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Hello and welcome to the show. Before we begin, apologies because of the noise in the background and let's get straight down to business. Yesterday we started looking at how to, I can't remember the larger question I think was something like how to build and how to empower a sales team. And so I decided to split the question up into two. And so yesterday we handled the How did you, how do you build a sales team part? Now?
For those of you who are listening to this episode, I'm into this podcast for the first time. What we dealt with yesterday was to show how if you want to build the perfect sales team, First off, you have to engage intentionally and deliberately with your own customer. And I mean, you, the founder of the business, the CEO of the business, the proprietress, the headmaster, the head chef, the whatever business it is that you do, you have to engage relentlessly with your customer because you're trying to figure out a couple of things.
You're trying to figure out who your ideal customer is. How do you like to be spoken to? Where do you find them in the real world or online? Let's see what else? You know, all those sorts of things. Because when you figure out all these things, this is going to serve as the foundation, it's going to serve as the kernel that you're going to use to train the future sales people that you bring on board. So number one of building a sales team is to make sure that you have done the job yourself so that you have all the information, the data, the material, the resources, the philosophy, the outlook, the whatever.
To train your people to say that, look, boys and girls, if you're going to sell for this bakery, if you're going to sell for this kitchen, if you're going to sell my catfish, if you're going to look for parents to bring their children to this school, if you're going to sell my solar panels, if you're going to sell my paint supplies, whatever it is, this is how we're going to go about it. These are the ideal clients that we're looking for.
This is how we're going to look for them in the real world or online. This is how we start conversations with them. These are the communication channels that work the best, whether it's e-mail or social media or whatever. So once you have all this information, you sit down with people, you tell them exactly what it is that they need to do. Then you can send them into the world and say go forth and sell on my behalf. So that is stage one of putting together the perfect sales team.
Oh, and then the second part of that conversation was that you need to hire correctly to begin with because lots of people, especially in this part of the world in Nigeria, you know, we have a thing for university graduates, qualifications and those sorts of things. But when it comes to sales and business developments, it's not as if those things are unimportant. But we should be looking at people that have the right, the right what's the word, the right attitude, the right frame of mind.
People who are self starters who are motivated, sorry, excuse me, optimistic folk. Those are the sorts of things we should be looking for because it is easy to train for the technical aspect. So now let's go back to the example that I started with. Let's say, excuse me, you're the head chef. If you find the person who graduated from Unilab culinary school or some fancy French Academy or whatever, and then you want this person to now work in your establishment and you're hoping that this person is going to be able to bring in customers for you, but this person is poorly motivated.
This person only wants to collect salary. To get the person to come to work on time is is Valhalla is like you're pulling teeth. The person doesn't care about customers. So long as they can prepare the fancy garnishing and gourmet whatever then this person might be highly useful. So excuse me recovering from my sore throat and all that. Yeah, so this person might be very, very useful in the kitchen. But then when it comes to customer relations and bringing people on board, getting new clients, this person is going to be totally useless.
But then you can find somebody who graduated from University of Ibadan or University of Joss. Maybe the person didn't even go to university at all. But the person has the right frame of mind. The person is teachable. The person is adaptable, the person is motivated. And let's say the person is a decent cook. You can hire someone like that, and over time, you can brush up the person's cooking skills and the person's technique.
You can groom the person. You can say, oh boy, look, when you're coming here, don't dress like this. Now wear a proper white shirt and then you tell the person that look, where we're trying to do filet mignon, this is how we filet the mignon. And if we're trying to do a gastro, Gastro, you know, you, you cooks, you chefs, you know how you all those your fancy words. If we're going to cook escargot, this is how we escar the cargo,
you know, and you train him on all the fancy stuff or you train how on the fancy stuff. So it is easier to have someone with the right attitude and then clean the person up when it comes to technical requirements and also on the sales end as well. So that when you unleash this person in your restaurant, customer service skills will be on point. If you guys are doing marketing drive, the the drive is there, the everything is there.
So it's easier to hire for people with the right disposition first and then train them up on technical skills and knowledge and technical skills later. But of course, remember whenever I say this on the podcast, I give a caveat that this thing like we're talking about things from a sales and business development perspective. There are some disciplines that are highly technical. So this I doubt this would apply when it comes to medical and when it comes to engineering.
