Stop Winging It! Building a Structured Sales Machine for Success

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I'd like to tackle the question how to build a sales machine for your business. Now, there's certain elements that you're going to need. And if you are a Nigerian who is used to those old Zenith Bank adverts that used to run on channels, TVCNN and those sorts of places, then this is a slogan that you heard before. And yes, it's a slogan might sound right, but there is a certain element of truth that runs through it.

So the elements that you're looking for are you need a framework or you need process. Next you need people, and then after that you need technology. So let me repeat, how do you build a sales machine for your business? You need a framework or a process. You need people and you need technology. And now, of course, for those of you who remember the old Zenith advertisement, it was always Zenith Bank. People process technology.

So let's start off with the framework or the process. Because if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I'm a key process person. I'm a key framework person because I believe that the main problem that people face when it comes to building their business is not that they lack motivation or creativity or things like that. It's just that it's a little daunting trying to figure out what to do, how to do it, how to go about it.

If you wake up and you don't have a mental framework for anything. So it's all well and good to say 2024 or 2025, or whenever you're listening to this podcast, it's all well and good to say this is the year that I'm going to smash it. But if you wake up tomorrow, January 1st, or, you know, February 2nd, or whenever you're listening to this podcast and you do not have a framework for customers, you're going to go after problems.

You're going to tackle how exactly you're going to smash it. I mean, it's not just enough to saying to say I will overcome, you need a road map to overcome. And it's not just enough to say I'm going to smash it or this is the year that I won't agree. You know, you need a framework or a process that will show you how not to agree or show you how to overcome. Or for those of you who are not Nigerian listening to the podcast.

By the way, when you say that I know Go Green, all that means is I will not accept. OK, well, let me put it this way, word for word. It might mean I do not accept. But the spirit of it is more like I shall not be overcome or I shall not be undone. Or I will not let anything prevail over me. Yeah, that's a better interpretation. I won't let everything, anything prevail over me. So yeah, all these sort of things are good.

But primarily we need a framework and we need a process. When we have that in place, then the rest of the journey comes a whole lot easier. Now from a sales perspective, from a sales or marketing or business development perspective or whatever it is you want to do, my chief advice is stop freestyling. You need a framework, You need a process. You need a framework that is proven and a framework that is cohesive, that makes sense, That is well thought out.

Because if you keep trying to tackle things in this business game and you're freestyling every day, there are some dangers that are going to come about from this. And the boy is like your customers are going to have a poor experience because there's some days that you wake up and you're going to be on your game and your customers be like, wow, like this guy, this girl, I mean, she she's on point. This person is legit.

But then there'll be some days that you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and customers are going to be on the receiving end of that as well. If you do not have a well thought out framework or process that you have to apply every single day, it's like with me on the podcast, if I wake up and I'm on fire, I'm still here for you guys. If I wake up and I feel, you know, I feel like spoiled eggs for instance, I'm still here for you guys because there's a framework, there's a process that I'm following.

There are questions that I need to follow. So come rain or sunshine, no matter what it is, I'm still here. Good days or bad days, That's the reason why I show up. So it's not that I'm more motivated than the average business commentator or consultant out there. It's just that there's a framework, there's a process so I can wake up every day, regardless of my motivation and get stuff done. So if you're freestyling, your customers are going to have a poor customer experience.

There's also going to be incoherent brand projection. And that's because, let's say you're in business with your spouse or with your brother or you have other business partners, you know, things like that. Whenever people are talking to you, they're going to receive one kind of customer experience, one kind of brand projection. Whenever they talk to your wife, they might receive another kind of experience, another kind of brand projection, whether greater or worse.

And when they call your business partner, they're going to meet another kind of brand projection. And, you know, you get the whole point. If you have your boyfriend selling on your behalf, you know these are sorts of things that I'm talking about. Everybody's going to be running from different playbooks and so you can't. Even the customers are not even going to be able to say this is exactly how this business is like.

So if you're wedding photographer, you know Kanechuku, Kanechuku and Ku people can't even say this is what Kanechuku. The experience of dealing with Kanechuku wedding photography is like because if you call and you get Kanechuku himself, it's one way. If you call and you get his wife, it's another way. In fact some people might even prefer that. Please when I call let it be Madam that picks up let it not be Kenichi Go because Kenichi Go is a big you know, you know what so we're going to be having I'm a coherent brand projections when we're freestyling up and down because everybody is trying to sell to market to brand to position to do whatever the way that they feel like.

But the biggest problem with trying to freestyle and sell is that people end up making promises and promises and promise what it is that you cannot do. Let me go back to the wedding photography example. Now I'm using that not because that's the best business to be involved in, It's just that if it's your first time listening to the show started off my business journey over a decade and a half ago as a wedding photographer.

