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Hello and welcome to the show. Taking today's recording at my desk. So expect the usual interruptions, especially since you know, neighbors are working on his house and all that. Now, if this is your first time of discovering the podcast, don't worry, you're in the right place because the goal of this podcast is business education. So you're in the right place. So by the time we're done, please talk about the show so that Nigerians both home and abroad can benefit from the questions that we tackle.
They can do that by subscribing on Spotify, YouTube, Apple or any player of their choice. And if you in particular, dear listener, you have any sales or marketing questions by the time we're done, bring them to me. You can call, you can SMS, you can WhatsApp on 08064662140. Now today on the show, we're going to look at a question from Anita based in Abuja and she wants connections into the industrial cleaning space. So let me repeat, Anita in Abuja, she wants to know how can I get connections into the industrial cleaning space?
Now, the answer to this question from a traditional sales and business development point of view is called prospecting. Let me repeat, if you're heading into business, you're looking for connections, you're looking for customers, you want to make stakeholders, the activity that you should be involved in is called prospecting. That is PROSPECTING. Prospecting is what we salespeople do traditionally when we try and answer the question, who might be interested in my product or my service?
Where do these people hang out, whether online or in the real world? When I find them, how am I going to initiate conversations with them and how am I going to start up buying relationships or business relationships? So essentially, that is what we have to do. It doesn't matter what business you're involved in. You can be like Anita and you're trying to break into the industrial cleaning space, or maybe you want to start off a wedding photography business, or you want to create an app, or you're an architect and you want to go out and get your first customer.
These are the first set of questions that we all have to have to ask ourselves. So the activity is called prospecting. The questions we should be asking ourselves, preferably with a pen and paper, we should be writing things down or typing things into our phone so that we don't forget. Because the problem with trying to do sales by just running things on your head is that you come up with some good ideas today. By the time you sleep and wake up, you've forgotten everything or you come up with some cool ideas.
By the time you have with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, or you have some issues with the kids or you attend PTA meeting, you come back, you eat ever, you sleep, you wake up, you've forgotten everything. So it's nice to have a pen and paper somewhere or some notes on your phone. Whereas you're getting one or two ideas, you just be jotting everything down. So remember the questions we should be asking ourselves who might be interested in our product or service.
At this case, at this stage, don't try to be fancy, just boil down, right, every conceivable person who you think might be interested in your product or your service. Because from there, you will now start trying to figure out, OK, where do these people like on a normal, normal, where can I find these people, whether online or in the real life? And then we'll now start coming up with a plan for how to start conversations with these people,
business conversations with these people so we can get into buying relationships with these people. So let's flesh things out now using Anita's context. So Anita, he said she wants to get into industrial cleaning. Now, First off, let's define industrial cleaning so that everybody will be following along. You understand where we're heading to. So industrial cleaning now is different from residential cleaning. Now, for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you guys know those days where I say sorry or there'll be some noise,
the house is being cleaned. That is residential cleaning. I pay someone to come to the house to just do you know, normal, normal, sweep, cobwebs, mopping, toilet, what else make the bed wash, gas cooker, you know all those kind of things. That is residential cleaning. Now there are some people who require industrial cleaning. They need cleaning specialists to come in because they have specialised spaces or non residential spaces.
For instance, my sister-in-law, she's a Baker and she teaches at the school where she's the one that teaches them baking and you know, or whatnot. So at the end of the day, she gets the students to clean the kitchen. That's a normal training. Of course, you know that the way the students will clean will not be, you understand, they won't cut everything and those ovens that they use in the kitchens and the cookers and everything are huge.
So of course you know that once in a while bread will fall at the back, milk will fall at the back, this thing will fall at the back, you know, and then grime will build up, oil will build up all these things. So after some time, you need people to come in with a professional touch and just flush everywhere, fumigate everywhere, clean everything. All the crumbs carry everything, all the oil, all the grease, all the, you know, clean everything.
Those people that you call in, those are the ones that you call industrial cleaner. So the person that comes to my house just do carpet, toilets, gas, go car, they can't handle that kind of cleaning. So when people have specialized spaces, these are the people that you call in industrial cleaners in your local market in the abattoir. If I go there and look at abattoir, you see that that place has never been cleaned since the open down market.