When it comes to engineering, you want the bridge to last 100 years, you don't want to build the bridge today and then the bridge will collapse. So I guess whether the engineer has good customer facing skills, customer interfacing skills and all of that is besides the point. The same thing with medicine surgeon. If the person is the best brain surgeon in the world, but the person has the personality of a wet blanket, it doesn't matter as in he's the best brain surgeon, he's the best brain surgeon.
You will get him to work in your hospital. So yeah, that was part one. Now we're going to move on to the second part of the equation, which is how do you empower the sales team? Because let's assume that you have done the work yourself. You know what it is you're going to train them on. And you've had the right people, you've trained them, you've sent them forth and they're selling. But The thing is, what what everybody's bringing in is maybe like, you know that kind of 50K
every month and 50K is not enough for salaries and stuff like that. So you have a goal of hitting maybe 200 K every month or something like that. So the question now becomes, how do you empower the sales team so that they can go forth and yield good fruit and bring in plenty results, plenty upon plenty upon plenty. So you're going to have to train your team on a couple of things. There's a field of sales management, it's called sales enablement.
Basically, sales enablement is this, is your sales team standing over here? What do they need to be much more effective? Let's give it to them. That is the whole thing behind sales enablement. So sales enablement, empowering your sales team involves training them up on frameworks and process training. Now in the beginning where you are setting up your kitchen, your your idea, you know what's good to train them and you guys have gotten the ball rolling.
So now this might be the time where you get in someone like me who is a specialist on some of these sorts of things so they can train up your staff. So we now need to take it beyond all the early things that you discovered when trying to sell your your cookery, your your catfish, your cassava, your welding services, whatever it is that you do. So you're gonna have to train people up on that, so expose them to selling frameworks and the selling processes.
Because unfortunately for those of you who are CEO founders who start the business when you're first selling, you're going to be using plenty of IDEA. You're going to be freestyling, but IDEA doesn't work all the time. Idea is limited. So you need to expose people through frameworks and processes so that they know that selling is not just an art, it's a discipline. There are principles involved. You need to do 12345 things in order to make closing the deal a lot easier.
So training on frameworks and processes. If this is your first time listening to the show, don't worry, don't run anywhere. I got you guys covered. We have over 840 episodes on the podcast so far, and there's loads of stuff here about selling frameworks and selling processes, so don't worry, I got you. You're covered. So just remain right here and keep coming back for future episodes. When you're done, scroll back previous episodes, there's a whole lot that you can binge on.
Then product knowledge training has really, really important. It's also part of sales enablement because you have lots of people going out trying to sell your stuff and they have absolutely no idea what they're selling. So back to the kitchen example, If you have the finest restaurant in Abuja or in Lagos or wherever it is and you serve a premium escargot, you know, it doesn't help if the person who is selling the stuff doesn't know how you escar the go, or who doesn't know what an escargot is or who doesn't.
Oh, by the way, if I'm correct, I think escargot is just French, fancy French word for snail. You know, snail that we've been eating here for generations. But you know, you take it, you you know, you take it, you garnish it, you throw in some fancy vegetables and then say escargot and then instead of charging, I don't know, maybe 1-5 or two, five per snail. You know, you now charge 20K per snail because it's escargot.
So you need to train your people on product knowledge. The person needs to know this is escargot, this is filet mignon, this is blah, blah, blah. This is how it's done. This is what makes it different, this is what makes it unique. You know, once in a while you call everybody, you train them on flavor profiles and blah blah blah. Because one day an idiot like me is going to walk into your restaurant and say, ha this is snail.
Now then why would I come and pay 1 snail 25K30K for something that, you know, if we go to the market and you know, Wifey buys it and she prepares it and we average out the cost, maybe we'll be paying, you know, maybe a few 100% or something like that. Oh, by the way, I haven't followed my wife to buy snail in a while. So for those of you who eat snail, if the numbers I'm calling doesn't add up, then you know it's obvious.
Why? Because we haven't gone to buy snail in a while. Because I guess it would be more expensive now. So eventually an idiot like me walks into the restaurant and says 20K. This is not worth 20K. Your person needs to be able to speak convincingly about why you know the escargot is escargot going, you know? So there's only someone who knows those sorts of things that can handle a convincing sales conversation. So obviously they have someone like me, even though I'm a sales specialist and I'm very good at handling sales conversations one-on-one.
