Selling Tech in Nigeria: From MVP to Multi-million Naira

Today on the podcast, I want us to look at how to roll out your business, ideas about how to roll up your roll out your business, especially for those of you who happen to be in the tech space. And that is because I was having a conversation with someone recently who is in the Edu tech space. I think it's called Edu tech. Basically, you know, you have software apps, you know, things like that, that I aimed at the education elsewhere, you know,

to try and teach people better I think anyway, so someone in the Editech space and this individual thinks he has a first mover advantage. Now, first mover advantage just means that there's a problem that needs to be solved. And so far people who should be your competition, none of them have entered the space, none of them have made anything. So he has made something and he thinks he has the first mover advantage, sort of like back in the social media days, you know,

before there was Google, there was Alt Vista. Alt Vista was a search engine. Alt Vista, what again there was Ask Jeeves. I think even Yahoo had its own search engine. So Google did not have first mover advantage or basically the Google thing is even to show an example how sometimes the first mover advantage is not a sustainable advantage As per the fact that you are first in the market doesn't mean that you're the one who's going to survive and thrive the longest.

Oh, by the way, my name is Tavishy Mahidi. I'm the host of the podcast. If you'd love to connect, you can call, send me a text message or WhatsApp message on 08064662140. So we've said that the first mover advantage is not a guarantee because you're the first person does not mean you're the one that is going to win. You know, like how we used to say in secondary school back in the day, not because you brought her to the club doesn't mean you're the one that is, you understand?

Let me stop there before I get cancelled by any. You get the point. So because you're the one that brought the babe to the club doesn't mean you're the one that will marry her. So anyway, so he has our first move for advantage and the problem that they're trying to solve. I'm not going to go into too many details because let me know, try and you know, expose how I put it. You know, the guy is, is not as if he's building in secret, but let me not come and broadcast over here on the podcast what they haven't broadcasted in public.

OK, You know what? He actually has broadcasted it because there's a website, there's an Instagram handle, there's, you know, he has lots of social media as assets. So I think I can talk about it now from what the guy tells me, I've not been able to verify there are going to be some changes in the Nigerian educational space. So you know, people in his EU back and you know, Ministry of Education, all of them, them, they've now said that exams are going to be moving towards CBT,

which is a computer based testing, maybe something like that, computer based testing. Oh, and by the way, that's how me and him started the conversation because I told him that, look, guy, if you're selling to regular people, don't call this thing, you know, stop putting CBT because ordinary people like me and mommies and daddies, we don't know what CBT means. But of course he's selling to schools, you know, secondary schools trying to get people ready for GCSE, for West African school leaving certificate for,

you know, all those for JAM and all these kinds of exams. So in that case, using CBT in his promotional material is OK. So that's just one lesson that I want you guys to know, those of you in the tech space, because you guys are notorious for using your acronyms. You throw acronyms all over the place. So acronyms are good. In this case, CBT only when you are selling to insiders, people who know what's up. So if you go to the educational space, I say CBT, People in JAM

know what CBT is. People in SSC, in West African, in WASC, WASCE, those are the people who conduct your, you know, Level 6 exams. All those people didn't know what CBT means. But then you approach it daddy like me and you say, well, CBT, I'll be like, and if you approach the average mom and say what is CBT, she'll be like because we don't know. So when you're selling, be careful about how you use technical terms. So basically as a first mover advantage in the CBT space, the software, the app is supposed to prepare students so that they can take computer based tests so they can practice and improve their proficiency.

Because back in the day during my own set, it was OBJ that as you mark objective ABC and after that you write essays. So writing essay, you know, with pen and Biro is not the same as writing essay as in typing out on the screen because somebody can be competent and have all the knowledge, but the person might be unfamiliar with computing and you know, this is the kind of thing that can cause anxiety for some people. So somebody can be very sharp.

But maybe you went to local LGA school, you know, where his blackboard pen and paper, they now show on that day. You now come and see computer. You have to now Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. And that's kind of, you know, bring your performance down. So this app is supposed to solve those sorts of problems. People get familiar, people practice. Since it's digital, you're going to be able to have a wide array of past questions to choose from.

So overall, this thing is supposed to help with performance. So this is the field that the fellow is that's this is the field that his startup is is working on. Those are the problems that they're trying to solve. So this guy's question basically was the strategy was he wanted to target schools, roll out some packages and get schools to get schools to purchase. And so I wanted to know how far, like what's next? And that's the reason why I'm making today's podcast episode because there's some of you who are in a similar situation who think that you've gotten the app, you've gotten a working prototype.

