The Paintbrush of Persuasion: Equipping Your Sales Team for Success

Hello and welcome to the show. It's available on YouTube, Apple Podcast and Spotify. I'm your host, Tavi Shima Ayede. Today's going to be a noisy episode because it's a weekend and everybody's home, so I expect to hear some interruptions in the background. And if you'd love to connect and explore opportunities with me, then call me on 08064662140 or you can WhatsApp me on the same number. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, then for social media,

connect with me on LinkedIn because that's where I spend most of my days, well most of my time anyway on social media. Then the question that we're going to look at today is what content and resources that your sales team or your employees need to succeed. Now, since I spend most of my time here talking to peoples in the SME space, small and medium scale or micro, sorry, not micro, is it micro or nano? So I can't remember, you know,

so many times I'm going to use the words sales team or employees interchangeably because when you're an SME, essentially everybody is doing sales. I was chatting with one of my classmates. Well, this was a while ago anyway. So she started work with a company that does chemicals. Well, they work with Petro chemicals. You distill some of the Petro chemicals and then you use the, the, what's it called? When you distill something, the byproduct, you use the byproduct to now create other kinds of things, not just plastics, but some things they can use in pharmaceuticals.

And what she was doing was she was handling, I think human resources. And, you know, we're having a chat about how she is, you know, making the switch. That's for those of us who studied law. And then now you're in human resources. And at some point she was like, look, essentially what she's doing in sales, I'm like, how, how do you mean? And she's like, look, it's a small company, so everybody has to sell. Because even though she carries the human resources badge, The thing is, if not everybody in the business is selling, then the business doesn't make money and then salary is not guaranteed and the business goes under.

So for most of us who are small and medium scale business people, you'll find that your employees have to sell. So you don't just have a sales team, but most of your employees have to end up selling anyway. Now the sorry, forgive me, it's how my time here. So this code is really coming on strong. Although to be honest, I spent most of last week drinking very cold stuff and that's just me being irresponsible. Where was I?

OK, yes, I am. So I just explained why the question was relevant to most of us over here. Because if you're in the SME space, then whether you have employees or a dedicated sales team, everybody has to sell. Now the philosophy behind this question, what content and resources do your sales team need to be successful? The philosophy behind it is what people in the industry call sales enablement. Now, sales enablement basically just means giving your employees or giving your, your sales team the resources that they need to sell effectively.

Because it's not enough to gather a bunch of people and put them in the room and then say go ye forth and sell. That's not how it works. Yes, you gather people together, you say go ye forth and sell, bring in the profits, but then there are certain resources that they need to sell effectively. And so this whole thing about sales enablement folks in this space, we've been thinking of the kind of training that your employees need, the kind of materials that your employees need, and the kind of technology that your employees need as well.

So I'm sure we can talk about it in wider terms, but for now, let's keep it that simple, this training, this material and this technology. So you don't just gather people into a room and say go ye forth and sell. You know, like my friend who is now working in a company that deals with some petrochemical stuff, you don't just gather everybody and say go ye forth and sell. Sales people go out and sell. Human resources people go out and sell.

Accounting people go and sell. You need to equip them with training material and technology. So First off, when it comes to training, the one that everybody starts with is product training. And that one is absolutely necessary because like Brian Tracy says, you know, it's the beginning of selling effectively because if you don't know what the hell the product is, then how are you going to sell it? Now, you heard that I was trying to describe what it is that my friend does in this human resources firm.

And it sounded kind of sloppy, but maybe you got the idea. And that is because last last, at the end of the day, I don't have a good understanding of what it is that they do. I know that there's petrochemicals involved and I know that you distill the petrochemicals to get other things and those other things. You can now use it in pharmaceuticals and you can use it in plastics. That's the most that I know. But that's probably not enough to go out and sell it.

So product training, you need to sit your people down. Oh, sorry. One moment I have to go and clear my throat. OK, sorry about that. I'm back. I'm trying to make sure that I don't, you know, do the sniffles and the coughing into the microphone too much before I lose subscribers. Where were we? Yes, I was talking about how product training is absolutely essential. So when you gather everybody into the room, before you say go ye forth and sell, the first thing you need to do is you need to teach everybody.

