Prospecting with Purpose: Online Research and Building Transferable Skills

Hello and welcome to the show. Sorry, I've been away for a couple of days, but I'm back and let's get straight down to business. So before we begin the usual, there's going to be a listener shout out and this is to Engineer AB. Sorry, I forgot to get your your real name or your full name rather. So Engineer AB, he's the creative director for Bao Bao Loose Engineering. Sorry, yeah, I'm definitely not pronouncing that right.

So the company name is BAOLYUS. So BAOLYUS Baulius engineering and they're into fabricating agricultural equipment. So if you'd like to have a look at engineer ABS stuff, see what an what engineers do, you know, in the fabrication space in just basically making equipment that people need for carrying out the agricultural businesses, then check him out. It's the same name on YouTube. And if you check Google, you know, they have a Google My Business page there.

So today's listener shout out Engineer AB and the company name is BAOLYUS Engineering. Yeah. So that's it. He discovered the podcast on Spotify. If I remember correctly. He reached out on Now first on LinkedIn. Eventually we had a chat on the WhatsApp and yeah, pretty stand up guy, interesting guy. And also a perfect example about how things are much more vibrant than we know in the Nigerian economy. Because a whole bunch of us who have passed through the school system, you know, primary school, secondary school, into university, the only things that we're exposed to are the typical stuff.

You know, you grow up and be either a lawyer, a doctor, or unless he was engineer, you know, the, the, the usual professions that we have in this part of the world. But then we don't come across people like this who go to school, take their school chops and then apply it to something altogether different. Because during my day you are either going to be an intellectual in quote or you are going to end up in a Polytechnic and using your hands.

But there are some people who are in a hybrid sort of role. So yes, he has gone to university and he has all the academic knowledge that is required to call himself an engineer. But then again, he's also doing lots of handiwork in fabricating all these machines. He works with his father, by the way. They run the business together. So fabricating all these wonderful machines that you need for processing food for poultry systems and all kinds of things.

So that's a listener shout out for today. Engineer ABA, couple of shout outs. OK, let me just leave it at Engineer AB for now. So the other guys, I'm going to shout you out tomorrow. So for today, pause Today's podcast episode. I'd like to achieve two things or rather tackle 2 questions. One of them is how should I put it? Well, tips for outreach online. Now for the purpose of the podcast, whenever you hear outreach, just take that to mean you are reaching out to someone.

So whatever it is that you're doing to try and contact someone, to try and get somebody on your radar, or rather you know, to get on somebody's radar, to get somebody's attention, initiate a conversation, whatever it is that you're trying to do, we're going to call all those things outreach. So I'd like to give a couple of tips for how you can be much more effective. Excuse me? I can be much more effective doing that online because a whole bunch of us are trying to use LinkedIn, use Instagram, use WhatsApp, use whatever tools are available to do outreach.

So yeah. So yeah, that's it. Now, the primary tip that I'm going to give for today is something I've spoken about in the past, but I really think from what I see out there that you guys are just not getting it. And that is this whole thing about research. You should be researching your prospects before you do any form of outreach. Now, this was not possible back in the day. So for our parents who are trying to run their businesses or their careers in the 60s,

seventies, 80s and 90's, the opportunities didn't exist to go and do research on someone. I mean, you might talk to somebody and say, oh, I want to go and meet engineer. I know her. You know, what can you tell me about the guy or engineer know? How is your guy? How far now can you hook me up, hook me up with a meeting, you know, that sort of thing. But now we have the opportunity and we have the resources available to be able to go online to engineer know has LinkedIn to his Instagram, to his what else, to his website to whatever to kind of get a fair idea about who he is, what business he's up to, those sorts of things.

Before we show up at his office or before we give him a phone call or before we visit his house to try and see how we can run our business. And we have not been taking full advantage of these resources that are available. So just do some basic research. Now, I want to give a warning, a bit of a caveat here. Now, some of you that are going to say, because some people have said we should do research, you're going to spend 3045

minutes, one hour doing research. By the time you're spending one hour or 30 minutes doing research, you have gone too far. What I'm just saying is the basic stuff before you go out and meet somebody, All right, So you think Engineering Oha is a good person to go and check out? Just do a basic Google search. A few things will come up. His LinkedIn handle will come up. Click on the LinkedIn and then see. Click on the company page and then see 5-10 minutes should give you kind of a good idea about how to start, where the conversations might go, things like that before you reach out.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is this. Recently a web design professional reached out to me on LinkedIn and was trying to sell me on how I should update my website. Now, for those of you who've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you guys know that I do not have a website. I have never had a website. Well, back in my wedding photography days, back when me and my brother were in business together, we did have a website.