Because I know nothing about escargot and I know nothing about filet mignon and I know nothing about that fancy food. If you take me and drop me in your restaurant today, verily, verily, I tell you your business will crash, 'cause I know nothing about the product. So product knowledge, training, absolutely important. Then there's also some technology that we need to provide people with. Technology doesn't have to be fancy.
If your boys and girls, your associates, your whoever it is that's selling on your behalf, if they're going out and having conversations with people, and then they come back and they sit down and say, oh, that was a good day. And then tomorrow they go out and they're trying to use their brain to figure out, who am I going to see? Who am I going to talk to? And you know, you're going to run into a bunch of problems. So sometimes technology can be as simple as pen and paper.
If you insist that, look, everybody, as you're leaving this office today, as you're leaving the restaurant, take with you a pencil and a jotter. When you're talking to someone, write down their name, write down their phone number, write down their e-mail address, write down the kind of things you spoke about, blah, blah, blah. Put the date there so that tomorrow when you wake up and it's time to go out and follow up on people, you can look at your notes and know which part of town you're heading to.
That last week I spoke to this person. So today let me talk to this person. So something even as simple as pen and pen and paper, that's, you know it's not digital, even that technology good enough. So pen, paper, files, tablets, phones, CRM, these things can get fancy and fancy and fancy but we do have to imbibe some sort of technology training to. So excuse me to make our, our staff and our sales associates really to make them efficient,
really to sell on our behalf. Now another part is a reward or compensation because people who work in sales, typically we are different from the rest of the population. Now the rest of the population is happy to get a fixed salary. So my salary is 150 K Every single month I'm getting 150K. For people who like to go into sales, The things that juice them up is the idea that maybe 150 K is my base. But if I also die I can take home 300K this month and next month if I hustle, hustle,
hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. If I triple my airport, my airport, I might be able to take home 450K. So those kind of things. They juice up sales people. So just bear in mind that if we're talking sales, the compensation has to be variable. So maybe everybody is taking 150K and then maybe the sales staff feel like, OK, your base is 100K, but out of every whatever that you bring, you get to keep 10K Commission, blah blah, blah.
So you know, nothing really gets them jazzed up so they can go out and also hard. So compensation variable, although there's some people, notably in the West for some reason who are saying that sales people should receive a flat fee and that money is not good compensation and blah blah blah. And the trans sites, all kinds of studies usually at people of a certain high earning potential you know already, but chances are your business is not there yet.
So maybe when you're paying your people hand robot salary, it will make a difference whether you pay them. I don't know, one MA month or two MA month. But once you get the hand robot salary, just know that if you're dealing with the sales people, variable compensation, that's how you go about it. You vary the amount up and down. This is your base. You sell more, you get more, you sell less, you get less. But a word of caution here.
Some people like to fiddle too much with these things. Don't fiddle too much with it. If not, you're going to affect their motivation. If in the beginning you tell everybody that you know what everybody. I'm giving people 100K every month, but every time you sell above this amount, I give you 20%. Be honest and keep that 20 percent. 20%. If you say above 50 Ki give you 20%, then maybe somebody goes out and the person is able to hustle maybe like 500K worth of orders.
You now do the calculation in your head. You're like oh boy, 20 Ki sorry, 20% or 500 K like man, that's a lot. You now start trying to forge the figures here and there. You see we agreed on 20% but you know you start trying to forge things. No, that is going to really mess with people's motivation. The most honest thing to do is actually if somebody sales above your threshold, just pay them first and congratulate everybody.
Later on you guys can have family meeting and say hey, you know what guys, in the beginning I know I said 20% too, but let me know like as that deal came in and we paid 20% to all of you, this is how it affected the cash flow and everything and he made it really rough to run the business last month. So I bet guys Novak's, but you know, I paid you guys for last month, but for this month, I beg that 20%. You know, I don't think I can do that 20% anymore.
Let's try out 12%. Let's see how it works. So don't be fiddling too much on the compensation, but if you must fiddle with the compensation, make sure you've paid them the backlog first before you start changing stuff, or else you find people highly demotivated. I know about this, OK, well, not first hand 'cause as is a car salesman in Abuja. I didn't know that some of these establishments in Abuja actually have what's it called?