And so therefore, it is now time for customers. Unfortunately, at least if you take things from a traditional sales and business development perspective, the answer is no, you're not ready for customers yet. Because remember that for sales and business development, the goal is not just to collect somebody's money now. We want to guarantee that if we collect somebody's money now, they'll be happy. Then they will come back to buy from us again and again.

And then they refers to other people. So let's just say we want to go and approach British International, British Abby, it's a British Ghanaian school, Abby, British Nigerian school and whatever. Let's say we want to approach British International School and we want them to be our clients for this thing. The goal is not to collect millions from British International School now, bam. The goal is to make sure that we collect millions from them.

Now we stand the chance of collecting again next year and the year after that, and after that, and after that and after that, that. That's the scope. Now when we have a working prototype but we have not tested the prototype in real world environments, we are going to create lots of buyers remorse and buyers regret. What that means is this. If we roll out this thing because of course he says it works, but they've done closed house testing.

And trust me, closed house testing is not enough because when you open this thing out to the real world, it will surprise you. Like all these Samsung Fold phones that you will see now and that you like. It's beautiful, right? But if you remember not long ago, maybe like five years ago, when these things were still in prototype, they made it and then they gave it to journalists to go and test. And then guess what happened?

The journalists when they took this and they tested live in the field. It is then, excuse me, that Samsung realized that oh, these phones are not so perfect. This can happen. This can happen. You have a gas like this castle a few boss like that. And The funny thing is for those of those journalists who had children and The thing is at home, of course, you know kids now kids will for sure if there is any deficiency in your product, any weak point in your product, the children will definitely exploit it.

So pushing out the prototype to journalists as it is what we want to do. You know, you will just take this thing, you know, just enjoy like one month, try it out, give us feedback, real world feedback. They're able to know how to improve these phones better. And so now the Samsung Fold phones, the techno Fold phones, you know, other people who have even the triple fold, excuse me, these things work very well because they've been tested on the real world conditions.

So it's the same thing for those of you who are in the tech space. So this is how we looked at it. This guy is clearly beyond the ideation stage. Ideation stage, that's the early part in the business where you're thinking, which business am I going to do safe. So this guy's clearly gone beyond ideation. So he has come up with the idea. He has the skill set. They've built the app everything don't set as in arranged everything.

So they've gone beyond that then sorry, 1 moment. OK, sorry about that. I had a call coming through, so I'll have to return the call later on. For those of you who are just listening for the first time, I record all my podcasts on my phone, so you know there will be these interruptions every once in a while when I'm making today's recording from home. So yeah, you're going to hear some noise in the background. So this guy has clearly gone.

Excuse me? This guy has clearly gone beyond the ideation stage and now this guy has a working prototype or what some people would like to call, well, it has gone beyond minimum viable product. The MVP or the minimum viable product is the smallest working version of your idea that people can look at, that they can see, that they can taste, that they can touch, that they can smell, that they can try out. So that you will now give feedback like, OK, this thing is correct, or this thing is broken, or I need to improve it here or I need to improve it there.

So we're clearly gone beyond MVP since the websites has been launched now. So I told together, look, I know you want to sell, but the next thing basically is we need to test this thing in the real world and see what breaks. I repeat, for this kind of product, the next thing to do is test it in the real world and see what breaks. Because if you go and collect millions from British International or any other school, you know, even in your secondary school or whatever,

you go and collect millions, they now roll this thing out. It is not opening or some places the team open or some places the thing open and then close, or some places the thing will fall short or some places The thing is hanging or you know, that kind of thing. There's a way that they'll look at you. Especially in Nigeria, people think, you know, young men like to be sharp. They'll be looking at you as if, oh, this guy is trying to be sharp.

They won't look at it like honest mistake. So we need to test this thing in the real world and see what breaks. So as the guy, based on what we've discussed now, I'm assuming your target schools are like private schools, not LGASLGAS are local government, LGEA local government, something authority schools, I can't remember when. Those are the kind of schools that I went to, I went to, I went to Ocean Primary School in Abuja.

Excuse me, Me and my contemporaries, that's what we went to. I went to was on primary school then my mom said she went to Uday Primary School. That was also the school back in her village. And it's one of the things that makes me weep. It makes me cry for the Nigerian educational system because we have people in this country, people of timber and calibre, OK people, you see them fresh people and the way a product of primary school education, I'm sorry, a product of public school education.

But nowadays, as in you live and not go allow you to send your own child to public school. So, you know, I drive past my school and I tell my kids, you know, that's the school, that's the school that I went to, you know, but the place looks like a prison yard now. No, really, the place really does look like a prison yard. It's such a shame. So people meet me and they're like, oh, you went to whistle 1. And I'm like, yeah, I say, I say it probably yes.