But I have ditched the whole thing of having a website as a delivery part of my business strategy. By the way, I am not saying I am correct. I am not saying you guys should ditch your websites, it's just that with where I am now, with the kind of ideas that I have for business development, drumming up interest, all those sorts of things, a website for now is not central to how I choose to run my business. And so I do not have a website at as at the date of this recording, but this web design professional reached out to me and tried to sell me on updating the website.

So This is why I say that you guys should be doing just some basic research before I reach out to people. If this fellow had just checked my profile, my LinkedIn profile, he would have gotten enough signals on whether I need websites, whether I use websites or you know, stuff like that. So this is the kind of research that I'm talking about. You just open somebody's LinkedIn handle and of course on most people's LinkedIn handles,

I like to put up their website. So if somebody puts up LinkedIn handle, there's no websites, but there's a link to a podcast. You check around the podcast, you can't see anything. You check the Instagram, you can't see anything. I think we'll be safe to assume in this case that the person doesn't have a website or it's not something that he's promoting. So in this case, if he had done his research, it wouldn't have been oh boy, how far?

This is what I do. If you want to update your website, I'm here. If you had done some research, the take would have been something like, hey, oh boy, what's up? I've seen your stuff. I love the podcast, especially what you said on episode XYZ. However, I think you could be growing the podcast some more if you had a website and part of your strategy was ABC and 123. Now that is a different kind of conversation and that is outreach that is relevant because the guy has done some research.

Now, this is the reason why research is important. Remember, I am not saying take 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour to research somebody. Just do some basic stuff. Open up the person's LinkedIn and check. Open up the person's Instagram and check, open up the person's website and check if you just look at those things, you will now you have an idea about how you how you should approach the conversation, whether you're supposed to be formal or informal, whether you can be,

how casual you can be or give you a sense of how you want to carry on the business conversation. Because like in this fellow's case, like I said, if you had done some research, he would have seen that the way to start the conversation with me is not I'm here when you want to update your website, but it would have been, I like what you do. You're doing real good. However, I think you can do more. If you had a website, would you be interested in having a conversation to see how we can hook this up?

So please research. For those of you who are worried or complain about why people snob you online, this is the reason why lots of you are getting snubbed and people will see your message and not respond. So when you send a WhatsApp message, I see those two blue tick Marks and the person didn't see anything. This is the reason why you're doing a whole bunch of outreach that is not relevant and is not targeted. And that's because you have not done some basic research.

So #1 tip for today for those of us who are doing online outreach, just do some basic research. Before there was the Internet, go and ask your parents. Before there was the Internet, your father or your mother would not just go and enter somebody's office called like that for a meeting. I mean, how you ask one or two people in church or in the office, you know, like, oh, you know this guy, like how far, what kind of person is he or what kind of business are they into?

Or when do you think would be the best time to branch the guy? Should I meet him in church or should I meet him at home and all those kinds of stuff. So with the same common sense that our mothers and fathers and our uncles and aunties used to run their businesses, 60s, seventies, 80s, that is the same scope that we should be doing right now, 2024-2025 and beyond. We just have to adapt it to the online space since a whole bunch of us spend a lot of time online.

Then the second tip that I have today, this one is for sales professionals, really those of you who are employees. So you don't run your own business, but you work for somebody. You work for somebody who has a business. So back to the example that I used, I think in the previous recording, your Madam owns a shop and she sells clothes imported from the UK for children between the ages of 6 and 18. And you're the person who handles the Instagram and you're the person who is in the shop so that whenever people come, they interact with you.

So I am now talking to sales professionals. Now I'm talking to that sales guy or sales girl who is manning the Instagram and who is in the shop for when people come, or your guy imports car batteries and stuff like that, but he's not in the shop all the time. You've done your apprenticeship, so you're now the one in the shop while our guy is not around. And then if somebody needs a battery or a new transmission system or whatever, they come and talk to you.

