Unlocking Growth: Strategies for Interior Designers and Space Managers

Hello and welcome to the show. Today we're going to be looking at strategies for interior designers and space managers. And before I continue, apologies for the background noise because this is also another one of those late night recordings. So the reason why we're going to be looking at interior designers and space managers now is because I had a potential client, let's call him ABC Decor. Now ABC Decor obviously was into the interior decor business in Abuja, Nigeria and also space management for other businesses.

Now the conversations that I had with ABC Decor didn't things didn't progress between both of us. But looking back at some of the material that I have from 2024, I think that this is good material to explore, looking at how good business and good sales practices that would have helped ABC the core to do better. Let's see how we can run with some of these ideas for people in similar circumstances. So that's the reason why I we are going to tackle this question right now or the series of questions.

Now. This is not going to be one of those. It's not going to be something that we're going to be able to tackle in one episode. So this is going to be a series that we used to wrap up the year 2024. So some of the questions I would have liked us to answer, how we had work together would have been who should have been the ICP, that's the ideal customer profile, the person that ABC Decor should have been running after. Because like I keep saying here on the podcast time and time again, it's one of the central questions that we have to answer.

Because if we don't decide who it is that we're chasing after from the girl go, then we're going to spend a lot of time, we're going to waste a lot of money, We're going to waste a lot of attention running after people that we have no business chasing in the 1st place. So we have to be absolutely clear about who it is that we're running after. You know, it's the same thing if we're talking about personal relationships, for instance.

That's for those of you who want to get married or be in a significant relationship. You have to start off by asking yourself who's my ideal guy, who's my ideal girl? And then start going after that instead of thinking, well, anybody will do, so I might as well chase everybody. We're going to waste a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of brain space, hard space, running after people that you didn't have to be chasing in the first place.

Then also would have liked us to look at prospecting ideas that ABC Decor could have tried out in his business. Then I'd also like us to look at channel strategies that he could have tried out. Now, the whole thing about channel strategies basically is just looking at possible collaborators that you can use to grow your business. Now, the reason why I wanted that to be one of the questions that we'll tackle for ABC Decor was because his prospecting was mostly one-on-one.

And by the way, prospecting just means who might be interested in my product or my service, where do they hang out? How do I start conversations with them and then the practices that you use to start those conversations. So of course, ABC Decor had been prospecting one-on-one, but I figured that the channel strategy is something that could have worked out in Abuja just because, you know, driving around Wuxetu, you see lots of all those places, you know, what are they called?

You know, like departmental stores, but they only sell furniture or they only sell curtains or, you know, property development outfits and, you know, different places like that in Abuja. So I figured that it could have been a good strategy to explore. And then also I would have wanted us to explore the kind of sales objections that he would have faced with potential clients and also with channel partners. Now an objection is just a reason that somebody gives for not wanting to go ahead with the relationship or go ahead with the transaction or go ahead with whatever.

So channel partners, if we decided to use channel partners as part of the strategy and was going to go and talk to, let me see what these people called. There's this shop in Abuja called for you. Now for you is one of these Lebanese, I think it's a Lebanese outfit and it's right next to another business that sells furniture. I can't remember that business's name anyway, but you Abuja people, you know the business I'm talking about.

So let's say he decided to get into business with those people as channel partners and they said, look, we don't work with Nigerian distributors or whatever. You know, that is an objection or yes, that's an objection, a reason for not wanting to go ahead with this proposal. Go ahead with this agenda, go ahead with this idea. Although when faced with potential clients, that's retail people, one-on-one people, you know, like me, Let's say if I

approach him as a client to say ABC Decor senior stuff on Instagram, how much would it be for you to come and hook up my house? And then he gives the price, You know, he says like 5 M and then I'm like, oh, you're too expensive. That is also an objection. So two different kinds of objections, two different kinds of contexts. One, you're dealing with a potential client, retail client and then the person says you're too expensive.