Honestly. I mean the last time I went to buy meat I was looking at like like what the hell is going on? I even saw the rats running up and down and you know 1 cat, you know, a couple of lizards and stuff like that. I say hey, see where we buy our meat from. So in places where people have sense that kind of place, once in a while you call in an industrial cleaner to come and do a proper cleaning, hose down the whole place, clean everywhere.
So those are industrial cleaners specialized the clean spaces that have specialized use or non residential use. So people who clean factories, people who clean warehouses, people who clean offices, people who clean power plants and because power plants get very dirty. If you don't believe me and you're one of those people that live in gated communities in Lagos, you know, maybe one day you just take a walk outside your estate.
As you're walking past your peep inside the powerhouse, the amount of engine oil, fuel, grime, grease, everything on the floor, it will shock you. So that kind of cleaning is not, is not somebody like you know me that will come and clean. It is a professional cleaner. Don't come and clean the the power plants, the diesel, the place where you keep the diesel engine and all that. Also large scale cleaning any. So essentially when you say industrial cleaners, that is what you mean And Anita wants to get into the business and to be honest or to be, I became a wedding photographer, one of my clients actually was an industrial cleaner.
I had no idea that this thing is even a business at all in any place of the world. Not to even talk of Nigeria. But yes, there are people who make a comfortable living doing that kind of cleaning because I remember talking to the groom, me and his wife, we got on really well. He was not in Abuja at the time. He was in KD doing some work and then he came in and never got clean. I was like, oh, so Barbara, what do you do?
He said I'm a cleaner. I said it with a straight face. I was like cleaner. I say, I mean industrial cleaning. I was like, oh, OK. Because when he's a cleaner, where my mind went to was, you know, the normal cleaner that we know you'll come sweep, mop, clean toilets, you know, clean gas worker, you know, that kind of thing. Remove cobwebs. So he is an industrial cleaner and their own specialty was post, what is it called?
Post construction cleanup. So if somebody goes and builds an estate, you know you build the whole estate fresh. By the time you finish now cement will be everywhere, paint buckets will be everywhere, nails will be there, asbestos, you know all kinds of things. So you need to call in a professional to come and clean up the whole space. So that's what the groom was into, industrial cleaning, excuse me, but his own era specialty was post industrial cleanup.
And by the way, this is your first time we're listening to the podcast of your opinion. See some of the benefits of listening to these kinds of material Because there are Nigerians who are making a living and I'm making a killing doing all kinds of things that some of us never even found from going school. So it's good they get exposed to these sorts of things. So you see what's going on, you see how people are moving and shaking, you know how people are getting things done.
So not everybody has to do a nine to five. And if you've decided you're not going to do a nine to five, I mean, just by looking and seeing what's in the environment, figuring out what other people are doing, you might also get some ideas about what options are available to you anyway. So that's the special industrial cleaning. It's not an intellectual something, it's not an oyibo something. People are doing it live in Nigeria right now.
People are making a living off of doing it. If you don't believe me, think about it the next time you go into your local Zenith Bank or Access Bank. Who do you think cleans the building? I mean, the building will have office staff that come and clean once in a while, but that annual, you know, spring cleaning will clean everything plus fumigate plus every. I mean, who do you think does that? Industrial cleaners, that's what they do.
So for Anita now how do we tackle it again? OK, yeah, I think we tackled it from like a three or four prong point of view. So First off, the first thing that I recommended to her was networking. You have to do some networking. Then I also touched on some ideas about LinkedIn and social selling. Then we also discuss some ideas around direct outreach. Because that is the kind of thing I would do anyway, because those of you who've been listening to the show for a while, you know that that's my typical way of doing things.
You know, I prefer let me go and see somebody, let me go to somebody's office, let me shake somebody's hand, let me have a physical conversation, you know, after that, collect the person's phone number and then after that you'll be following up with the person. So that's, that's what my own style, direct outreach and then referrals. So that was how that was what I recommended for Anita. That was the three pronged approach.
I'll be 4 prong, I'll be easy 5 Anyway, so that's what we did. So for networking, I recommended to her that she should join the Chamber of Commerce. And the reason why I recommended the Chamber of Commerce for her in particular, while my mind went straight there was because if we're looking at industrial cleaners as people who clean factories or people who clean warehouses or people who clean offices or power plants or large scale buildings, I just thought that is precisely the kind of place where she will find those kind of associations.