So I'm talking to sales professionals now, or you work for Lead Way Insurance or Access Bank insurance and you know your sales manager sends you out every single Monday to go and look for customers. So this is the tip. Now for those of those of you who are employees, you are still sales professionals. You're just doing it on behalf of somebody else, trying to move somebody else's business. Now before I get into the tip,

we should be doing our best as sales professionals, sales employees, we should be doing our best to move our or our Madam's businesses forward. And this is the reason why. The reason why is because in moving Madam's business forward, if you are the person who is manning the Instagram handle and you are in the shop, you know when people come in on to buy the business clothes or you sell for lead insurance. In trying to move or gas business forward, you will have to learn some skills that are easily transferable into different contexts.

The more of these skills that you pick in trying to do good for Olga and Madam now, it'll make you much more valuable to your own business interest when you start your own business tomorrow. Excuse me, So if right now you sell for Lead Way insurance or you sell insurance products for Access Bank or for GT Bank and you're just doing yourself anyhow anyhow, yes you're doing the business anyhow anyhow, but the truth is you are also hurting yourself because after three years when you're ready to start your own business, no matter what it is, let's say you want to leave, leave selling insurance and you want to be a wedding planner.

If you did not try to apply yourself as a salesperson when you are selling lead way insurance, you're going to be starting your career as a wedding planner with a deficit. You could have spent three years while being paid salary working for somebody else. Learning how to look for customers, being confident in how to approach people. Learning how to have qualifying conversations to figure out what people's problems are, Learning how to make effective proposals,

learning how to build rapport and build relationships. You could have been doing that for three years while you're working for somebody else and somebody was paying you salary. It actually is the best way to learn. So while you are an employee and somebody's paying you money. Now I'm sure you might be thinking if I overdo, I'm growing somebody's business. Yes, I agree you're growing somebody's business and it sucks. But The thing is you are also investing in yourself so that tomorrow when you leave, because chances are you will leave.

You know, was during our parents day that people used to stay 20-30 years with one employer. You know, now typically we, we move in shop, shop, shop. I would say people who work for an employer maybe 3-4 years and then you cut and then you move. So when you leave, if you've implied yourself, you are now going to take these skills with you. You're not going to leave these skills for the employer. Whatever skills you pick up when you're learning how to sell insurance for GT Bank or for Access Bank or for lead way, you will carry those skills with you.

Your employer is not going to say that rapport building skill that you built. Put the rapport building skill, leave it in the office, go out of here, but leave the rapport building skills you carry it with you. So because of that, my tip for sales professionals is that you should want to improve your performance. The reason why I'm talking about this today is because I've been having a trying customer interaction. Somebody brought me in, prove his business, talking to a bunch of that sales people and there's one person in particular he's just not getting it.

He doesn't understand. He clearly doesn't want to improve performance. I mean he's not getting it that if you are with an employer in Nigeria, because let's face it, Nigerian employers, most of them are just jackasses as they don't care. So if you are in that organization, that rare organization in Nigeria where your employee, your employer actually gives a hoot and has actually paid for you to do online training, this online training that bring a coach in,

bring a, this bring a personal development special, bring a whatever. It's gold if you're in that kind of organization and yoga or your Madam has called somebody in, take advantage of that opportunity and want to improve yourself. I want to improve your performance because like I've been saying, if you work in that kind of organization where the person calls me in and it's my job to make sure that you guys are at your best, you sell at your best.

When you decide to leave in two or three years, it's not as if you can take the benefits of all these training and performance improvement that you've been, you know, they've been running you guys through. It's not as if you can remove it and drop it for the company. You will leave with that knowledge. So please, sales professionals who are employees of other people, you should want to improve yourself and you should want to improve your performance.

Sorry about the noise that is in the background. You know, I'm not in my usual recording space and you know, we've gone through that whole 7 days rain and blah, blah blah. So everybody's taking advantage of the sunshine and what do you call those things? You know, lawn mowers and all those things. You know, everybody's cleaning up the grass and all that. So that's the noise that's coming through in the background. And what was I in my rant?

So I was just saying sales professionals, this thing really blows my mind. If you want to improve your performance and This is why, because if you improve your performance here and yes, you grow your orgas business or our dam's business, it sucks because you're helping your guy become a millionaire. Yes, that's true. But The thing is, eventually you're going to leave Orga or Madam, the time will come for you to improve your own life and become a billionaire or a millionaire or a billionaire.