That's an objection. The reason that I'm giving for not going ahead for both of us not working together is because you are too expensive. And then for channel partners, if they said, OK, look ABC, the core, your stuff is all right, but we do not work with Nigerian resellers, Nigerian distributors, Nigerian, whatever, you know for XYZ reasons, that is also an objection. So those are the things that I wanted, I would have loved to tackle if we had gone ahead working with ABC Decor.

So once again, the main questions, who is the ICP? Who is the ideal customer profile? Who is the ideal customer? Who is the customer avatar? Who is the best customer? Who is the target customer? Who is the whatever time it is that you want to call it? Because we need to know who it is that we're chasing from the gecko. So we don't waste time, we don't waste money, we don't waste attention running after people that will end up, you know,

messing up our business or messing up our mojo. Because sometimes you collect good money from people, but then they mess up your mojo, you know, they mess up your mental mindspace and all that. And, you know, messes with your motivation and the ability to do business every single day. If I have some horror stories about that. So, you know, I'll share some more of that as we go into details in the podcast. So that's the first question.

Who's their deal customer? Who are we chasing? Who are we pursuing then #2 what prospecting ideas should we try out? Number three, channel strategy, you guys, some of you ought to consider it. Coming into business as a wedding photographer is definitely one of the strategies that I explored. In fact, it was an obvious strategy because that's what we were doing back then. We young photographers in Abuja and even those of us who were in Lagos back then, it's something that we, we were all doing anyway.

So look, you're new in the business, who is a wedding planner that you can partner with, you know, blah, blah, blah, that sort of thing. Or wedding event hall. Tried the event hall thing, didn't work too well. But anyway, that's the beauty about sales. I mean, you come up with an idea, you try it. If it works, you keep on doing it. If it doesn't work, you stop. Or you, what's that word? Reiterate, make it better, take feedback, make it better.

Then the final question, what are the sales objections that people will give you? What are the reasons that people are going to give you for not wanting to go ahead doing business with you? So those are the questions that I wanted us to tackle with ABC Decor. Again, not the real business name, just using it because I don't have the fellows permission to talk about these things publicly. So if you'd love to connect and explore opportunities with me then call me or message me.

The phone number is 08064662140. Also connect with me on LinkedIn. The name to look for is Establishing my AEDE. Now, when we go into details in the episode, just remember that the answers that we're going to give or the answers that we're going to explore, the opportunities that we're going to explore are going to be rough answers to the question. Not necessarily the best answer. It's just the most probable or the most likely answers that were based that are based on who it is that I'm talking to.

In other words, the suggestions that I'm going to come up with are suggestions that seem to make sense for that chap for ABC Decor, but you could be in his business or a different business and the suggestions will be different. The course of action will be different because you are different. The way you want to build the business is different, your preferences are different and your ambitions are different. So these are the things that determine the option, the options.

So when I start exploring particular things here, just bear in mind throughout the series that I'm not saying this is the best way to go about it. For instance, when it came to ideal customer profile for ABC, the Core, we narrowed it down to businesses and individuals. Of course, that's not narrow, that's customer segments. That's broad. And of course, we've already done a podcast episode about trying to select your ideal customer profile and how you can break things down into segments before you now break things down into specific customer profiles.

So we broke it down. It could be dealing with other businesses as clients, or he could be dealing with individuals, you know, people like you and me who say, look, come and hook up my house or come and hook up my office. Then for businesses, we looked at corporate offices and then we looked at hotels. When we say corporate offices, you know, I'm thinking, yeah, the same place I call all the time, Zenith Bank, Zenith Bank,

Access Bank, you know, those sorts of places. Corporate offices. Of course, it doesn't have to be a bank. I'm just, you know, for some reason that just comes to mind whenever I'm thinking corporate. So corporate offices and then hotels. In fact, that's How I Met this fellow. ABC Decor was back from my photography days when he used to work with someone in the short stay space. By the way, short stay is not the same as short time.

You know, short stay is nice and classy. Short time is something else altogether. So where was I? So, yeah, so that's How I Met this individual. And we got talking again later on when I was in business consultancy And when we first met, that was the sort of thing that he and his employer used to do. They used to hook up hotels and short stay spaces. So, you know, go and do the designs for the hotels. Then, of course, we looked at individuals, home owners.

