The 4 Pillars of Business Success: Lead Generation, Inbound, Conversions, and Retention

Hello and welcome to the show. Today we're going to be looking at training programs that can improve your sales skills and improve your sales knowledge. And the reason why we're looking at that today is because I've had a couple of questions from from some people. OK, let me see. The first question that I can remember, first person rather that I can remember receiving the question from was from a listener of the show.

I think his name is Alozi and, and he, he asked questions about where to get sales training opportunities in Lagos, Nigeria. That's sorry, in Nigeria for people who are just starting out in the work environment now. He left his comment on Spotify. He's a listener of the podcast. Oh, by the way, shout out to Alosia. Thank you very much for listening to the show and thank you very much for your comments. In fact, while I'm here, I might as well shout out the second listener of the show that is Nolez.

That is NOLEZ. I think this must be some sort of a nickname anyway, so shout out to Knowledge who is based in Benway and she is in the business of selling perfume, whiles she's starting that as a side gig. So I should be chatting with her soon about that. Anyway, so folks like Alosi have been asking about sales training opportunities in Nigeria, particularly for people who are about to begin their career. And so I figured we're going to make that the topic that we're going to address today.

So what kind of training programs are available? I can help you to brush up your sales skills, brush up your sales knowledge. Now before we go into the training programs that are available, I can only talk about programs that are available with me because to be honest, looking at the landscape, I can't say. I know a host of other sales training professionals out there in Nigeria because, OK, well, I know of Paul 4, but Paul 4 is based in the UK.

So I mean, if you want to, you know, if you have that UK money, then yeah, you can hit them up. But block out here on ground. I don't know to many folks who are doing the sorts of things that I'm doing. But before we start looking into specific kinds of training programs, before I start making any kinds of recommendations as usual, whether you have any training program, what kind of training program you're going to take, it depends on what the source of the problem is in your business.

Because not everybody has the same problem. So you can't really say that there's one kind of training program that is fit for everyone and for all businesses in all kind of contexts because everybody has different business problems. Now, there are some people who their business problems is lead generation. Now, for those of you who've been listening to show for any length of time, you will remember that the lead is just anybody who has raised his hand or raised her hand.

They have done some sort of activity to show that they might be interested in your product or your service and they have given you permission to reach out to them. Now, those people are typically contacts that we have, you know, on some list or on our phone or whatever. Maybe we'll get them through some kind of Instagram campaign. But these sorts of people, these are leads. And so some people have problems with generating leads.

That is getting people to raise their hand and they say I am interested in your product or your service and they hand over their contact details. Now the example that I gave in the past when I made a podcast episode about this lead generation was to show how lead generation doesn't have always have to be done online. I spoke about the chap who showed up at my son's school with Flyers and handed to me and a bunch of other parents because they were selling back to school things, you know, bags, clothes,

textbooks, all those sorts of things. Now, handing off Flyers is also an opportunity for lead generation because when you hand out Flyers, well, First off, lots of people ignore the Flyers. But if you hand out enough Flyers, because remember, when it comes to Flyers, it's a numbers game. So you can't say that you've handed out 200 Flyers and then you've done work. You have to hand out more than that. For people who want to try Flyers, my own recommendation is, you know, at the very least you hand out 1000 Flyers before you can start complaining that it worked or it didn't work because handing out 50, you're handing out 10 or handing out 100.

It's just absolute rubbish. You know when you get much return from that? So this young man outside my sons school gives me a flyer. Give a bunch of people some Flyers. Now let's say one of those parents looks at the Flyers and like okay, I like this kind of bag. Or wifey has been saying that the children's bags are old. We need to get these kinds of bags. And let's say the person now calls you because your nobody is on the flyer to say, hey, what's up?

Took your flyer. You outside my son's school. I beg. Do you guys have this kind of bug? Do you guys have Ben 10 bug or do you guys have Superman bug or Spider man bug or whatever? So this person has done something to show that he might be interested in your product or your service. And by calling you implicitly, he has kind of given permission that you can get in touch. So by handing out Flyers now you have generated a lead because somebody has raised his hand or raised her hand to show I might be interested and has given you contact details.

So there's some people that this is where their business is running into problems. They just don't know how to generate leads. So if lead generation is your problem, you're going to have some kinds of trainings that will be different from other people who are trying to build their business by doing inbound. Now inbound is when you're staying there in your office, in your shop, in your house, in your wherever and you do a whole bunch of activities, whether online or offline.