I mean, those, those kinds of connections, those kinds of people, those kinds of potential customers, because back when I was based in Lagos and my brother and I were in the export business for our family, those are precisely the kinds of people that we were meeting. So we went in the Chamber of Commerce in Lagos General, but then the Chamber of Commerce Lagos had some small, small subcommittees and then we were in the, what was it trade, I'll be export, export subcommittee or something like that.
And those were the kinds of people that were meeting there, people who had factories because they were exporting, they were producing things to be exported. People who had warehouses so that they will store something as a halfway point before exporting or so that you store something as a halfway point when you are importing the thing. And then people who owned big, big businesses, you know, the whole building, that's their whole office, people who are doing things on a large scale.
So I just remembered based on my experience of being a member of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, the Export Subcommittee or the export, I can't remember what was called back then, export group or export, whatever. I just remember that. Oh, OK, The kind of customers that Anita is looking for, they are in those places. Now you see why part of prospecting begins with us asking the question who might be interested, because by the time you start writing this thing down, OK, I'm looking for people who own factories, people who own and operate warehouses,
people who own and operate large buildings, or people who own and operate power plants. It is then you can now start coming with ideas. Or let me think about this place. What about this place? What about this place? What about that place? So that is why the first question is who might be interested. Get a sheet of paper, pour everything down. Just write, no idea is too big, no idea is too small. Just throw everything out first.
It is when you now see everything, you now know that OK, this one is touch area, this one won't make sense. This one is a big cue. OK, let me be leaving these ones. Let me be deleting these ones. But first of all, just brain dump. Get a sheet of paper, get your phone, just pour everything out and then Step 2 where they will hang out. It is from doing those sorts of things that we now know where to look. If I didn't go through this exercise or thinking where can she find people who might be interested, Chamber of Commerce would have never come to my mind.
So networking, Chamber of Commerce. Then after that I recommended the Cleaning Practitioners Association of Nigeria and that is the CPAN. Now some of you will say she's coming into the business, why are you recommending how to join Association of Cleaners? How would she find business from there? And this is the answer. Well, First off, as a general rule, it's always a good idea that when you come into a business, you hook up with other people who have been doing the business before you.
You learn one or two things. You learn one or two things to do. You learn one or two things not to do. And you might also find one or two good Samaritans there who put you through on one or two things. Don't look at child's competition. They'll just help you aspire. You're new in the field. So as a as a young somebody, as my junior brother, as my junior sister, let me just guide you on one or two things all those kind of things, they really, really help.
But one of the benefits of joining these sorts of associations, in this case, if you're an industrial cleaner, why it might be a good idea to join the Cleaning Practitioners Association of Nigeria is because you're going to get partners for commissioned referrals. Because sometimes some people are doing business and they're doing business very well and they have too many jobs that they cannot fulfill. They need somebody that they can trust to say yo Anita, you're from my village, I regard you as my sister.
I don't want somebody who is still one of my clients. But look, this is a very important client. I have two jobs for this day. I beg go and help me sort this one. By the time you're done, this is how much I will square you. I'll give you 10% or I'll give you this or I'll give you that. People are looking for those kinds of opportunities. People are looking for those kinds of how will I put it? Should I say partners, You know,
business partners, if you can call it that, so that when things are busy, somebody you can trust to say, look, guy, I trust you. You're my very person, I beg Orgasso. So, so and so is one of my main clients, but I cannot be there right now because this is going on or I have another job. I beg, help me take care of this thing. By the time you're done, your own share is 25%. You know, that kind of thing. So that is not a bad place to learn to meet other stakeholders in the profession and then also to possibly get commissioned referrals at the end of the day.
So that's why for networking, I thought of those two Chamber of Commerce and then the CPAN. Some of you ask, how the hell did I find CPAM? I found it on Google. And that's the advantage of Google and ChatGPT and Google Gemini and Claude and all these AI tools. When you're looking for ideas, you can type in, you know, some stuff and you can find one or two things. Because to be honest, I had no idea that the association existed.
I can't remember the exact prompt that I used to find the association, but SHA, from fooling around, I was able to come up with some useful information, which is why I recommend that if you have a smartphone and you're in Nigeria in 2025, let's just say if you use your mobile phone only for Netflix and TikTok, I think you are. I think you're wasting your time. You could do better. These ones are powerful tools, so use them accordingly.
Use it to build your life and use it to develop yourself. So that's all on networking. But of course, you know, the more you think, the more you brainstorm, the more you talk to people, the more you fool around with all these AI tools, you might come up with other and better opportunities for networking then for LinkedIn or social selling as some people call it. First off, you have to create a linking account, optimize your LinkedIn profile.