That's people like you and me. OK, well, no home owners. Well, because I'm a renter, OK? Yeah, that was true. Homeowners, because people who rent typically are not going to lavish a huge amount of money when it comes to doing your styling and interior decor. Then real estate developers and then property managers. So that's how we broke it down. But like I said, this was based on the conversation that I had with him, what his own personal appetites were, the kind of business he's trying to grow and his own preferences.

So I could be having this conversation with you. You're also into the decor space, but then you might decide to just flashy individuals all together. You know, as in home owners, real estate developers, we're going to hook you up with people who are home owners, things like that. You might decide to skip that all together and just focus entirely on corporate. So it all depends. So there's no best answer here, there's no correct answer here,

there's only the most expedient answer or the most appropriate answer based on who you are, your context, your industry, your preferences, your ambitions. Then some of the prospecting ideas that I would have loved for us to explore with ABC The Core would have included networking events. Let's see, because in Abuja, there are conferences, real estate Expos, you know, blah, blah, blah, things like that. I can help you connect with potential clients and also partners.

You know, since we're looking at a channel strategy, that is where real estate developers and property managers come in because, OK, wait, let me take a step back. When we say channel strategy, this is what we mean. When you're for most people, when you get into a business, you'll find that your potential customer or client has to do use a bunch of services or products before they get to you. And sometimes they have to use some products or services when they leave you.

The channel strategy just means you hook up with people who are in those ancillary businesses, those related businesses to your left and to your right so that you guys can be sending customers back and forth. So back to the wedding photography thing, because I told you that that was the first time I gave the channel strategy a shot. So your wedding photographer, you end up doing business with brides and grooms. If you partner with a wedding planner, wedding planners also do business with brides and grooms.

So you guys can now be referring business back and then forth. Now as a wedding photographer, when people hook up with you after that, they're typically looking for somebody who does wedding video. So you see how that works. To your right, Abby, to your left, you have the wedding planner. People sometimes hook up with a wedding planner. First you, the photographer, you're in the middle and then to the right hand side there's the wedding video person.

And then so if you have agreements, you have relationships, you have, you know, an understanding with wedding planners and with wedding videographers, you guys can refer clients back and forth. So that is just what the channel strategy means. You guys are typically going after the same sort of customers. Why not send business to each other before customers do business with you? They're going to talk to some people. Why not partner up with those people?

After customers do business with you, they are going to end up buying some products or some services. You might as well partner with those other people. So, OK, OK, let me see. OK. I think in the last couple of episodes I spoke about my experiences with the builders market here in Abuja, the builders market in Gudu, that's in Apple, in Gherki. OK, that's a good one. So when I went to buy the roofing materials that we needed to sort out Mumsy's house, we needed people, a crew from Abuja who would be willing to work in Makudi.

Of course we're looking for good rates, but we're looking for expertise because rightly or wrongly, there is this feeling that anyway, for some reason we just felt like markedly people can do the job. But we probably would be able to get better or I say better talent if we came to a much more cosmopolitan area like getting a crew from Abuja or maybe getting a crew from, you know, like a Noogu around that side. So that was the thinking I'm at the time.

So of course it made sense for us to get the referral for the crew through the people who sold us the roofing panels, especially since that was part of the warranty package. Like, look, we're selling you these roofing sheets, here comes the XYZ years number of warranty. And if you use this crew, yeah, we know them, we know how they work. We're willing to honour this warranty and honour this guarantee, especially if you go through these crews.

So you see how a channel strategy works. So as a roofer, you're partnering up with people who sell roofing panels. That's just an example. Where was I? So that was some of the prospecting ideas that we're looking at now using. OK, I was just explaining channel, the channel strategy. How did I come to channel strategy? Yeah, I was talking about networking, that if you attend industry events, that's if you're into decor, like ABC

Decor, and you're attending networking events, that gives you an opportunity to connect with not just potential customers, but also people who can become channel partners later on. Then we also looked at referrals. I always like people to key into referrals because a lot of people that end up talking to have been in business for a couple of years anyway. So The thing is, they've already run a few things. They already know a few people who are already happy.