So that's my primary constituency. In fact, this podcast, if you listen to the early episodes, I'm talking primarily to wedding photographers, wedding planners, you know, blah blah, blah. But over time, I found that most of the listeners are beyond events, beyond weddings, those sorts of things. And that's why the the focus of the show has changed to what it is like today. So back to what I was saying, People are going to end up promising what it is that you can do if everybody is freestyling, everybody has their own sense of the sales process.

People are trying to overcome objections anyhow. There might be somebody who will be selling on your behalf. This hasn't happened to me, but I've seen other photographers that has happened to. Somebody is selling on your behalf and the person is trying to do a favor so that with a bride and the bride is talking about how her skin is like this or her arms are like this or her tummy is like this. And then the person who wants to close the deal by all costs says that's not a problem.

Now we can fix this in Photoshop and the bride's like, really? They say yeah, of course, no, my guy can't let you go and he does this all the time is is not a problem. In fact we're free for so, so and so did. All you have to do is just pay the 300K deposits, but the total money is 500 K The bride pays, she's happy. Of course you you collect the money, you thank your cousin or you thank your sales person or whatever for bringing in such a huge check.

Because maybe what you've been doing is you've been the deals you've been bringing and has been maybe 250K250K300K and then this guy brings you 500K and you know you're you're happy only for you to finish the wedding. And then the bride is not talking about how OK my arms are like this slim. It. Your guys say you can do liquefy should be you can liquefy and slim. My arm and my tummy is like this. You know do it. My husband NASCAR on his cheek.

I don't like it. You know do it. And then you guys start to quarrel because she has selected 300 images and in the 300 images let's say 250 of them her arm is exposed. You're going to slim her arm. 250 images, like that's lots of time. And then out of those 300 images, let's say you know her husband's car. She doesn't like her husband's car. Out of those 300 images, 150, the husband's car on his forehead was exposed. You know, Yeah, you're not in trouble.

Plenty of quarrel. Because even though it's something that you can integral the wedding photographer can do, you do not. You didn't conceive that you would have to do that amount of editing and retouching for weddings, that more than half the photos you'd have to devote that kind of of attention to. Now, the reason why these kinds of things happen, not just in wedding photography or in other kinds of businesses, is because you guys are not selling from the same book.

You're not in agreement on the kind of brides that you're going to be. So I know brides customers now, kind of customers that you're going to be chasing after because that has to be part of the sales process, was the ICP. Who are we going to be chasing? You know, so there's some wedding photographers that they let everybody know that look, if you're with the bride and she starts talking about my skin, this, my arm, this, my whatever,

like please just free the bait. Like I don't want quarrel. I can't deal with that sort of thing. You know and you know whatever it is that the your yardstick for determining the ideal customer profile. The thing is everybody needs to know. So if your wife is selling on your behalf or your boyfriend is selling on your behalf, or if you're older, like much older than the averages of those who are listening to the podcast and your children are coming of age,

your children, you know, maybe your kids are now 1820. You want them to be involved in the business. Everybody needs to know this is our ICP. When you start talking to these kind of people, if they say this freedom, that's not our target audience. If you see people that look like this, that sound like this, that are interested in this or that, do this or do that, that's a key audience. That's who we should be chasing after.

So you're going to run into a lot of problems because people end up promising what you can't do if you are freestyling and if you're not trying to run your business off of a well proven system or process or framework or whatever it is that you want to call it now. So what is required to get things chugging along in sales? If you're looking at things from the framework, framework and process and systems and all that is just need a simple system or you need a simple script or you need a simple framework or you need a simple philosophy.

Whether you have reduced it to writing or not, you think it has to be simple enough that you can say in conversations over and over again. Now the reason why I'm using different terms is because when it comes to business, everybody gets all righteous and people want to. I don't know shall, but people just get righteous anyhow. So if you say simple system, somebody say no, I'm not a systems person. System is too loose.

What we need is a well tightened well. You know all the dots and the eyes. Like what we need is a script. Some other people say no script that is too rigid. I like things being loose. I want us to be able to inject my personality into it. I want us to be able to put some authenticity into it. So instead of this script thing, let's just have a general philosophy, you know, So whatever it is that you call it, whatever term you prefer,

whether system, script, framework, philosophy, there has to be some guiding thing that is simple. If it is written down, good. If it is not written down, so long as it's simple enough for you to tell other people and that they remember very good. Which is why I use the kind of definitions that I do over here on the podcast, because I'm keeping it simple. I want you guys to be able to remember, even if you don't use the exact words, I want you to be able to.

When you're out in the field and you're talking to someone, you remember that, oh Tavi Shimmer said on the podcast. I can't remember the term, but this is what he was hinting at. I want you guys to be able to remember that. So the framework, the script, the philosophy just has to answer a couple of questions. How do we identify our customers? Who is our ideal customer profile? Who should we be chasing after? Who should we be spending time and money pursuing or pursue as we say in this part of the world, who are the people that make us the most money?

Who do we love working with? You know all those questions, but you have to be able to identify your ideal customer profile #2. It has to answer the question, how do we start conversations with these people? Because there are some people that are trying to project a what's it called, What do you call this? It's exclusive. You know, like you're trying to get an exclusive for you. And so for those kind of people, it is a no, no.

