The Unspoken Signs: How to Tell if Your Business Conversation is Actually Going Somewhere

Hello and welcome. My name is Tavishima Ayedi. I'm the host of the podcast and I'm making today's recording at home. So there's going to be some noise in the background because kids at home and they're watching Teen Titans as usual. Now, the goal of this podcast is solving business problems, problems with sales, marketing, customers, side hustles, career if you're a sales, if you're a career salesperson or other things that could be holding your business back.

Now, if any of these things resonate with you, then this is the show for you. So subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, or any player of your choice. And if you'd love to connect, please call or SMS or WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Today on the podcast, I want us to figure out how do we know if we have a sweet customer on the line? How do we know if this is a good customer interaction that we're having? How do we know if this is a deal that is worth pursuing?

How do we know if this is a deal that is likely to close? Sorry, I can't come up with a more concise way to, you know, to say exactly what it is that we're doing today. But basically, OK, you guys know that I coach, I consult, I train, and lots of times I'm talking to business owners while I'm talking to sales people and they feel like, oh, what this deal is a is a sure thing. Sure, banker like this one will close and I ask why and they say I know when I was talking to the guy the way he was responding,

you know, I say like this, they say like this, we are laughing, we are vibing. Or when I was talking to her the way she was talking, you know as in the vibe. The you understand some people just feel as if the vibe is cool. Therefore this deal will close. Unfortunately, that is not the case now because of the nature of businesses that some of you are involved in. It would take a while before this thing clicks. But I started off in the event space, weddings in particular,

and this thing used to happen to us a lot all the time. You meet a bride at the bridal show. You guys are hitting it off cool. You are laughing, you're joking. You're like, oh man is the correct babe. You know, you feel as if this one is a done deal. She calls you for the meeting. You show up to our house. Our parents love you, you know, the the bride to be loves you. Everybody's feeling you. They will offer you breakfast.

They give you some wine, you know, you relax, you have breakfast, you know, you have omelets and sausage and just gisting, you're feeling as if everything is cool. This one has happened to me before. I'm serious. That's happened to me before. We had omelets, sausages, eggs. What again do we have? We have some wine, you know, in the hotel was Mumsy that paid. That's the old mumsy. I pay for everything. Then when the time came home,

I'm sorry we've gone with somebody else. I was like how after all this time that we spent together, how I was now feeling like a jutted lover. Like like all of us are cool now. Like we're on a first name basis. You know, me, my family, I know all of you like one of the first name basis. Like how so when you're in service industry, like events, you learn quickly there's not everybody that is shining teeth with you that this deal is a correct deal, that this deal is going to close.

So it's something that we wedding photographers, wedding videographers, those of you who do catering for weddings, those of you who do cakes, you know, things like that. You learn very quickly there's not everybody that smiles with you that's going to end up giving you money. So if these subjective ways of figuring out how a deal is going, subjective just means, you know, on a personal level, like how I'm feeling you, how now they feel me, like what's the vibe?

All that is subjective. If all these subjective things cannot let us know how is the deal going, then are there any other tools we can use? The answer is yes, there are objective. Objective means doesn't depend on me, doesn't depend on you. We have to ask ourselves the question. We either know the answer or we don't. If we know the answer, we know whether we're leaning positive or negative or neutral, but either way, there are questions that we can ask.

So today I want us to look at the objective questions that will help you determine whether this conversation is a sweet deal or not because believe me, it happens all the time. Like for the crew, then I'm training in solar is one of the guys was very happy and I said, what's up now You're really vibrating today like you're on a high note. What's going on? He said I'm talking to somebody more. This is going to close. I said it's going to close.

Fill me in. I said no problem. I called the guy. Guy is baiting Bouchy. We're talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. The deal might close at so million, but to be honest, even if we manage and collect 11, you'll still be OK. You know, based on logistics and this and this and this. The guys say, you know, you do power payment 80%, blah, blah, blah. And you know, when I was talking like this or saying this, the way that we are flowing, the guy sounds educated in this sort of thing.

Sounds like he has done his research. Like forget this thing is a done deal. Congress, Congress. It's always nice when you have a good call. He said thank you, Sir, it's OK, But you know what, let me ask you some more questions. So I fire a shoot. I said OK, so budget, did you guys discuss money expectations? He said of course. Now, now the guy said he's willing to drop 80% and I'm thinking maybe if this thing comes in at 11,000,000 will be OK, even though what I proposed to him was, you know, XYZ

million. I said, did you ask him if the budget was OK? He said no Sir. I said did you get feedback on the budget? He said no, Sir. I said in that case, we can't really say that we know anything about the budget. The framework I'm using, by the way, now is band. Band is BANT. It's a qualification. And what's it called? Again? Qualification and discovery is a qualification and discovery framework. These are frameworks that you use to be able to figure out if you have the key elements, the key ingredients in closing a sale.