You've done business, you know, like so 510 clients. It's not a bad way to go back and say, look, I appreciate the business that we did together. I hope you're still happy. Thank you very much for supporting the business. I'd really appreciate it if you could give me names and numbers of anybody in your situation who's looking to get this, this, this and that and that so we can take care of them as well. So that's how you set up that whole referral game pretty much.

Then I also want to look at with ABC the core would have looked at social media marketing because for him and his previous boss, the really big into the whole social media thing, specifically Instagram and Facebook. Well, obviously you guys know about my love hate relationship with Facebook. I mean, never could crack it for business purposes and they've tried to hack me like 3 times this month. Someone who shut down the whole thing anyway.

But yeah, social media marketing, something would have looked at for ABC Decor, Instagram, Facebook, that's what they used primarily. We might have explored the question, you know, any other place. LinkedIn perhaps then also would have looked at the content marketing strategy that's just around creating valuable content that your potential customers might find interesting. So blog posts, podcasts, articles, videos, whatever it is that you put out on the on the Internet that is supposed to get you organic traffic.

That's people just organically looking at your stuff. When we say organic, we mean not paid. So the way that you promote your content on social media is twofold. There's organic and then there's paid traffic. Paid traffic is when you're advertising. That's when you tell Zuckerberg, look, Zuckerberg, I'm going to pay you XYZ and, and I want you to guarantee that you're going to show this particular post to 5000 people living in Abuja between the ages of 18 and 25.

So that is advertising that is paid. Then organic is just you create the thing, you put it up on Facebook and you know, it is what it is. If people like it, they like it. If they don't like it, they don't like it. You know, we let the algorithm determine and we let whether people's taste and people's likes determine whether the thing will reach a wider audience or not. So for content marketing, yeah, that's it. We're thinking, is it going to be organic?

Sorry, content marketing is organic by definition. But then my own, what I like to advise people to do is based on what works well organically. That is what you can now use to inform the kind of advertising that you're going to do on the platform. So don't just start off saying we're going to create video content and start boosting the video or advertising to the video. I mean, run organic first. You might be surprised that even though it looks like video is working well, you might be surprised that for your particular business or for the kind of content you produce, it actually is your photographs,

your stills that are getting a lot of organic content. Now you now know that OK, for your business and for your own context, it will make more sense to actually pay money to boost the photographs. Or to create an advertisement that is going to be a photograph or is going to be a still. So that's those are some ideas around content marketing. OK. I'd already spoken about channel strategy. So some of the things that would have wanted us to explore with ABC, the core channel partners.

So architects and other interior designers. I mean, some people are not the fan of that, but you know, it does happen that you have a particular kind of specialty, like one of my guys, Doctor Mike, actually my ophthal, whatever, whatever, what are they called? Ophthal Eye Doctor Shah, you know, people who work with your eyes. So my guy, Doctor Mike, his wife is also in the business, but then she doesn't like handling the call for Northern clients because she says that the Northern aesthetic is too gaudy for her, that Northern has like too much gold and shiny, shiny,

shiny stuff for her. That's too gaudy. It's too is is garish. It's she doesn't think it's it's tasteful. So she has a different sense of aesthetic. The colors are different, more muted designs are not as bold, simple lines, more modern. It's almost like Auk kind of feel the way that that Doctor doctor Mike's wife handles her own stuff. So now if you excuse me, so if you're an interior designer now, like Doctor Mike's wife and you don't like doing the northern the northern thing, you can have partnerships, channel agreements, things hooked up with other designers who like doing that kind of work.

And the agreement is just like, look, every time I have a northerner come through, I will send him to you. And if you have someone who, whether the person is a northerner or not, they seem to like the much more modern UK kind of aesthetic, you send them to me and that's how you guys switch traffic. So actually you can be an interior designer, an interior decor person, and have as your channel partners another interior designer or another interior decor person.