The process of getting to your millions or billions is going to be jump started or going to move a whole lot quicker if you did a good job while you are with OCA of learning how to improve yourself. So my recommendation for those of you who are sales professionals selling on behalf of other people #1 information diet. It's not just food we should diet from. You should have an information diet. You should have some form of regular weekly, daily, monthly,

whatever, self improvement, skill acquisition, something that expands your frameworks and your mindsets. You should be doing any of these things. Now. I have some good news for you. Back in the old days, in the days of my father and my mother, if you wanted to improve your information diet, you would have to go and pay for those of us who grew up in Lagos, their training, OK, well, I don't know if they're still there, but some of the old names in training space, you'd have to go there and pay, you know, X 1000 naira per head or per employee, per organization.

And you pay for these things. But now information is readily available on the Internet. The podcast that you're listening to, this is one of them now available on YouTube. If you go on YouTube, do an expanded search, you'll find other people. So it is not inconceivable to think that in this day and age, you can find seminars on YouTube that every single month, let's say the first Monday of every month, you listen to to improve yourself.

It's not inconceivable to think that in fact, if you're a salesperson, it is it how I put it, you'll be stupid not to, let me just put it that way. At the very least first Monday of every month, go to YouTube, pull up some of those seminars and listen. In fact, the monthly thing, I think if you're doing once every month, I think that's not good enough. I would recommend weekly. But let me just say, let's just make allowance, OK?

Some people don't like audio, some people don't like video, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, no problem. At least once a month, just make a date with yourself. Put it in your diary, put in your Google Calendar, first Monday of every month or last Friday of every month, or second Wednesday of whatever it is you want to do. Just these things are out there, they're free. Just listen. Watch it as you're watching personal and paper.

Start writing down stuff. This one sounds stupid. I won't write it down. Oh, this one makes sense. Let me write this thing down. This one makes sense. And this one looks like it's something that can apply easily in this context. OK, no problem. Tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM, when I resume work. Let me try it. Let me see how it works. So you need an information diet. An example that I've given to the team that I'm currently working with on behalf of their employer is this.

There's a guy called Victor Antonio. He is an American sales trainer. He comes from his mostly complex solutions that he sells that he used to sell back when he was in the field because now he owns his own agency. So he's not in the field anymore. So what he used to sell digital solutions, mobile solutions, engineering solutions, you know, all kinds of things to to different businesses. So they are selling routers and all that kind of fancy stuff that, you know, I can't remember right now, but the reason why I

recommended Victor Antonio's podcast is not because Victor Antonio is the best or I mean, he's the correct guy, but it's not as if he's the best. I recommended him because his episodes are no longer than 10 minutes. So for those of you who love listening to my podcast, but you're angry because sometimes I do 10 minutes and then sometimes I do 45 minutes and then sometimes I do one hour and it makes it hard to plan your day.

Don't worry, I'm working on that. So all those one hour episodes, I'll try and cut that out. But I'm not trying to say that if you're angry about long, long episodes, there are people like Victor Antonio who do nothing more than 10 minutes Max. I think Victor Antonio, I think I've listened to 1 episode that was 20 minutes, but 1010 minutes. Sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp. And the guy is done. And his focus also is on giving practical tips just like me, so that you listen to something today and it's something that Tuesday morning, 10:00 AM, you resume work, you can apply this thing.

So that's what I recommended to the team. I said, look, this is Victor Antonio. You guys are in the complex sale. Victor Antonio is from a similar background. So you guys just take this Victor Antonio, listen to it every day. Let's discuss one thing and you believe that this simple assignment, listen to something for 10 minutes every day. The people that I'm talking to, they don't drive, they take public transport. How hard is it for you to sit in a downfall and you remove your earphones?

If I in Lagos? Well, I don't know what Lagos is like right now because I haven't lived there in a long time. But while I live there, my own commute was two hours, one hour to work, one hour back. If traffic was rough, my commute would be, you know, 3-4 hours, you know, maybe one hour getting to work and then maybe two hours back. In cities like Lagos where you have these long commutes, you are daft if you are not sitting down in traffic and then just taking out at least 10 minutes,

pull out your earphones, Listen to something that is going to enhance your ability to sell. You are just being daft. So look for these resources, especially those of you who live in Lagos, those of you who live in pH where you spend 45 minutes, one hour in traffic, help yourself look for some of these things on your way to work, Listen to one. After that, they can, you know, watch, I don't know, Netflix, something much more entertaining.