They also do things that guide you so that you know the important questions that you ask somebody during the sales process. Because if you don't ask these key things, if you don't put your mind and put their mind on these key things, then most likely you do not have the sale And for band as a qualification framework that is budget authority, need and then timelines. So budget now, that's why you have all these money conversations.

Did you explicitly have the money conversation? No, somebody saying he's willing to do part payment of 80%, I mean, that's good. But The thing is, you know, you need to ask. So like in my own case, if somebody says that we need to do part payment, we have been throwing around some numbers. The low figure is 11, the high figure is 13. As they're on the phone, I'm using my calculator and doing some small math so that at the end of the day, I want to be able to ask together.

OK, Sir, I like the way the conversation is flowing. You say that you're willing to do a part payment. So does this mean Sir, that if all the technical specs, if all the technical specs are correct, you would be going, you'd be willing to go ahead on this project to the tune of either 8 million or 10 million? You'll be able to make that as a deposit. I will ask upfront and hear him say nay, yes or hear him say no. It is only when I have gained feedback on the budget that I

will now know whether we are good to go because somebody will say no. When I said part payment of 80%, what I meant was part payment of 80% is realistic is doable. It's not as if I have that kind of money and I'm ready to drop it. You see, there's something in business or in sales that people call happy years. Happy years just means we hear what we want to hear. So you need to know and this one reason why we have to ask questions a lot because a lot of times we're hearing what we want to hear.

That couple that dealt with me, they did me as if I'm a jilted lover. I was here what I wanted to hear. The fact that people invite you into your home, the fact that they give you wine, the fact that they give you eggs and bacon and sausage, the fact that they are paid up, the fact that they're asking after your children by name does not mean this deal is going to close. And the fact that the bride's parents have, you know, putting you on a first name basis does not mean this thing is going to close.

You ask in that case, I didn't ask them anything. I went, I made the proposal. I showed them my samples. They said we'll think about it. They said the quality of my work was wonderful. I gain, I didn't ask feedback on nothing. I didn't ask feedback on nothing. I saw when I did my follow up to say, oh, it's been a while. I've heard from you say, oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you, we've got for somebody else. I thoroughly mismanaged the sales process.

And that is why I had that feeling of a young man who calls his girlfriend and then she's in the arms of another man. She was never yours to begin with, my guy. You just didn't know. So that's the situation that I found myself in. And lots of us, we find ourselves in our situation in business a lot. But we need to ask budget. We need to get feedback on the budget. Based on what we've discussed, based on these samples we've seen, based on the technical aspects that we're discussing,

it could cost anything between 11,000,000 to 8 million to source this sort of thing. How far what do you think about that? Is that a reasonable budget? Is that something you're willing to pay? Is that something you're willing to invest? How does that match up with your budget? And then hear what they have to say. Don't assume the fact that the guy is still laughing with you. Maybe he's just being polite. He wants to say no, he just don't know how.

Especially since, you know, you seem to be a correct guy, you seem to be a correct girl, and he will vibing real well. So gain feedback on the budget, gain some clarity on the budget. Ask some direct questions on money expectations. Is this more than you're willing to pay? Is this the kind of figure you had in mind when you reached out? How does this relate to the other quotes that you have? See there are 1,000,000 and one ways of asking these sorts of things.

But The thing is sit down with your GPT and come up with sorry 1 moment. OK, sorry about that. One of my kids is just walked in. You know I left my door open while I was making the recording. Where was I? So I was saying sit down with your GPT, sit down with Google Gemini, sit down whatever it is you like and try and brainstorm the possible ways that you can have money conversations that you can have budget conversations that you can discuss.

You know, the range, the budget range ranges that people have in mind, you know, before talking to you. So budget in this case. Now the customer that the that this solar sales Rep was talking to you about she for budget. Did we gain clarification? No, we didn't. So budget well, we know that you guys had part payment 80% no problem. We know that we mentioned 11,000,000. We know that you mentioned 13 million. You know we didn't get any feedback.

What's your budget? Let's write that down. Next thing is authority. Authority now in month means we have to get close to the person who is willing and able and capable to make the decision because lots of times lots of us are talking to people who have no authority. Again, that is something that you learn very quickly when you're in the event space like I was, because sometimes somebody will call you and she'll be very friendly and you people will talk and you talk for 45 minutes and you feel as if this deal is going somewhere.