So don't just say because I'm a fashion designer, I can't partner with other fashion designers. It can work so long as both of you are not doing the same thing. So as a fashion designer, if you're designing for young girls between the ages of 12 to 18, because there's one of wifey's colleagues who has, I think he has five daughters and, and a son. And the girls, you know, secondary school, they do prom. Oh, by the way, I didn't know that prom is not a thing in Niger, but apparently it is.

So they go and get their prom dresses made and you don't have to buy them. You'd have to ship in your prom dresses from from Obudu. You don't have to buy from UK or America because there are designers that make prom dresses here in Nigeria. Well, in Abuja, there are people that make them. I don't know about Lagos or the East. Well, that's your promising thing in the East. I'll be surprised if in my place in Benoit State, in in, you know, Benoit State and environs,

Benway, Tarraba, Nasawa, you know, I'll be surprised if prom is a thing, you know, these days you never know. So, yeah, if you're a fashion person and that is what you do 12 to 18 designing prom dresses, because these prom dresses are really expensive and it's a unique market because essentially the, you know, your customer is buying something that the baby's only going to wear once because it's not, you can't take your prom dress and then wear to church.

So any interesting market, interesting times, interesting trends going on in Niger. So if that's your market, 12 to 18 prom dresses, you can't do channel referral, partner with another person who is also doing dresses of young girls 12 to 18. So if you're a prom person 12 to 18, you can partner with someone who does female dresses aged let's say 45 to 60 because maybe, OK, no, 45 to 60, that's too old, maybe 35 to 50.

Because maybe that is the kind of person a woman who is aged 35 to 50 is the kind of person who might have a daughter that is aged 12 to 18 and is going to do prom. So that's how you guys can be switching business back and forth. Anybody who is older than that comes to you, you send it to your friend because your friend is the one who does women age 25 to 50. If there's anything less than that, your friend will send it to you then.

So for ABC to call would have looked at architects, interior designers, real estate agents, construction companies, furniture and lighting suppliers because we have loads of them in Abuja, especially Wusso to if you're just driving through, especially at night, I mean they have beautiful showrooms. They just light up the whole place when I see them. I think that these guys must spend their fortune on Nepal bills because it's just different kind of bulbs,

different kind of chandeliers, different kind of light stands as an exquisite stuff. Like I can't wait to make some good money so I can have nice well lit house with all those fancy, fancy stuff, especially when the children are grown because now that there are Rugrats running all over the place, even if I had the money and I put those things in the house, that's how today, now crash. You break the chandelier, you break this one, you break that one.

What can you do? Just look at them and you shout, but you can't kill them. Where was I So furniture and lighting suppliers then also would have considered collaboration ideas where you can do joint marketing campaigns with different partners, what they can do cross promotions by offering joint promos or do Co branded events. Let's see what else. So those are the things honestly across ABC Decor pretty much and with potential sales objections that he would have faced in the business.

Well, the usual budget constraints when people say, look, you're too expensive, that one who will always be there, especially in this business, interior decor business. Because look, let me be honest, for me, I've never even considered the prospects of an interior decor person because every single time we're moving. So excuse me, how much time the quote. So every single time we're moving like we're going to have to move soon.

Well, we just as soon as we get into 2025 in January. For me, wifey is the decor person. So I just leave it up to her. What are we painting? What are we painting? What's the new curtain going to look like? Do we have to replace the chairs? What kind of new chairs, you know? And so far, her sense of aesthetics has not failed. It always looks nice and it comes together quite good, looks real cohesive, ties together in a very nice, stylish way.

So for me, I've never considered an interior decor person. So I'm sure that interior decor people, they get to hear that all the time, like you're too expensive. Because I'm sure the guy will be thinking, what, why the hell will I be paying you? You know, 3M or 5M or 10M when I can just give the assignment to wifey and you know, wifey will sort out the whole thing. And I'm not trying to be sexist, I'm just saying sometimes that's, that's just how it is.