Salesman on staff. Like this Chinese Jeep manufacturer. The one that has the G logo, What's it called again? The logo is like a letter GI can't remember the the the offices on it's not far from Sandra Lea hotel in like area 8 close to the cathedral around that side for you Abuja folks you should know the company that I'm talking about. So yeah so they have car salesman. So you know, you walk in the AC tights everything, you know,
somebody takes you to the car, you know and you know that whole thing of all this is keyless entry, anti side field AC, you know, oil pumping, you know, Bluetooth, this connect to you, wireless that you know, Internet, this, you know everything, that whole whatever. So there are people that sell cars like that. So I ran to someone who was selling for a Mercedes-Benz, not a Mercedes-Benz dealership, you know, somebody who is authorized to sell Mercedes Benz's cars in Nigeria.
And so that was their quarrel. They agreed on percentage. My guy went out and flooded, only for the guy to now saying start saying that OK, yeah, we agreed on this, but then this and this and this and that. And the guy was upset, but he stayed, collected what was below what he was promised, and then promptly left and went to go and sell for someone else. So you might be losing some of your superstars. If you start messing with people's compensation, then you also want to empower a sales team.
You have to have to put on your sales management hat. Basically what that means is you're tracking people's activity and you're tracking their time management. How many times did you go out yesterday, when you went out yesterday, and how many people did you see? Where is this deal? Does it look like this one is closing? Do you need help on this one? Do I need to talk to somebody in the other company to make it easy for you to close the deal in all these sorts of things?
Start having all those sorts of conversations. So when it comes to empowering a sales team, we're now moving to the area where you know, nowadays it's called sales enablement. And these are the things that we not start focusing upon, making sure that we have frameworks and processes. We're training people on it, we train people on product knowledge so that they can have useful, valuable conversations with potential customers.
We make sure that everybody's all teched up. Technology doesn't mean you have to give them virtual reality headsets and iPads and all that. It can be as simple as pen and paper and a a diary and a folder. But we need to get some things to be able to teach them how to track conversations, track relationships that they're trying to build, what stage of the business relationship that in, and all those sorts of things. Then for sales people, it's variable.
Compensation, make it so that the harder they work, the more money they make. Really jazzes up sales folks Then, yeah, sales management, you're also going to have to become a sales manager. So if you're a founder, you're a CEO of the business, yeah, we're going to add some things to your plate eventually. Sales management, that's a cap that you have to put on. We cannot avoid it. Now before I leave, 'cause we're at 20 minutes, let me just sneak in a little something.
I sent an e-mail out to someone this morning and I figured, let me just share my response with you guys. Now typically what I do is I share what the other person sent and then I break it down. But let me just take you guys my reply. So I replied, someone who sent me an e-mail this morning and I told the person thanks, but I don't do interviews. I don't mean to be rude, but I get solicitations like this all the time and they all sound the same.
Oh, OK, now hold on. Let me give you a backdrop. First of all. Now of course, you know that the podcast is growing. A bunch of you are discovering this thing on Spotify, other players, and I'm really thankful for the growth that the podcast is getting. But then there are people who have who are trying to get on podcast interviews and things like that. So I keep receiving messages of people trying to to pitch for themselves to come on the show or to pitch their Olga, the head of the business, you know, to come on the show.
And I'm really, it's slattering. It's nice that I'm finally getting that kind of a response. So this fellow sent me a long e-mail as a really long, but I read everything 'cause I'm trying to be polite then saying basically saying this is my ogre, this is what my ogre does, he'll be a great guest on your show. So that's the context. This was me replying. So I told the fellow thanks, but I don't do reviews. I don't mean to be rude but I
get solicitations like this all the time and they all sound the same. By the way, it is true. They all sound the same. So people, you people go and hear something on the Internet about how do this template and get this results something. So please stop following this template people. Because The thing is the the rest of the world is following that template as well. So your message comes in and your message sounds like everybody else.
So stop following all this template gurus. So yeah, I don't mean to be rude. I guess illustrations like this all the time, they all sound the same. And then I advised the guy I said look, take time out and listen to an episode or two from the prospect that you're trying to put your organ on. I told him if it's too much for Allah to listen, then listen to it at times 2 speed. That way you don't have to spend too much time.