And the whole idea is you're trying to get people to be attracted to you and let them start chasing you, let them start calling you in. So all the stuff that we do on social media, you know, you put, you do your Instagram videos, you do your everything because you're hoping that the whole thing will trend. And when you trend, lots of people will now start calling you or sending DMS, you know, stuff like that. That's basically the idea behind inbound.

Although nowadays when people say inbound, what they mean is mostly online, but arguably advertising, you know, old school advertising, when you put the advertisement on NTA or put the advertisement on radio, you know, TV, radio, that sort of thing. It's also another way of generating inbound. So there are two business philosophies that I'd like to talk about on the podcast for generating business. One of them is outbound.

Another one is inbound. Outbound is when you go and you start chasing other people because they're trying to draw more business. Like the fellow who went outside my son's school and started handing out Flyers, you know that is outbound. And so inbound is when you're there chilling wherever you're chilling and you're trying to generate interest so that you know that damn good, they rush you. That's the whole idea with inbound.

So the person who has problems with lead generation, your own training is different. The person who has problems with generating inbound, your own training is different. There are also people who their business problems stem because they can't handle conversions. Now what conversion means basically is you're just trying to get people to take the next step because business is business is like normal relationships. Nobody consummates a relationship on the first day,

except if you know, you're in some countries and you happen to be in some contexts, maybe like you're in the club or something. You know you're feeling the babe, or you know the guys feeling you and you guys think everything is everything. And then you know, somehow, somehow, you know, you guys end up at home. You know that kind of thing. But apart from that, relationships usually go one step by one step by one step. You say, hey, babe, I like you talk your own.

And then you start having a conversation and then from there, you know, on and on and on. So it's the same thing with business conversion, small, small steps. The example that I've given lots and lots of times before from my wedding photography days was I would go to a bridal fair and I'm there because I'm looking for customers. Somebody will come to my table and say, wow, I like this album, I like this frame. How much?

And then that's how we start talking. After that, I'll try and hook up a meeting so I can go to the person's office or so they can come to my studio and we'll look at albums. And you can see that everything is one step, one step, one step, one step, step one, go to the show, collect their phone number. Step 2. Fix an appointment for samples. Step 3, fix another appointment for negotiation, you know, and then on and on like that.

So we close business by taking small steps, micro steps along the way. So for those of you who think that business is about, you just show up one time and then you say some magic words and then you collect 500K from the clients like that in one sitting. It's possible and it happens, but that's not my area of specialty. I can't teach you that. It's very, very hard to do that. The rate of rejection in that is very, very high.

I can be very soul crushing. So it's not for everybody. It's not for the faint of heart. So for the rest of us, the focus is to try and close the deal. Small, small, small, small, you know, one small step, another small step, another small step. And then that's how you seal the deal. So the person who is having problems with conversion, your own training is different. Then let's see what else, OK. And then I have customer retention or client retention.

Now the goal of business, a lot of people forget this all the goal of sales, the goal of business that a lot of people don't pay attention to is this. We're trying to get people not just to buy from us once, but we are trying to get the people to buy from us again and again and again because that's where the main money is. So think about it. If you're selling something, let's say Indo me, yeah, let's say you sell Indo me.

Indo me is now like 1212 K cartoon. Maybe your profits on that Indo me is 1K. If somebody comes to your shop and buys one cartoon of Indo me and you know pays 12 K, the only thing you have profited on that person is just that 1K. However, if you get the person to come back and buy Indo me from you every two, two weeks, then there are 52 weeks in a year. That means the person will come 104 times in a year to buy from you.

Now 104 times we have said that the profit on the Indo me is let's say is 1K. So if my math is correct, that means if you do a good job and the person comes back again and again and again, the actual value of that customer is 104 K 104,000. So that's the goal in business. You get the person to come back over and over and over again because that is where the most money is made. Just like this babe no less, who reached out on WhatsApp and who dropped a comment on Spotify.

That's how no less is going to make the most of her money. If you get somebody to buy a perfume one time for her and on that she made 10K but the person never comes back, that's not a good job because you've only made 10K and then that's it. However, if you get the person to buy one perfume from you in January and buy another perfume in July and buy another one in November and each time profit margin is 10/10 K, you can see now that is beginning to make sense that from 1 customer you squeezed out 30K.