This is what we do. This is what we produce, this is how the product works. You know, all these sorts of things. Product knowledge, absolutely important because if you send somebody out into the field and they have no product training, even though the person looks right, sounds right, dresses right, the moment the customer asks one question and you can't answer and you begin to fumble, that is how you start losing the sale.

Especially for people who are in these sorts of technical spaces. So if what you do is you produce diapers, then I guess you don't really need in depth product training per SE. But you find that for most of us, even if what we sell is beauty or skin care products, we actually do need product training because it's not enough to say if you use this, all your pimples will go away. Nowadays parents, let's say you're selling for kids.

Parents are more, what's the word? They're more informed. So of course, and mum, she will ask you like, OK, does this thing contain sunscreen? You need to be able to answer if it contains sunscreen and if the answer is yes, it contains sunscreen. And the mumsy asks you, OK, is the SPV 45 or SPV 60, whatever. You need to know that there's a difference, why that difference is important and what exactly is contained in this cream for children that you're selling.

So we all need product training. Then there's also a certain level of industry training that people need to know about. You need to know what's going on in the industry, what are the trends, what are the competitors, you know, stuff like that so that people can have a sophisticated discussion the next time they're with your customers. Because you know how sales can be. Now you come in, you're trying to sell something, but then sometimes the conversation goes off track and there's plenty of chitchat, small talk.

You know, people need to be able to handle themselves. So they need to be abreast about what the industry is. And so back when I was in the financial product space, in the insurance space, that's something that really came in handy because if you're talking to your customer and your customer doesn't like your product and then they say, but XYZ insurance does this, you need to be able to have the knowledge and the competence to say, Oh yes, XYZ insurance does this.

But this product is actually better suited for this, that, that, that, that and doesn't apply in your situation because here is how. And then you have that discussion. And then you're able to show the customer how the particular product that you're trying to sell to them, particular insurance product or the particular financial product, how it is best suited for them. So industries training, you need to, excuse me, your sales team,

your employees, they need to know what's up. Then on the training aspect, you also need to make sure that your people have sales process training. And this is where most business owners in Nigeria, this is where they drop the ball. You teach everybody about the product, you let everybody know about the industry and what the competition is doing. But then you don't teach your people that, look, there's a process of selling.

It's not about going out and looking handsome and pretty. You know, it's unfortunate, but I was talking to someone last week. The person wanted to hire a sales force for their team and better standard talking about how we need beautiful girls, you need light skinned girls and blah blah, blah. And so in no offense my my mother's and Big Sisters listening to this podcast, but really some people think that that is all that is required when it comes to sales.

That if you so excuse me, that if you get a sales force that is largely female attractive, light skinned and properly educated, you know, people who have master's degrees, education and stuff like that, there's some fun is that you'll be able to sell very well because that is all that is required. Attractive women out in the field. And that is why every once in a while I keep going on on the rant and I haven't written about it on LinkedIn a long time ago.

That look, it's more than just getting pretty women with correct shape or boys who know how to speak funny and then putting them out in the field. It's not that simple. So we need to learn that this is a sales process. How do you identify the person that you're going to talk to? How do you start the conversation? How do you figure out the problems? Now that I know what the problem is, how do you make an effective presentation or a proposal when you guys start talking about price?

How are you going to negotiate? When you guys have negotiated everything? How do you know that it's time for the close? How do you initiate the close? Are you going to take part payment or full? Then there's fulfilment, you know, are you going to stage fulfilment? Fulfillment is basically when you're trying to deliver on what it is that you sold. Are you going to figure out if customers are happy, if there's any issues, what's the customer service process?

So there's there's plenty of talk and training that needs to be done on this end because people are entering into the field with the right product, training with the right industry knowledge, but they don't know that there's a way to handle the sales process. And that is where people fumble things. So there's plenty to talk about, but let me just put a pin on it here on the training aspect, because we've already done 10

minutes into the show already. Then next is material because remember I said we were looking at this at it from a three pronged approach. So you want your people to sell effectively. You want your employees to sell effectively. You want your girl in the shop to sell effectively. You want your boys out in the field to sell effectively. There's training this material, this technology. So we've handled the training aspect.