That is my school wasn't one primary school. I went there, but our teachers were on point. They taught us well, lots of us graduates from their naval officers, cardiologists, brain surgeons, senior advocates of Nigeria like you name anyway, is a petition. The problem of Nigerian education is not, it's not today that will fix it anyway. So I told him, so it's not LGA, it's not local government school you're looking at, right?

He said, no, it's not, it's in private schools. I said, OK, no problem. So this is all you need to do. The scope is like this. You will come up with a list of schools that you need to approach. Now, for those of you who've been listening in the past, this sounds kind of like when I talk about prospecting, coming up with the prospecting list, you can see how this is the beginning of any kind of sales motion that you want to do.

You have to come up with a list because if you want to run this thing from memory, the problem is this. Excuse me? You think of 10 schools, and they'll be wonderful schools, but the things will be in your head. Then you watch Netflix, you hang out with the boys, or you hang out with your girls, or you go for a night video. You sleep. I wake up and you say it's now time to grind. Who am I supposed to call? You can't remember.

So you actually do need to have a pen and paper physical list. Write this thing down. If you don't like pen and paper, pull up your laptop, pull up your phone, write it down in the document. But we need to come up with the list of people that we are going to run after. So in this case, the list of schools. So he said he had a list of five. I said, OK, 5 is OK, but honestly we should get more because the problem is you talk to five people, two people who say send me e-mail, one person will say Gimme flyer, another person will say I'm interested,

but I'm traveling, let me come back in two weeks time. So basically you can talk to five people and get zero response. That's what I'm trying to say. So we as easily speaking in my own opinion, I will say, OK, you know, 5 people, let's make this thing 10 just to, you know, in case of in case, let's just make it 10 if you can do 1520 for good. But anyway, 5 is not bad. So we agreed. And the scope is, you know, approach these people and remember what we're trying to do is we're trying to test this thing live.

Now. Always look at things from their own point of view. You approach them and you say that this is the problem that we solve for people like you in the educational sector. We have come up with a solution and we are currently in beta. Beta just means The thing is, yeah, but the thing not too perfect in not too smooth. So we offer you this thing in beta for you to test it and run it for free in your schools. We would appreciate feedback on what works, what needs tweaking,

what needs improvement, you know, blah blah, blah blah blah. You know, so you have access to it for free for a limited time period or for a limited number of seats, limited number of students. But as a scope, this is the problem you face. I have a solution to that problem and I'll provide it to you in beta stage and you will use it for free for a limited period of time, limited time or limited number of students. In return, this is the feedback that you're going to give me.

This will be our opportunity to launch it live. And then in that case, if anything is broken, the person won't be looking at you as if you know you're a Ross guy. They know upfront that that engage in a collaborative process where they're trying to improve upon an existing solution. So that's the scope. In fact, you will even be able to test it quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Because in the beginning, if you're trying to sell and collect millions from schools,

people will be hesitant. When you do this beta stage, it's possible that you can get, you know, 2 schools, each school dropping like 150 students to test this thing that is quick access to 300 students using your software live and in the field. So that if this problem, you will know if there's bug, you will fix it. If there's redundancy, you will remove it. Whatever the problem is, you will deal with it before you now start selling the alpha version.

And the good news is, all these people that you approach during beta stage, when you get ready to now rule out alpha, the complete product, who are you going to approach? It will be them. Remember Me? I'm the boy from two months ago. That software that we used to prepare your students for CBT, Do you remember? Oh yes, young man, I remember, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How are those children? They don't write jump.

How did they go? How was everything? Oh, I hope that my software was able to help in that. Anyway, Madam, you know, then I said we're in beta right now. We don't finalize. We're in alpha and since you are the first people set of people to try it out, we want to offer it to you on so, so, so and so terms. Those are the first people that you approach from them. I mean, these are the first sort of people that you're going to get a chance to that might be your first customers.

And since already used the product before, especially if your alpha version is on point, they may now, you know, getting referrals from them and stuff like that will be a whole lot easier. So now you see that that is the scope for people in this space. So it's not just that you have the software idea and you've gotten this thing to work in your own private testing. This thing has to be tested in the real world because we're trying to avoid bias remorse or bias regret where people give us money and they're angry at themselves because they give us money, or they're angry with you because they gave you money.

Bias remorse and bias regret. They do not help in getting repeat purchases and in referrals. Getting referrals, let me repeat, if somebody's angry with themselves, then how can I waste money on this thing or somebody's angry with you? How can I give this idiot money? The chances that the person will come back and give you money again is slim. The chances that the person will refer you to someone else, those chances are slim.

So we need to make sure that this thing works. We've gone beyond ideation stage. We're currently at MVP stage. We need to make sure that the MVP works now for the schools. He said he knew a couple of people who are proprietors and I said proprietor. That was good, but there was one problem. Now a lot of us when we try to sell into existing accounts, we focus on one person and that's a mistake when we're trying to sell complex solutions because exam taking software or students performance improvement software or whatever.