You have to look good, look sharp, look professional for potential clients when they see you, they look like it looks like you're somebody who knows what's up, not as if you're just a tacharya individual. You know, a cherry wedding as in an anyhow, anyhow kind of person. Then the goal here, OK, well there's also a bit of networking is you also want to start sending connection requests to professionals not just in your industry, but also other target industries.
So if you're a professional cleaner, I think it might help if on your LinkedIn you're following people who are chairman or head of operations or whatever of factories, warehouses and you know, people who have large scale operations, you know, follow people who are head of operations. Let's see what else head of operations apart from head of operations who again, I don't know. Well anyway, but at least definitely you should definitely follow anybody who is head of operations at Target organizations.
So that's on the LinkedIn end. Now direct outreach, like I said, that is the one that I like to do. That is where I start. That is my default. And of course, we also have to start up this process by having a pen and paper. Remember, pen and paper absolutely important because like I said, life happens. You come up with a brilliant idea now, then you want so Gary, and then from there you go and poop. And then by the time you sit down, you can't remember what it is you are thinking about before.
So just get a pen and paper as the ideas are coming. Just be writing because life happens and you forget. So for direct outreach, the approach is the same. We're going to draw up a target list of companies. So let's say you're doing your Anita, you're doing industrial cleaning, you happen to be in Abuja, unless you happen to live in this estate, is it a Batcha estate in zone 5? I'll be zone 5 or zone 4, I can't remember.
You live in that estate and you now think, OK, let me go and do banks so. From that estate, if you stroll small, like 10 minutes, you will get to Zenith Bank. From Zenith Bank, if you push up small, you enter Echo Bank. From Echo Bank, if you walk down small, like 30 minutes, eventually we get to GTB. And then from that GTB, if you stretch like 10 minutes, you enter Access Bank. So if the goal now is direct outreach, direct just means face to face as in I came to come and see you.
This one is direct is not social media, is not e-mail is not WhatsApp is in as in is like is direct. I carried my 2 legs and my car. I drove there and I came to see you. That's what we call direct outreach. So First off, you have to now come up with a do some small research, come up with a target list of companies. So if these banks are going to go and visit someone like Anita, you actually have to sit down and write it.
Zenith Bank zone 4E bank. So, so, so, so Access Bank this as in write everything down. You drop a list. Then you also need to do some thinking because we have to identify the right person that we have to talk to when we go there. You can't just roll up to a bank, enter inside, you say you want to do direct outreach. Then when you enter the bank, you don't know who the hell you're supposed to see. So part of the process also involves thinking.
Sit down and think, when I entered this bank, now who is the right person I'm supposed to be talking to? So I drew up a list of some possible people. OK, one more freestyling. I said head of operations. So head of operations, because some banks have head of operations. Like I met somebody recently who is head of operations for Zenith Bank. I didn't know that they have head of operations because I was always thinking, you know,
branch manager, executive director, you know, that kind of, I didn't know that these are operations. So head of operations for the branch, that might be one person, write it down, facility manager. And that's the one I forgot. Facility manager. Facility manager is the person who makes sure everything is clean, lights are turned off at the right time, security lights go on at the right time, all the video cameras are working, the toilets been cleaned, is the canteen area well taken care of,
you know, all those sorts of things. So facilities manager, so head of operations, facility manager, procurement, you can also speak to procurement because procurement are the people who pay for products and services that the business is going to use. So every single time that Zenni's bank or Access Bank or you know, whichever organization is going to buy something, they want to buy tissue paper or they're going to buy soap or they want to buy staplers or whatever.
And then everything has to go through procurement. Another person you can speak to could be the branch manager. So you see now that sitting down with a list, we've already come up with some names. Head of operations, we'll put it there. Facility manager, we'll put it there. Procurement, we'll put it there. Branch manager, we'll put it there. Now since I am not involved in the business, I cannot tell you exactly who the best person is to go and meet if you're into industrial cleaning, but I would recommend that we always take a multi threaded approach.
Multi threading just means when you're trying to break into any account, you don't just focus on one person. That is the thing that causes stories that touch you. Try and connect with as many people as possible because you don't know which way the deal can click. And apart from that, it is a feature of modern business now that when businesses buy, it is not just one person who makes the decision. So yes, when we were children back in the day, yes, if dog at the top said this is what we're going to do, that's what the whole organization will do.