Now let's look at material. When we say material here on the podcast, we just mean marketing collateral, that's all. What's the website going to look like? Because of course, you know, nowadays we have to refer somebody to the website. Well, depending on what you do, you have to refer somebody to the Instagram. So for those of you who are in the beauty and skin care space, most likely will be the Instagram that you'll be sending people to.

So what does the website look like? What does the Instagram look like? What did the other online resources look like? Then if we're sending people out with Flyers right now, Flyers and brochures, those ones are really raining now in Abuja. For people who are selling real estate development projects, a lot of them are in traffic now carrying their Flyers and their brochures and stuff like that. I'm not saying that that's what you should do.

I'm just telling you guys that in Abuja, that's what is raining for now as at the time of making this podcast. So I have no idea about what's going on in the East or what's going on in LAG then. Yeah. So what kind of Flyers are we sending them out with? What kind of brochures, what kind of written material so they can leave behind? Are we sending them out with business cards? How do we design the card? What do they look like?

What is the call to action on the Flyers? You know, so these are the kinds of things that we talk about when we mean material, it just means marketing collateral as they're out in the field and they're talking to people and they need supporting material to explain something, to illustrate something or an excuse just to give somebody material so that you can get their phone number and call them back. What kind of things I'm going to send them out with.

And that's material. Then the last technology, also something that people ignore. Technology doesn't have to be high tech. A diary that's also technology. I've spoken about how starting off in the legal space years ago, close to two decades ago, how back then this is how we used to run things back then. Everybody, every single lawyer, from the baby lawyer up to the most experienced lawyer, everybody has their own diary.

And in the diary, you put everything there when you're supposed to see a client, when the matter comes up in court. What the ruling was, when, when things are drawn to everybody had their own diary. Then the firm itself, the law firm, the law office itself also had like a master diary where all the extra information will be entered into. So the person who is the police. By the way, I've not been in love for a very long time, so I'm not sure if this is how law firms still work.

So I'm telling you what used to happen, but I don't know about now. I'm sure things have changed. So there'll be somebody then who used to be called the head of practice. I don't know if they still have head of practice in law firms. So head of practice now is the person who'll be responsible for making sure that if the 15 junior lawyers went out on 15 separate matters and came back all the information that was gotten about the particular cases we have in their Diaries,

we have to make sure that the main office file is updated. And we also have to make sure that the main office diary is updated as well so that anybody can go to the main master diary or the main file with the client's name and open it. And you'll be able to know that, OK, for this particular client, this is how the matter started. This is where we're at and this is what we have to do next on that particular matter. So you can see that technology doesn't have to be fancy.

A diary also is technology. So if you tell your people, go you forth and sell where it was, leaving them to their own devices, leaving them to do things on their own, not exactly a good idea. Even if you get people, you give all of them diary, small, small diary. You know, 2024 diary, OK, right now the yes and and then 2025 diary. And then you try and teach them simple stuff about how to use a diary, how to schedule stuff,

how to record stuff. You are doing a lot to move things in your favour rather than when you just have a meeting every Monday morning. And then you tell your people where go ye forth and sell. Even if you give them a diary, you're helping them. Then phone, phone. That's also good technology. Lots of people don't pay attention to this. You leave your people to sell any which way and to use their own phone. Well, there's debates about it one way or another.

There's some people who say, look, let them just use their phone. And there are some people who say, no, I will give them a dedicated official line because you want to be able to keep all the contacts and the data that goes along with using the phone. So well. Anyway, that's the subject for another podcast episode. But diary, that's technology. Phone, that's technology. There are some people who use Excel sheets. I was interviewing someone recently that's back when I was doing some consulting work in the alternative energy space.

My client wanted to hire a sales manager. And so for the guy he was selling for, I think was Sun, Sun Systems or something like that. And when we got to discussion about how you manage contacts and things like that, and the person was talking about how they used Excel and it was really, really impressive. But it just goes to show that, you know, Microsoft Word, you're opening a Word document, you open Excel sheet, you can actually can use that to manage your daily sales activities.

