?
How should we craft the advertisement? What picture should we use in all these sorts of things? Because you know the customer there. For those of you who are on the inbound front who want to stay at home or stay in the office, stay in the studio, stay in the canteen and you advertise and then people come and come into your business. Eventually you have to Start learning outbound tactics because your business will get to a stage where like for some big deals, OK, let's say the catering thing, you're selling food online and stuff like that.
By the time somebody calls you and says, I love this, your food. Do you do weddings? And it's OK, let me try it and say, OK, yes, I do weddings at that stage where somebody's going to have 2000 guests at their wedding, they're going to have 2000 guests. So let me turn the car off. So at that stage where they're going to have 2000 guests at their wedding, most people are not going to feel comfortable just staying online based on Instagram handle.
And then they will now transfer millions of naira to you. I think that everything is done. The average Niger bride, if I forget the bride, the average Niger mother of the bride will want to see. So you want to just transfer 2M3M to this caterer just like that. Like who is she? Where is she? Can I see her food? Can we do tasting? What has she done before? So there are some mothers of the brides that they would actually want to see someone.
So if you have been trying to grow your catering practice by doing inbound, by the time you'll start moving, by time you start moving to this bigger orders and stuff, you will have to go out and see somebody and say good morning, Ma, good morning, Sir. If you shake somebody's hand, you sit down and you should be able to have a competence capable, casual, comfortable conversation with these people. So whichever way you are, if you're starting off on outbound,
you need to learn inbound. If you're starting off on inbound, you need to learn outbound. So both of them are important. So your level of comfort is also important. So the product determines if you're selling Choco Milo or launching a new suite, Sorry, it has to be outbound. Your level of comfort also would also determine. So what I know, like I said, the beauty of doing things in sales is that nothing in setting stone.
So start experiments, get feedback and then iterate and then change your plan accordingly. So summary of what I've been trying to say on a few queue today, this past 30 minutes is just don't ask what the effective sales tactics are for the Nigerian market. The effective tactic depends on a whole bunch of other contextual things. Figure out the strategic questions first. The strategic questions are who is my target audience?
How can I reach them? What's the best way to communicate with them to let them know I exist? This is what I can do. This is the benefit for them. By the time you start asking yourself these questions, you will now start thinking in clear terms of either outbound or inbound. And then whether you're going to be outbound or inbound would also be contextual. What kind of product is this? Does it make sense to be slapping up and down and talking to people or would it make more sense to actually get somebody who runs e-mail campaigns and let's give this person, I don't know, 50K and let's see how much, how many leads we can, we can generate out of that.
So you start asking yourself all those smaller, smaller, smaller tactical questions. And then summary, please stop using Google to say what is the best sales tactics for this? What is the best sales tactics for that? There is no best sales tactic. It's going to depend on the circumstance. When you figure out what the larger strategic questions are, you can now use Google or Gemini or ChatGPT to say, I am a wedding photographer in Abuja.
I've been in the business for three months. My sales are struggling. This is my target audience. This is my, this is my that I think an inbound approach would be the best way of doing it. Give me sales tactics that should help me in this scenario. And then you hit enter pop, and then whatever it is that Google gives you or Gemini gives you, OK, no, you can't run that session on Google. So you have to run it on Gemini.
Gemini is owned by Google. So you run on Gemini or ChatGPT or Perplexity or you know, the different AI versions out there, then the AI will now give you a bunch of options and you know that. OK, these are things that I can try. So yeah, let me just bring it to a close here. Let me just leave it. Leave it at this within 30 minutes. So connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140. Country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, then also connect with me on LinkedIn.
My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next recording. And please, Nigerians, I was going to say, let us pray that we should be able to get through all this crap soon. But I guess there's no way out of it. Those of us who are involved in the private sector, I really think we ought to start giving you some serious thought about how we're going to start being involved in larger policy discussions.
I'm not saying everybody has to run for president or whatever, but whether it's on a local level or a national level, those of us who have expertise in problem solving and those of us who depend on a Nigeria that works because let's face it, these politicians have stolen money. If everything goes to shit, they will just move to another country. You know, they have houses all over the place in UK and America and all whatnot.
So those of us who are here or those of us who have decided to remain and we have to find a way of getting involved in the larger policy discussions to make sure that this country works for us and for our kids. Either that, or let's decide to Japan and run away and let this whole thing fall down like a pack of cards. So sorry if I'm sounding pessimistic, but then I'll catch you guys in the next recording.