But things are changing. Decisions are now being increasingly made by consensus. The old guy at the top want to see what a Commission of so, so, so and so things. They also want to see what head of so, so and so things and what this person in this department thinks and then they'll sit down, then they'll come up with a decision. So it helps if in trying to push for your contract, push for your bid, push for your whatever.
You have been talking to 2345 people who are concerned. There's no how you capture everybody. Well, there's a decision making committee and there are five people who are important to make that decision and at least you're in good terms with three of them. It's not a guarantee that the deal will be yours, but you can see how you are taking the steps to make sure that things move in your favor. So when you drop this list now,
those are the people you should be trying to hook up with. I don't know who the best person is, but in my own opinion shall try and party up with them. All facilities manager know who the person is, get their phone number. Procurement, try and get the number of somebody in procurement. If you know the branch manager won't be bad. If you know, operations manager won't be bad, in fact, to be a good idea when you walk into the establishment and you know,
people know who you are, like, hey, Anita, she's coming again. And these are how now how you do, how work, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, good times with everybody. That's the kind of vibe, that's the kind of atmosphere that'll make it easier for you to push forward your deal at the end of the day. And then you also have to come up with a plan for initiating contact with these people. Since we're close to 30 minutes,
I'm not going to go into too many more details. And then another source of business is referrals from existing customers because Anita is not a jam bite in this business. So she has been doing this thing for a while. It's a good source of business to reach out to people you did business with in the past. Hey, what's up? How you day? Hope you like that job shadows. No problem. My staff did not steal anything. We didn't break anything, you know, blah, blah, blah.
If you're happy, I'd appreciate you can make a recommendation, make a referral, you know, blah, blah, blah, help improve my ministry, you know, all that small talk, but I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say. You reach out to previous customers, be sure that everybody's happy, there was no outstanding problems. Then see how you can get referrals or get introductions to other people that might be customers, that could be customers.
Then let me see. Let's see if I made another note for Anita. OK, I think I made a note here about WhatsApp. OK, I made a note here about WhatsApp, but to be honest, I can't remember what I meant when I wrote down this comment on WhatsApp and hopefully I'll remember when I do. Maybe I'll make another podcast, another podcast episode. But anyway, the main thing that I wanted to pass across today basically is this. When you're getting into business new and you're like Anita and you're thinking I need connections, I need patronage, I
need customers. Too many people make the mistake of just freestyling. You wake up on Monday, you begin the freestyle, you wake up on Tuesday, you try on freestyle. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're freestyling. The problem with freestyling is that is not a plan. You're running from pillar to post. You're trying, not some ideas that don't make sense. What you actually need to do is before you hit the ground running on Monday from last week, Friday or Saturday, you need to sit down 1st and engage.
Come up with a plan for prospecting and remember prospecting is where you ask yourself some serious questions or you sit down with your business partner or you sit down with your wife or with your boyfriend or whoever and you ask yourself some questions who might be interested in this product or service. At this stage, don't be picky. Write everybody down you think might be interested. It is when you have written it, you can now look and say Oh no,
this one doesn't make sense. Delete by the beginning. Don't be picky, write everything. The next step will now be all these people have written, where do they hang out? Where do they hang out in the real world? Where do they hang out online? Then you now have to ask yourself, how am I going to initiate conversations with these people to start the buying relationship? So this is the start of the process. You sit down, pencil and paper or get your phone or you're a laptop person, sit down with your laptop, open a Word document and then start typing out this thing.
This planning is absolutely essential, absolutely essential. For those of you who listened to yesterday's podcast where I spoke about the importance of having frameworks to reduce the amount of stress you're going through in your business. You can see that if you front load all these thinking and you plan properly and on Monday you already have a sense of this is what I'm going to see. I'm going to Access Bank. And then from there I will enter Zenith Bank to see how I can do.
I can start selling my industrial cleaning services. You can see that some emotional stress is taking off because Monday morning you already decided two or three days before or one week before what it was that what it was that you're going to do. So please, all these planning, planning stages when it comes to sales, when it comes to marketing, they are very, very, very important. Don't wake up and be freestanding in your business.
All right, So that's just the major thing that I wanted to pass across. So that's all for today, folks. Remember, if you have any sales and marketing questions, you can call, you can SMS, or you can WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you at the next episode.