“The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell; and the funny thing is that you are a salesman and you don’t even know it.” The air is pungent with job losses. Two million as at November, reported the Business Daily. If you are a victim, choose to “get busy…
Continue readingThree reasons why you should prospect
Prospecting frees you of the misleading notion that,“Watakuja tu”, Let me state the obvious today. Because again and again, as obvious as it is, it is disturbing how rarely it happens. Sometimes, it makes me think that if breathing was not a reflex action, many sellers would forget to do it. How else do you…
Continue readingTell with facts, sell through stories
Watching the movie tends to kill your expectations from reading the gripping novel. Now you know why. Facts tell, stories sell. Facts appeal to logic; stories, emotion. Facts keep us going because they trigger the emotion, that initially moved us, when it wanes. Expert sellers fuse both into one. Like this hawker once did in…
Continue readingA non-issue to you is likely the issue with the buyer
Buyers are a tricky lot; they may echo a problem collectively but likely have idiosyncratic pain points. When it’s one thing they need and are struggling with, it doesn’t matter that it’s 3% of your product, it only matters that it’s 97% of their problem. Buyers don’t care about your wow product. At least…
Continue readingWhy businesses must ‘own’ their customers
Businesses that ‘customer-lead’ through intermediaries, must gain control of that process, monitoring it as it unfolds. Who ‘owns’ your customers? If you think you do, good for you. Still, read on to confirm so. Today’s piece targets businesses that say they are customer driven (customer-centric, customer-led etc.), and yet, they are not in direct contact…
Continue readingAvoid the word sell when selling
When the term sell is used, sellers are left high and dry as all other parties look on them as pariahs. Successful sellers steer clear off the word sell. This is because the word sell is pleasurable only to sellers. To everyone else, most of all buyers, it grates on the nerves. This is the…
Continue readingHow to sell when limited by ethics
Whichever tactic the seller deploys it requires that they insert themselves in the buyer’s business. Looking at marketing purely as give-aways or advertising is limiting, even idle. Usually, sellers compete on one or a combination of what are called marketing P’s. That is, product quantity or quality, price friendliness, promotion (marketing), processes being user-friendly, people…
Continue readingWhat COVID-19 teaches us about selling
It doesn’t matter how much you extol the virtues of your product or service; if it’s not working, it’s not getting buyers “Hata Corona imeisha” my cabbie said, casually declaring the end of COVID-19. He said this as he donned his mask because company policy dictated so, and it could affect how I rated him….
Continue readingShould Kenyans buy the COVID-19 ‘sale’?
Influenza and pneumonia kill 16X more Kenyans than Corona. ‘Dehydrated’ slum areas, are choking with school-going children, face masks are being used as chin guards, and still… nothing. Fellow Kenyans, were we sold a bill of goods? This is the question we are asking. Were we conned about COVID-19? Or, are we Divinely protected as…
Continue readingMake a customer, not a sale; here’s why
Lessons from landlords, private schools and the matatu crew Tenants, parents and passengers. Do you suppose those that sell to them have ever saw them as customers? Those that sell to them are, respectively, landlords, schools and the matatu crew. Do you suppose an upside to this pandemic will be that the three will rethink…
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