After three weeks, you will now discover that she's the sister of the bride, that she's the younger sister of the bride. It is there that the story will now start taking a nasty turn because in the event space, we all know that the younger sister of the bride, even if she likes you, she can't force her big sister to use you. She can't. It's not her own wedding. This is how we use whoever it is that she wants to. So in the wedding space, we learned very quickly for those of us who deal with things on the bright side, that if you're not talking to the bride direct,

chances are you might be wasting your time. So the cousin of the bride, the sister of the bride, the you know, there are some cases where people can pull rank. Like if I'm talking to the parents of the bride direct, Oh yes, no problem. Because after all, they're the ones who will pay. So yes, the parents of the bride, they can pull rank. Although I didn't like those situations because there are some, those one situation in particular where the parents,

they liked me, but the bride, she hated me. I said Wahala when I showed up that day, the Brad, she just squeezed her face because she wanted one celebrity photographer but the parents picked me. MENA. Brad was angry. I said hey, you don't help anyway, what was I so authority? We have to be talking to the person who is willing, who is able, who is capable to make the buying decision to initiate the transaction. So in this case, the person that they were talking to in Bauchi,

it's a business. What they want to do is they want to charge, create a charging station for phones, laptops, you know, all these sorts of things. So I asked the salespersons, OK, cool, no problem. On authority, what information did we find out? Do we find out whether he's doing this business in partnership with other people or? No, I didn't ask. It's nice to ask this sort of thing. I mean, if it's a business, there's a way you can stylishly ask to figure out whether he's in this, you know, alone or not.

Because OK, let's let's put it this way. You can't be talking with the person. You say, ah, now boss, this sounds like a very wonderful idea, but your business partners, I hope they're on board with all this. The person says, oh, no, I don't have business partners. I'm a sole owner of this business. Now you know that in this case there is no other person you need to talk to so you can see that they're stylish. Where you ask, you don't ask him.

Are you the one who is going to make the decision? I know that's too direct. You, you, you will, you will insult somebody. So like in this case, what is your, what do your business partners think or you and the members of the board? Is everybody in agreement? It is then you now know for sure now, Oh yes, I have a board, but the board does not make these sorts of decisions. These sorts of decisions fall within my own purview.

So we're fine. We're good to go. So authority, what do we know? Nothing, by the way. See, I'm not trying to bust the guys bubble. Oh, I'm not trying to humiliate the guy to say this is not a deal. I'm just trying to let him know. And I'm just trying to let you know that is not every single sweet conversation where people are shining teeth with you guys. A is is a is a done deal. So continue to be sweet and cool people.

I continue to shine teeth is all good. In my own case, they invited me to give me wine. They gave me sausage, they gave me bacon, you know, eat the bacon. But then we focus ask the questions that you need to ask about budget, about authority, about need, about timeline. Then I said OK, need, what do we know? So authority, we don't know anything. So need what do we know now? Well, don't want to use it to power the place where they're going to be charging phone,

charging laptop, you know, all these sorts of things. That's OK, No problem. Yeah, that's a need. But did we go deeper? Have they tried solving this problem before? Is it that they're using NEPA to do this thing now, but NEPA is messing them up, so that's the reason why they want to invest in solar? Or is it that they've been doing Napa plus Gen. but NEPA plus Gen. the cost is too high, so maybe that's why they're thinking of solar.

I don't know. Well, you need to ask these kinds of questions because it gives us a sign as to how serious this person is that we are having a conversation with. Because sometimes some people are just curious. They might be doing this business and they're doing it with NEPA Plus Generator. And with NEPA Plus Generator, their profit margins are fine and maybe they're doing 800 K 1.2 every single month. And so they're doing OK.

It's just that, you know, the business partner said go and do some research. So I'm just calling to do some research. It will be nice to know that the person you're talking to is just doing research. It's not as if he has a problem that he's trying to solve. If that's the case, you will continue to reduce with the person on a research level. No need for trial close, no need for strong closing tactics is a simple matter of OK, sure, no problem.

Let me learn some more about your business. Here are the figures that you need. You know, can I be in touch, you know, in case things change in the future, Can I add you to my e-mail list? You know, once in a while you call the guy what's up? How's business doing? So maybe we hear that the National Grid has collapsed or something like that, You know, because our National Grid in Nigeria is always collapsing. When National Grid collapses,

you call the guy again, what's up? How you did? How's business this National Grid? Obviously no to only thing no to has you guys over there about you, you know, you have the conversation and laugh about it. Maybe that's the way you now stylishly used to bring this thing up again. Now come you know what national greed is collapsing at this rate 6 times every year. Are you sure, even though you are just curious, I sure you should not just consider this in seriously.