Your sales people are not allowed to go out and chase anybody. They're supposed to chill and then people will reach out and contact you guys. So but you need to hand all these things down. How do we start conversations in person? How do we start conversations on Instagram, on WhatsApp, or whatever? You also have to be able to figure out what it is that people need, because you cannot make a sales pitch or a presentation or whatever until you know for sure what it is that people need.

If you don't know what they need is you're shooting. You're just, you know, you're just shooting your shot. You're spraying in the dark. You might hit the target, you might not. But your odds for business success go up when you're able to figure out what it is that people need. So your system, your framework, your philosophy, you need to be able to tell people this is how we figure out what they need. Then this is the one that most people pay attention to.

How do we make an effective proposal or presentation? Everybody knows that this is part of the package, so there's no need to stress that. But please, the earlier stage, am I talking to the right person and have I figured out their need? That is more important than effective proposal or presentation. If you're talking to the wrong person, effective presentation skills do not count. You won't close the deal. If the person does not have a need, or you haven't been able to figure out the need, or you don't know how your product or service applies to solve their problem.

Effective presentation or proposal skills do not count. So continue to learn all the effective proposal and presentation, communication, and all that jazz. Learn it. But the earlier things are much more foundational. How do you identify the customer, your ICP, the ideal customer, the customer avatar, the people that we like, the people that we love, the people that give us the most money, people that give us the most joy?

Whatever it is you want to call it, that is much more foundational. That, and how do we figure out their need? Then there's also how do we close the deal? Of course, everybody pays attention to that. We'll talk about that some more in future episodes. So you should be able to tell people, it should be written down if you're if you're OK with that. If you're not one of those writing types, you should be able to tell people over and over again When you guys are having sales meeting, Monday meeting, prayer meeting, first meeting of the day, opening office meeting, team building meeting, whatever meeting it is that you guys have every single week, you should be able to tell people that this is what we stand for.

These are the customers we want to serve. This is how we identify them. This is how we're going to approach them online or offline. And this is how we start conversations with them. This is how we figure out if there's a need and we're talking to the right person. This is how we make effective proposals, and this is how we start making moves to collect our money and to collect the deposit. If you can say this in a simple conversation or you can write this out in a simple document,

then cool. You have a framework or you have a process that you can start with today. As your business grows and you now have five people selling for you. 10 people selling for you, 1520 thirty. The complexity of this framework will have to change. But in the early days when it is you and your girlfriend or you and your guy or you know if you're female, you and your ride or die sister, When is that early stage? When it's just two of you, three of you?

This simple thing that can be spoken that covers all this or a simple document, whether you wrote it on a post it note or you put it on Google Docs that covers all these things, that should be fine. Over time you flesh it out. So now once the script is developed, you're going to need consistency to drive sales. So you guys are going to have some sort of cadence, whether it's weekly or monthly or seasonal or yearly. But there has to be that thing of every Monday we're going out or every Tuesday we're doing this, every Wednesday we're doing that.

We have to apply the script consistently. Then let's see what else. OK, yes. Then also the script, once you have it, is going to make it easier for you to scale because you're going to be able to teach your friends, your employers, your children, your spouse, your parents, your uncle, your auntie, your employees, your whoever to sell for you. Then it also solves a bunch of business problems because now everybody is singing from the same hymn book.

Everybody is singing from the same song book. So customer experience is uniform, the brand experience is the same. That is the reason why Mr. Biggs in Abuja, Mr. Biggs in Lagos, Mr. Biggs in Ibadan. The experience is the same because they're singing from the same brand brown book. The only difference is that Mister Biggs in Abuja you won't get amala. OK, well, I haven't seen Mr. Biggs in Abuja in a long time. I hope they haven't shut down.

So the difference between Mr. Biggs, Lagos, Mr. Biggs, Ibadon is that Mister Biggs about you'll be able to get hot amala. But Lagos people, they're too cool. So there's no amala in Mr. Biggs. But you get the point anywhere you enter Mr. Biggs. Same brand experience. So what else? OK, yes. Another reason why Frameworker process is important is because this is what is going to allow you to escape this self-employed. Also that some people who don't want to be self-employed you and have be a business owner.

You have to be like Dangote. You set everything up, you travel, you come back, business is doing good, you don't have to be there. It is only when you have systems, processes, frameworks, philosophies, whatever in place that you're going to be free. The reason why you'll be free is because now other people can start selling on your behalf. And the people are selling on your behalf today, tomorrow if easier up to make other parts of the business much more robust and resilient, you know, for future growth.

So let me wrap it up because this is 20 minutes. Feel free to reach out to me on WhatsApp. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. Can confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address from the link we're listening to this episode. Also connect with me on. So did I say WhatsApp? So I meant LinkedIn? Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. So for WhatsApp the details 0806466 2140. The country code is +234 if you're not Nigerian.

So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.