That OK, today I've seen Mr. Ogdenbe, next tomorrow I need to see Mr. Chukudi and the day after that I need to see law. Law is in there or whatever. So Excel sheet can also work. But if you're going to do things the right way in court, then you need to have ACRM. That's a customer relationship management tool and CRM tools basically is just something that shows you who are you talking to right now? Who are you chasing?

What stage of the conversation are you at? What stage of the relationship are you guys at? What are you supposed to do next to move the deal forward? Are the people owing you something? Are they supposed to send you something before that, before the deal moves forward? So the CRM basically just a tool that is there to answer all these questions. So the name of all your contacts are there the people that are not serious separated into a separate category.

So you can do relationship knowledge, sorry, relationship nurturing, yes. Then the people that are serious, it looks like the deal might go forward. You know, you create a dedicated deal and you start tracking it through the stages. What stage are we at in the deal? So CRM, that's also part of our technology. But of course, for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, I've been saying that if you can't afford CRM or you don't know any free CRMS or you just don't want to use CRM, you actually can use your phone as the CRM tool.

So if you're not listening to this podcast episode and you're curious and you want to see how you can use your phone as the CRM tool. So excuse me, then just go to YouTube because all the podcast episodes I've done so far, over 970 of them are available on YouTube. So I'm saying YouTube just because it would be easier to search within YouTube than trying to search within your podcast player. So go to YouTube, type Tavishima, then type CRM and then type phone or something like that or Tavishima on phone.

And every single episode that I've made about how to use your phone as ACRM tool is going to come up. And then of course, listen with a pen and a paper, make some notes about how you can use your phone, your note taking functions in the phone, your diary functions in the phone, what else? Your notification functions in the phone, just to do some basic stuff like, you know, who are you talking to? Who should you talk to next?

What stage are you at? You know, all these sorts of things. Then when it comes to technology, there's also the thing of company car. Yeah, there is that conversation. My one of my sisters started off in the banking space. Well, she has since left but back then anyway, it was a thing. The bank could provide company cars so that they could go out in groups of five and there are some business owners who still try and do that today.

Although with the cost of fuel now being 1000 to in Abuja I anyway, it's been long since I've spoken to any business owners about how the cost of how the fuel increase has affected the way that they run their business. I've only spoken to one person who is in the paint space. He sells paint. He sells paint. Sorry about that. And yeah, he was complaining about shirling the car for the boys and girls to get out into the field.

So essentially we're trying to answer the question, what content and resources do my sales team need to succeed? That whole thing is called sales enablement, and we are looking at sales enablement. You're thinking primarily training. What should I be training them? Material. What kind of things should they be carrying? Technology. What kind of tools do they need to do their job? So now let's use a case study to try and flesh this out.

OK, good. Since I spoke about this guy myself, paint, I'll just use him as an example right now. Just all the things that we're talking about, it's not going to be excessive fury. And then, yeah, it will be a good example to talk about because when Hamatan, excuse me, at least in Abuja anyway, Hamatan is. And the heat and the dust is going on real strong. So I think this will be the perfect time to look into paint sales.

Now, for those of you who are in the paint industry, forgive me, maybe I'm saying some things that are not correct. But The thing is, back when I was a boy, a real young boy, back when I was an embryo, people did not paint. Used to be a seasonal thing. Like you couldn't sell paint in the rainy season. I don't know why. Maybe it's that if you paint in the rainy season and it rains, then The thing is going to wash. Or maybe it's that if you paint in the rainy season, there's not enough sunshine so things will take too long to dry.

I have no idea. But just remember because my father used to do a bit of building back then, that back then, people will not paint in the rainy season. So if that is still the case now that we're in Hamilton, I was assuming that for those of you who sell paint, you guys are getting ready for your busiest time of the year. So now if you sell paint and now we're in Hamilton and you're thinking, so 1 moment, sorry about that.