Is it's complex, it's expensive, lots of parties involved, they have to build relationships and it's not as if the school is going to decide immediately. It's not as if you meet them on Monday and then by Friday they will now transfer Deposit doesn't work that way. So what you need to do in this situation is you need to be multi threaded. Talk about it all the time on the podcast. Multi threading just means you need multiple points of contact in this new school so that you know the proprietor is good is good or that you know the principal is good.

But it actually helps when you know people who are also involved in the implementation of the process. So I advise this guy, you know the proprietress is good. So proprietress you know how he works in Nigeria, proprietors can say go and apply this thing and everybody was OK or guy has spoken. But still, if you know the head of IT, it will be good because the head of IT for the school will be responsible for rolling this thing out.

If you know the VP of Academics, it might be good because I'm assuming the VP of academics might have a say in how this thing is rolled out. If you know somebody who is a teacher of IT in the school, if I think that's the one that will be sweet past because I think teacher of IT in schools, the classroom teacher is the one that will see the most potential for this thing. I say or more, this thing is good. This thing is legit, This thing is correct.

We need this thing. So if you can have somebody like the teacher of IT who is now selling on your behalf within the school, the person is now like your champion within the school. These kinds of things help. So this is what we call multi threading. More than one partner, different stakeholders. So if you know the principal is good, if you know the proprietors, you know I know two people is good, if you know head of IT is good, if you know VP of academics is good, if you know the IT teacher is good, if you know the head of accounting is good.

In other words, going into this kind of thing if you know 6 people in the school is better than going in and knowing only one person in the school. So we even need to make sure that we do some research well before we begin so that when we enter the school, we can make multiple touch points. For those of you who've been listening to this party for a while, you remember that time I mentioned to you guys that I was working with this incubator and well, we hadn't started work yet.

When I entered, I sorted the orga Pata Pata, the CEO. I thought I was my village boy as correct now I was young would I entered, you know, team guy, team guy. I was thinking to myself is a done deal. Also, because I knew the VP for programs within the Something Easy programs or events. So I was thinking this is a done deal. Now the CEO, I know him is my village guy, the head of events. I know this guy. We've worked on one or two things.

No problem, I'll get the contract. That's what I thought. Then something happened. The CEO, the guy does jabber further studies. So now you remain only one person that's the head of that's VP of programs or head of events, I can't remember. And before I know you to that guy to Japan. Now what happened? I was left with 0 contacts in the organization and now had to start. I know how to start afresh. I was thinking I knew two people.

I was set. Little did I know when you see that's how these things happen. That's why you know, I keep saying that sales is a matter of probabilities. You're trying to cover your bases. So in this case, if I had just pushed small, OK, I know the CEO. If I had known another person, maybe the chief operating officer wouldn't have been bad. OK, So I knew they had the VP of a program or the head of events. If I knew his vice or other people within his department, it wouldn't have been bad.

So that when those two jackpot conversation continues because they're other people instead of me having to start this thing all over our fresh now This is why multi threading is important because you don't know, the more people you know, the more stakeholders you know the better. So that's it pretty much. OK, it's 24 minutes, so let me not take up too much of your time today. So for those of you who in the tech space who are rolling things out, this is the proper way to think about it.

You've gone beyond the idea. You now have something, think of this thing as a minimum viable product. Now we need to get some people to test it to be sure that this thing is perfect. The testing that we're going to do is not small testing, is not among ourselves, You know, the founder and family. We need to test this thing real world, test this thing live so that if there are problems, you will know the people that you talk to at the beta stage, when you roll out the beta, when everything works, that the people that you don't come and meet when you have the alpha,

the perfect version to sell to them. Then also make sure that whether the beta stage or the alpha stage, don't do single threading, don't know only one person. You need to know multiple people, different people in the accounts. Don't know people for the sake of knowing people. You know, people who are reasonably attached to the thing. So like in this case, for instance, because it's a school, if you know the chief security officer, I don't know, might not help.

OK, If you know the chief security officer, at least nobody will harass you inside the school. You'll be able to enter inside the school. When it comes to decision making, I haven't done any research, but I really think when it comes to decision making principle, VPVP, academics, head of ITIT teacher, I can't think of who else you know, but people who it seems reasonably are relevant to the problem that you're trying to solve or that are relevant in making the decision of whether people were with your product or service or not.

So that's it. Thank you very much for listening to today's episode. Remember, if you'd love to connect, you can call, send me a text message or WhatsApp message on 08064662140. Thanks for your time and attention. I will catch you all at the next episode.