And then on your way back, watch another. That 551010 minutes that you're doing every single day is always going to be able to help you double or triple your performance with your current employer this year or next year. But by the time you've been doing that for two or three years while you are working with this guy, by the time you're ready to branch out on your own, you are starting with lots of knowledge and transferable skills that make it easy or easier for you to grow your business.

So there is no need in the beginning for you to pay for a sales consultant. These free resources are there. Come up with an information diet or podcasts or YouTube when you're consuming this, excuse me, when you're consuming this material, make sure you have pen and paper so you can write down one or two things that makes sense and then you can execute. Then drop with a simple plan. Drop a simple plan and then execute it.

So OK, I listened to Victor Antonio. Victor Antonio says whenever your customer says the price is too high, this is how I'm supposed to answer. No problem. You write it down, then you now put that post it note, leave it on your desk so that next time you're on the phone and somebody says, oh, your price is too high, you just look at the post it note what Victor Antonio said. Just do exactly what it is that he said. If it didn't work, OK, go and talk to your guy, talk to other people.

This was my strategy. I don't think I did this well, how could I have done it better? And then tomorrow you try it again. By the time you did a couple of times, by the time you've been doing this for a year, you will not be afraid. You will not shake anytime a customer calls you and says, oh, your price is too expensive. And the good news is when you start your own business and you leave your own OGA and then somebody calls you, a person says your price, your price is too expensive, you will shake your confident because you have been answering people who say your price is too expensive over the course of the last year.

And not only that, you've been listening to other people, whether it's Tavishima or Victor Antonio or any other person to give you different strategies about how should you should handle those sorts of things. Anyway, I've gone for 30 minutes. Let me just wrap it up here. But bottom line is this, for those of you who are trying to do business online, please research people before you reach out to them. That is the difference between your outreach being irrelevant,

not targeted, ineffective, all kinds of things. So just do some basic research. Don't look at anybody for 10 minutes. Open the LinkedIn, see the LinkedIn header, the everything. Scroll down 1-2. OK, close it. Open the website, look at it. Click on About us, go back to the main page, Scroll down, flip 1-2, then close it. Open the Instagram, look at it. Scroll, scroll. Look at a couple of pictures. Get a sense of what this person is like.

OK, this post seems interesting. Click on it, look at it, read it, then close it all that won't take you up to 5 minutes. You will now be better prepared to call up this person or to go to their office or to go to their house or to or to try and have a conversation with them, you know, after church or after mosque or whatever. And therefore sales professionals, somebody else is paying your salary. I know you don't want to make organ Madam a millionaire, but it is not organ Madam that are suffering.

You are the one who is suffering yourself. Organ Madam, they'll be all right because they've built this business to the level that they've been able to even pay for you to come and work for them. So any which way they'll be all right. Get an information that improve the performance of the business where you work because the only way to do that is for you to improve yourself. And when yourself, when you have improved yourself and you're moving on to something else and you're starting your own business, you want to take all these transferable skills and the new confidence, the information, the everything with you and that is what's going to help you grow your business.

So let me just wrap it up like that. So please connect with me on WhatsApp for questions, tips and insights. Phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. Also connect with me on LinkedIn, which is the best networking and business and career development social network. You can say you want to improve yourself or improve your business and you're not on these places. So I mean, you should. But of course, you know, some of it is a context dependent because I'm currently talking to somebody who's in the Web 3

space. And in his own opinion, like, look, Web 3 is Twitter. That's where every all the web three people are. So LinkedIn, there's no need. And in that, in that case, I would say, yeah, you're correct. As it stands in Niger of today, yeah, all the web three people, they all hang out on Twitter. Sorry, not Twitter. What's it called now? X? So that's everybody hands out, so hangs out. So yeah, it's context dependent. But I really think the rest of you would be able to benefit immensely by being on LinkedIn.

Because for those of us who are there on LinkedIn, we talk about career, we talk about business, we talk about personal development, we talk about all kinds of things. But you know, there's no twerking videos or no videos of oh, you won't be, you won't believe what this happened. No videos of Mr. Macron, none of those sales, sorry, first strap videos and stuff like that. So you you'll be able to go there, learn, hang out with like minded people and just have a productive time online basically.

So that's it, that's the end of my rant for today. Thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.