So if you sell paint right now entering Hamatana, you're thinking, OK, now is the time. Gather all the boys and girls into the office, give them motivational speech and now say go ye forth and sell. No, it doesn't work that way. You need to gather the boys and girls into the office and there's a couple of stuff that you actually need to teach them. You need to use the boys and the girls, the product specs or the use case scenarios.

These are the different kinds of paints that we have here. These kind of paints, they work best for residential buildings because they're cheap or because they have this. These kind of paints work best for commercial buildings because commercial buildings are this tall or this wide or exposed to this amount of sunshine. So you need paint that is of this specs or the aspects. Then what else? These kind of paints, they're very good for killing mold or these kinds of paints are very good to use in children's bedrooms because they don't have allergens or whatever.

But you need to give them this sort of training so that depending on who it is that your people are talking to, whether they're talking to a property developer or whether they're talking to your mom, see who don't want to paint the children's room only or they're talking to a, excuse me, sorry, forgive me. Whether they're talking to a landlord who wants to allow Lord who wants to paint the outside of the house, they need to be able to have that knowledge so you can have a very good and profitable conversation with the people because the people need to sound knowledgeable.

So you need to make sure that your boys and your girls, you have taught them every single thing you know about all the different products that you sell. So this paint range is different from this paint range. This one. These are the advantages. This one, these are the disadvantages. These ones. If you're talking residential, talk about this one. This one. If you're talking commercial, talk about this one. This one. If you're talking about factory use, talk about this one.

So all those things, then you also need to teach your boys and girls when it comes to selling paint, you need to talk to them about them. FAQs and objections. Now, FAQ just means frequently asked questions. You just send your people out into the field knowing the kind of question that most people ask because let's face it, some of you might not believe because maybe you're new in business, but don't just continue. By the time you do business like 2-3 years, you realize that every single question that a customer could possibly ask, you have heard everything.

After about two or three years, once in a while you hear something like, ah, where did that? Excuse me? Once in a while you hear something and I'll be like, OK, that's a brand new question. I've never heard that before, but The thing is, those basic questions that people ask every day, every week, you should be compiling them in the office. That's what we call an FAQ, frequently asked questions. Your people need to know what the FAQ are so that they will not be surprised if you teach them in the office that most people say your price is too high.

When they get into the field and somebody says your price is too high, they will not be confused because back in the office, you guys already had that, that conversation that look, everybody you talk to, they will say your price is too high or they will say, what makes you more expensive than Dulux? Let's say you're selling for another company, you're not selling for Dulux. You need to have that question. Now when somebody says why are you more expensive than Dulux?

After all, Dulux is international market leader. So you need to teach them, this is the FAQ. This is what people will say when they say it. This is what you were saying next, or this is how you will handle it. Excuse me. So those are FAQs and objections. So it's part of the things you have to talk to the boys and the girls before you tell them go ye forth and sell paint. Then you also need to talk to them about market trends or what's going on in the competition.

So like I said, we're selling paint, you're selling a different kind. Dulux, I'm assuming that Dulux is a market leader in Nigeria because well, back as a boy back then Dulux, the ones are raining back then Abuja and Lagos, but I don't know about now. So let me assume that Dulux is still raining. So you teach them, you let them know what's up, OK. When it comes to residential, these are the brands that reign. When it comes to commercial,

these are the brands that lots of people try to use. These are the market trends. This is where we're trying to break in. This is where we're trying to enter this class of market. So we're trying to enter that class of market, you know, blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things. Then what I said about training them, about skills process, you need to tell them a whole bunch of stuff from prospecting to closing. Prospecting is when you're trying to figure out who might be interested in my product or service or who is the ideal candidate for my prospect or service.

How do we identify them? How do we start toasting them? How do we start the conversation? How do we book a meeting? If we want to do demonstration, how do we run the demonstration? Can we give them samples? How many samples are we supposed to give them? When we give them samples, how do we follow up? How do we close the deal? How do we collect the money after we have collected the money? How do we schedule delivery? How do we handle customer service conversation?