If you're listening listening at 2X and you listen to 3 minutes of your podcast, you listen to 6 minutes. If you're listening at 2X and you listen to 5 minutes, you've gotten 2 minutes. But if you do that, you're going to be able to quickly figure out whether this podcast is really good for your Orga or not. And then you can now make a convincing pitch about how your Orga or your Madam would be a good guest on the show and also advise together.
That is also going to save you the hassle of emailing people for podcast interviews when there is no fit, because when you do these sorts of things where you don't properly research someone before prospecting, and that's the reason why I'm sharing this thing, you are just wasting your time. WhatsApp, e-mail, LinkedIn in e-mail, in messages. These things are fantastic because with them we can send messages out to hundreds of people at the time, but there is no point in sending hundreds and thousands of messages if it is going to be ignored by 99.999%
of the people who reach them. I prefer that with simple copy and paste you can personalize a couple, you can send out maybe 10 or 20 every every day or every week, but at least the response rate goes up. I mean, it doesn't profit you to send 100 or 1099.99% of people ignore. How about you send out, you do research, make sure that it's tailored. You send it out, you send it out to 10 people and then maybe two people respond, excuse me?
So you keep doing it that way. And basically, I'm just saying focus on quality and efficiency. Don't, don't focus on, don't focus on the numbers. Focus on being effective. Let me put it that way. So it's not just for me because I'm a podcaster. You're trying to grow your business. You're reaching out to other people. You're trying to grow your business. Just spend small time, 2 minutes, 3 minutes. Look at the person's LinkedIn page.
Look at the person's Instagram. Check the person's website. You'll be able to know like, oh OK, this is a good fit. Let me shoot my shot. Let me see if this person will become a customer. Just do small research. Don't just get people's names and numbers from wherever and they just start blasting out these messages. So I keep saying it again because I have a thing for sales people because I'm a salesperson. I read all these things and then I delete.
But if you don't believe me, for those of you who are in relationships, when at the end of the day, when your husband is on his phone, check his phone and see. When your wife is on her phone, check her phone and see. You see that your husband, your wife, they're not sales people. Anything that comes in is spam. Block delete, immediate or ignore. And this thing is hurting your deliverability. This is the reason why some of you are being blocked from LinkedIn.
Some of you are being anytime you send messages, your your messages are going into spam. These are the reasons why, because of all these unhelpful sales tactics that you guys are doing. I've even seen the one where you are the networking events. You're trying to collect somebody's phone number. You say no problem, I'll flash you, You collect the person's phone number, you flash the person. The person has True Caller on their own phone.
Instead of your name showing up as True Caller showing up on True Caller, what will show up on True Caller on the other person's phone? Will be 57 people reported this phone number as spam or reported it as scammer. It's it doesn't make a good impression. So please, when we're trying to go out look for business, we're trying to hustle market. Just do the smallest research possible before you go and meet somebody and say I have the best, I have the brightest, I
have the best solution for you. Just do small research. Open the person's Instagram page. Just look up and down. Flip up, flip down. You'll get a sense, Is there a fit here? Let me go back to example of those of you who sell pajamas. If you open the person's Instagram, you flip up, you flip down and looks like this is a single babe, then why are you sending her messages about pajamas for children? What for? If you flip up, flip down and it's like oh OK, this guy is a father of four.
No problem. Slide into his DM and try and sell your children's pajamas and the person is mumsy of two. No problem. Slide into DM, try and send sell your pajamas. Well, not that you get the e-mail. Sorry, the Instagram contact details for 1000 people. And then without checking, just copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, send, send, send, send, send. At the end of the day, you look and say I sent 500 messages, You give yourself a part on the back and say, oh tavish man, I tried.
You give yourself a high 5:00 and then in two months time Instagram blocks you. They don't. I mean like they deactivate your account. And you're saying that what's wrong with these people? They deactivated my account. I didn't do anything wrong. Blah blah blah. These are the reasons why we run into trouble. OK, so 30 minutes. Let me just bring it to a close. So thank you very much guys for listening. That's all for today.
Pretty much. And connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, then connect with me on LinkedIn as well. My name is Tavishima Ayede. You can confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.