It's rare, Well in my own experience is rare anyway, that you find that the husband is the one who is the more style oriented 1 when it comes to styling the house, matching the paint with the furniture and matching the drapes with the textures and things like that. So and it is what it is. And yeah, so those are the sorts of things I wanted to look at if we ended up working with ABC Decor, just focusing on areas that ABC Decor could have used to improve his business.

So business practice, good sales practice to attract more clients. So like I said, this is a whole lot to talk about. We can exhaust it in one episode. We've already done 28 meeting, I'm sorry, 28 minutes. It's like 29 minutes just doing this intro. So what we're going to do is in the future episodes, we're going to flesh out all of these options that we've discussed. We're going to flesh the man in some details, and then we're going to use this particular question to wrap up.

We're going to use this particular series to wrap up 2024 and then we'll use this to ease ourself into 2025 because at the date of this recording, we're already halfway through December of 2024. Now as we're heading over into new year and of course, wrapping up this year, I'm still looking forward to meeting and getting to know more listeners of the show because it looks like on average, for now, on average, it looks like I'm adding at least 300 new subscribers every single week.

So you guys keep growing and growing and growing. And that's just on Spotify. I don't know how to track the number of subscribers that I'm getting on iTunes or on other platforms. So, you know, people reach out, especially the people that I've been shouting out, but not everybody does. So I'm looking forward to meeting you guys, getting to know more listeners of the show. And then I'm also praying for journey mercies for those of us and those of you who are going to be travelling to Villa because you know, this is the time where there are some people travel home, you know, you finally get annual leave, you stack it into December so you can travel.

And then also for those of us who happen to be Nigerians in Diaspora, you know, people abroad while coming back into Niger for December holidays. I didn't know that that was a thing. But when I did some work with Magnesi, so excuse me, it's my cold. So Magnesi, that's the lady that does bags, custom made leather bags in Abuja. So for her this period actually is a profitable period. And I was surprised, you know, 'cause Nigerians were coming back from diaspora, coming home,

you know, they're actually looking for these sorts of things because you're going to buy the equivalent. The, I don't know why are they called Balenciaga or Ferragamo or whatever. You know, I'm not a bag person, I'm not a fashion person. But you know, you fashion people, you know what's up so you can come in and pick up some of these things at a bargain comparable quality. So she ends up doing good business around this time of the year.

So yes, there are Nigerians who are booking their tickets like, OK, it's halfway through December, let's come home, Dirty December, you know, flex shop, what else? Even medical tourism are surprised because apparently the NHS in the UK, that's and also in Canada, the subsidized government medical services, I mean, it takes forever. In fact, in the UK you have to be dying before a doctor will see you. If you're not dying, we'll just patch you up, give you medicine so it's not an emergency.

Go home, go and wait. When we have vacancy, we'll call you. So there are some people who say, look, you know what, this problem I've been having, let me just come to Nigeria and let me do the surgery. I'm shocked. I never thought I would see the day that people will say I'm based in America. But you know what, for this, my surgery, let me come and do it in Nigeria instead. I never thought I'd, I never thought I'd see that happen.

Where was I? OK, Basically what I'm just trying to say is, you know, my prayers is joining message for everybody, for those of us travelling to Villa, joining mercies for those of you who are in America or wherever. Oh, we have Nigerians in Cuba when I had some medical issues and the doctor I saw in Niger studied in Cuba. So we have a Nigerian community in Cuba. So those of you coming back, you know, America, UK, Cuba, Jordan,

wherever you're coming from, you know, journey message coming in. And it's also my prayer that we're going to round up 2024 real smooth and start off 2025 real strong. So if you're ready to get actionable strategies to grow your business, you can book, excuse me book at no cost audit by calling me or messaging me on 08064662140 or connect with me on LinkedIn. The name to look for is Tavi Shima Aide. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Remember, this is going to be a series we're going to be looking at strategies to help people in the interior design and the core space and space managers. Now the whole idea is using these people as a case study, you should be able to find one or two ideas that you fancy or that you find practical, practical or that you find usable for your own business and will inspire you to take action and do something today to set up yourself nicely so that once we enter 2025, we just pick up and just keep rolling smoothly.

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