We need to have all these conversations with the boys and the girls before we sell them, send them out into the field to go and sell our paint. Then when it came to prospecting, I was talking about the ICP oil buyer personas. This is one thing that business owners forget to stress. You don't just gather boys and girls in the room and then say go and sell. You need to tell them, who are we supposed to be chasing? Because there's a company that I, I've done some small work for and they hit the field and I was talking to one of the people and they sent me some videos about people that I've been talking to.

I'm just looking at the video. In my heart of hearts, I could already tell that, look, these people that you're talking to, these are not the kind of people that have the money to buy this product that you people are selling. So it's the kind of thing that can happen when you send your boys and girls out to sell for you and you don't even tell them that who are you chasing? You need to tell them we are only going after these kinds of people because of what we sell.

So only talk to people that look like this, that sound like this or this old or who work in this industry or who live in this part of town. You need to tell them if you are selling, let me see, our worker is raining. Now if you're selling those new Land Rover Jeeps or those new Toyota Jeeps, those fancy ones with correct grill, the one that the grill lights up at night, you know, has like crisscross diamond patterns, as in sweet,

sweet cars. But I can't wait to make some nice money so I can buy myself one of those cars so I can start flexing on all of you. So if you're trying to sell those kind of cars and then you come to my own neighbourhood and I'm trying to sell that car, you know, you've missed Rd. because people in my own part of town, what we drive is Camry, what we drive is Corolla, what we drive is Honda Accord. Maybe somebody might have Toyota Jeep, but won't be 2024, you know, will be maybe 2001 version or something like that.

I'm not saying we're broke. I'm, I'm just saying that you understand that, you know how Niger is. So if you're selling those kind of cars and they're coming to my neighbourhood, they're trying to sell in my own neighbourhood, you've missed Rd. You need to be able to tell your boys and your girls that look based because of what we sell and based on the research that we have, just focus on this kind of person, focus on these kind of jobs, focus on these kind of neighbourhoods.

You know, it's just common sense. And like I keep saying it, that is the reason why people who sell pure water, that's the reason why they don't come to neighbourhoods like mine, because in neighbourhoods like mine, everybody's there inside their own house, water board is running, everybody has a fridge. So nobody's buying pure water, none. That is the reason why people who sell pure water, they go to the garage, they go to the park and they don't go there in the morning.

They go in the afternoon when it's hot. And then they shall pure water because people who are coming out from the bus who are hot and frustrated need something to cool them down and then they'll buy the pure water. So that's just the common sense, whether you're selling pure water or you're selling expensive cars, this whole thing of ICP very important. Who is the ideal customer? Who are the buyer personas? Where do they live?

Where do they hang out? How can we find them real life online, offline? How do we go to them? Really, really important. Stop telling your boys and girls your sales teams go you forth and sell, but you have not told them. Who are we chasing? Tell them clearly or else there'll be no situation where they're talking to people and some of us can see that you're wasting your time. These people that you're talking to, there's no room here.

There's no going to be any business. So you need to have those conversation with your boys and girls before you send them out to go and sell your paint. Then also have those conversations around CRM or lead management or advancements. Basically what you're trying to say is when we're talking to people, this is where we're going to keep our records. So remember when I was talking about diary or phone or Excel or CRM, This is where that's important.

When you talk to somebody, this is how you record it in the diary. This is how you schedule the follow up, you know, blah, blah, blah, stuff like that. So you need to have these conversations with them. When we're talking to people, how do we decide who is a valuable contact to keep up with for the valuable contacts, where do we record the information? When we record it? How are we following up with them? How are we calling them?

How long should we schedule? If you talk to somebody and the person is interested, should we schedule an appointment for one week? So we're settling for two weeks. Should we schedule for three weeks? What comes first? What comes next? Should we give them sample now or should we talk about money first? After we're OK with money, then we now know that we give them a sample before we visit site. You know, we need to have these conversations.

You need to have a conversation with your boys and girls. Helps them to sell effectively then. OK. Yeah, the technology thing. Official line. Well, the fellow I was talking to for him was an official line person and giving his own business. I would say yes, give everybody the official line because it's something that the guy has suffered in the past. Everybody was selling from their own phone. So the day that somebody says Olga, I'm tired, I resign and they leave.