Let me put together a proposal. Let's see what we can do for you know. So that's how you entered the conversation again. But at least you know that the person who's doing research, this is not somebody they're going to be following up, you know, close marking like that. But ask these questions. So need, what do you know about their need? No, we don't know much. And then timeline. Timeline means we need to get a sense, excuse me, of when these people are willing to make a decision.

How ready are they to make a decision? Yeah, that's that's it. Basically, one way of figuring out is just to ask, like me, I always start with, you know why now? So how come you guys are looking at this now? That is when people will say, oh, the reason why I'm looking at this now is because of XYZ and this and this and that. So because of that, this is the kind of thing that I want to make sure we finish before November of 2025.

In that case, in my head, I now have a rough date, November ish. It gives me a sense of whether these people are serious and how to continue to pursue them. So I say timeline. What's the timeline? I don't know. Now, I don't think it's sunk in with this guy, but I hope it's sinking in for you that it's possible for you to have a sweet conversation with somebody. You will are laughing at shining teeth by the end of the day.

Budget, you know nothing or you have confirmed nothing. Authority decision maker, you have confirmed nothing. Need you have confirmed nothing. Timeline, you have confirmed nothing. In that case, I can't say it is a good deal. I can't say it is a bad deal. But I can say that there are lots of things we need to confirm before we even know whether this thing is actually sweet or not because it's not by the level of shining teeth.

So like I said. Some of you may because of nature of your business, you understand what it is I'm saying. But if you know somebody who has been in the event space, especially weddings, one ask them. They will be able to relate to you and tell you that what I'm saying is true. There are some people that you will assume like ah man, like we're now best friends. You now find that they gave the job to somebody else. So it's not that the customer is confused, it's not that they are deceitful, it's not that they are liars is that you didn't do your homework, you didn't ask the right questions.

So that's one example of a qualification framework. But budget authority need timeline. I've made lots of episodes about it before. So when you're done listening to this episode, Scroll down. We have over 1200 episodes. Just be looking for anything that has BANT in it or qualification in it or discovery or qualification and discovery. Some of the older episodes, I haven't called it conversation framework. So anything that has conversation, you know, you have some more details.

So that's one. So you can see that there are ways that we can objectively know whether we have a good deal or not. But please do not be deceived. It's not according to the level of how somebody is smiling with you, because if that is how you judge all these things, you will find yourself getting heartbroken plenty of times during the year. If bad, sounds too complicated. Brian Tracy used to talk about want, need and afford.

That is one of the simple qualification frameworks that he recommended in his older, older stuff. Do these people want this thing? Do they need it? Can they afford it? And then some people like to throw in urgency. Is there a sense of urgency? So let's look at it. Want, need, afford an urgency. So back to this case in Bauchi. What do they want? This is what they said they want. Why do they want it? We don't really know.

So can we say that there's a want? Well, on the face of it, that's what they said. But how sure are we? We don't know. Is there a need? Well, this is what they said, but how sure are we? We don't know. So you can see that want I need is sketchy. Even though they were laughing and we're talking and wash shining teeth. Want I need is sketchy. I'm not sure. OK, afford. And the guy said he's willing to do part payment 80%.

But did we clarify? Did we confirm? No, we didn't confirm. OK, but so that I won't sound like I'm a bad guy, let's just say afford. Yes, no problem. Afford. Let's say we have confirmed it. Urgency, when are they willing to take action? Is there any sense of urgency When, when do you think this thing is likely to close? We don't know. So you can see that in this case, want need afford urgency. Want we are not sure. Need, we are not sure afford.

OK, well, sure. Urgency, we have no idea. So you can see that when you start using objective criteria, you now start getting a sense of whether this is actually a good deal or what else do I need to confirm next time I'm talking with this guy to know if this is a good deal. So qualification frameworks, there are plenty. Take your chart GPT, go and do some research on qualification and discovery frameworks. Or go and check YouTube, lots of videos on qualification and discovery frameworks.

But either way, do not judge how good a deal is based on the level of how you guys are shining teeth or in my own case, whether they offer you wine and whether they offer you breakfast. So that's it. And that's all for today. Remember, if you'd love to connect then you can call SMS or WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Thanks for your time and attention. I will catch you next time. Same place in your headphones or in your speakers.