If you can stretch the relationship out for you know, 5-6 years and of course, you know, people, never, most people don't stay in the same place. You know, their taste will change, their purchasing power will change. So the kind of perfume that the person will be buying from you will go up and up and up. So you see that that's the whole goal when it comes to customer retention, client retention. It's all about repeat business and referrals because verily,

verily I say on TV, it does not pay you when you do all this hard work. You go and drop flyer, you go and create Instagram views, you go and advertise, you go and do this, you go to trade show and all these sorts of things. And then you get let's say 100 people to do business with you in 2024. And then next year in 2025, out of that 190%, let's say 95% of them just miss, you know, they go and they start doing business with someone else.

Then you know how to start 2025 looking for a fresh bunch of customers. So that is what essentially customer retention or client retention is about. We're trying to figure out how many people are staying with us, how many people are remaining with us. So the kind of sales training that you're going to get, it depends on what the nature of your problem is. Is your problem lead generation? Do you have a problem with getting people to raise their hand and to say, oh, I might be interested in what you have?

What is the problem inbound? Are you having a problem trying to arrange things so that people are rushing you, sending you DM, calling your phone, stuff like that? Or is the problem conversion? Let's say you're good at lead generation, you're good at inbound so that the EV at any given point of the week, let's say you have maybe like 80 people send you e-mail, calling your phone, sending you DM. But then the problem is conversion of the 80 people that I send you DM, you're not able to convert all of them into customers.

You're not able to get them to take the next small step that makes them become customers eventually. So is conversion the problem or is customer retention? Is client retention the problem? That you're good at lead generation, you're good at inbound, you do your thing. 80 people hit you up in January, and out of that 80, your conversion is good. You're able to make 76 for them to be customers. But then client relation is poor. 76 people buy from you,

but out of that 76, maybe only two remain with you. The remaining how much is that now? 74, The remaining 74, they just fade or they just ghost you. Is that the problem? So these are the things that are going to determine the kind of training program that you have to do for sales, business development, business knowledge, you know, things like that. So there might be other problems that lead to a loss of business revenue.

But from my own perspective, these are just the main things that we ought to be paying attention to, especially those of us who are in the SME space. When I say SME, I just mean, you know, you're starting out like our sister Nolas who reached out on Spotify and then later on on on on WhatsApp. So these are the major problems that we have to be paying attention to. So the training that we're going to do will depend on the kind of problems or the kind of combination that you have.

Because sometimes it's not just one problem, sometimes it's a combination of problems because you might find that somebody is poor at lead generation but is good at converting the number of people that they get. And then let's see what else. And then maybe the person is poor at inbound, you know, so it's possible for somebody to have two problems. Also, looking at this list, if you have 3 problems, I think that's a huge, that's serious wahala.

When we you get the whole point. It's not as simple as you have one problem or another problem. It's usually a combination of all kinds of problems. Oh, by the way, apologies, today's a noisy episode. I'm not in the audio booth as usual. And then the kids are home. So that's why we have noise in the background. So summary, before we move on to the kind of training programs that are available, all the kinds of training that you should be paying attention to,

just remember that it depends on the kind of problems that you have. Is your problem? Is your problem lead generation? Do you have a problem with getting people to indicate interest? Do you have a problem with getting permission from people so that you can have a conversation with them, so you can talk to them? Or is it that the list of people that you have to talk to isn't big enough? Those are lead generation problems.

And then there's inbound problems, or some people call it attraction marketing. They're trying to market and attract people to you. So is your problem attraction marketing? Is your problem that you don't know how to get people to come to your store or you don't know how to get people to come into your, you know, digital ecosystem, your LinkedIn, your Twitter, your Instagram, your Pinterest, your whatever? Or is your problem conversion that if you talk to 10 people,

you're only able to get one person to be a customer? Or that if you talk to 100, you're only able to get 50 to be a customer? You know, is that the problem? You don't know how to make people take the next step and to make them become a customer. Or is the problem customer or client retention? You have a problem with getting people to come back or you're looking at the list of customers that you have for the year and too many people are leaving, too many people are ghosting and you don't know why.

So these are the major problems. I think what I'll do is I'll make a podcast episode 1 after another to give a sense to Alosia and any other person who is curious to know the kind of training programs that can be created depending on the kind of problems that you are having. So with that, let me bring today's episode to a close. If you're curious and you want to connect with me to see what we can explore, then hit me up on WhatsApp or you can call me.

The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian. And if you want to connect with me, connect with me on on socials. You can connect on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show. So thanks for your time and attention. Please remember to like, share, subscribe. The show is available on Apple iTunes, what else, Spotify and on YouTube. So thank you very much for your time and attention.

I'll catch you guys at the next episode.