That is it. You do not have access to those contacts anymore because they're on that guy's phone. I want to forcefully take his phone from his hand and then transfer all the contacts. You can't. So right now, my guy is an official line guy. So there's some of you who might want to consider that, that yes, everybody has a phone, but when you go out into the field and you're selling, you will only use this official line that is so that you have access to your data and you own your contacts and then things like that.

Then the thing about company car, well, like I said, there's not lots of Nigerian employers that do that. The banks used to do that, you know, get one company car, then attach 1 driver and you know, five people or something. The paint guy I was talking to, that's how he runs his business. Although he was thinking maybe he might get rid of that because of the cost of fuel and then things like that. But anyway, it's tough to consider.

It doesn't have to be company car. There's some people who give a daily stipend like OK, you're going out today. We expect that you're going to this and this and this part of the country. So this is your daily stipend of for transport. And some other people who say, look, everything is in the salary. So we paid your salary, go sort yourself out. So it depends then. OK, this is 30 minutes. Let me just bring this to a close because we've spoken a lot.

I just hope that me trying to use this case study, you know, that's for somebody who is in the business of selling paint, whether in Abuja or Lagos or Port Harcourt, They're trying to show you how to think about this thing taking in terms of training, material, technology. What do we need to give our boys and girls who are selling for us so that they can go out and be successful? Whether you agree with some of the methods that I've spoken about or not, the summary thing that I want to pass across, what I'm hoping that you guys will take on board is this.

Don't just hire salespeople or don't just hire employees. Don't just hire boys and girls, put them together in a room and then tell them go and sell. Go and bring sales. That's not how it works. There are some small, small, small conversations you need to be having with these people on the daily, on the weekly or the monthly, and what I've talked, what we've spoken about over here on this podcast, sales enablement. These are the things I was supposed to be doing.

You gather them once in a while, training material, technology. If you're doing this in a small, small, small, small, small, you will notice that their effectiveness will begin to rise. The person that was only bringing in one customer a month might now start bringing in two. The person that I was bringing in five customers a month might now start bringing 7. Now the difference between 2:00 and 7:00 seems small, but for those of us in the SME space,

think about it this way, to go from 2:00 every month to three seems small. But The thing is, the profit margin is kind of big. OK, let me put it this way. This is how I explained it to wedding photographers when somebody challenged me. This was years ago about how if you are doing 3 customers in a month and you now do four, that has not a big enough return. So this is how I explained it to them. OK, all of us here now, we're all wedding photographers.

Abby, we're doing 4 customers a month. Abby. Let's say with each person, the profits that we're making on each person's head is 100K. And then that means that doing 3 customers every month, you're making 300K per month. So now I explained it this way, if you're able to go from three customers to four, even though that seems like a small increase, actually what that means is you now have 100K extra that you didn't have last month.

And if you step back and you look at it from a yearly perspective, that means that you have now have an extra. What is the 100K times 12? What is that now? Is that 11M? Is that 1.2 M? I'm not sure. Anyway, if it's 1.2 M, then yeah, good, I'm correct. I hope my math teacher is not listening. If it's not 1.2 M, then do the math on your own and whatever figure you arrive at, that's it. So getting an extra 1 customer per month can be the difference between how much you made last year and an extra 1.2 M in revenues this year.

So do not despise days of little beginnings. I know that we all want our people to go from bringing 5 customers every month to bringing 10 customers every month. Now if your if your people go from doing 5 customers every month to 10 every month, then or more your your life has changed drastically. But The thing is actually it's not bad if they go from bringing 5 customers every month to bringing 6. They're even that extra 1

customer per month. If you take that profit margin, you see that it's, it's not bad. So summary, don't just get hired people put them in the room and say go and sell. You need to give them a couple of stuff, training, materials, technology, so they can go and sell effectively. So that's all for today. Thank you very much for your time and attention. And remember, if you'd love to connect with me and explore opportunities, call me.

The number is 08064662140. That's my WhatsApp number as well. So you can WhatsApp me. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, therefore, social media connect with me on LinkedIn. So I'll catch you all tomorrow.