Questions About Doing Business In Nigeria

1. First let’s define Bargaining. Wikipedia, defines Bargaining as a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service dispute the price which will be paid and the exact nature of the transaction that will take place, and eventually come to an agreement.  In Nigeria this is very common in the open market. There are no rules regarding bargaining and no price is too high or too low to ask for. In the corporate sector negotiations (bargaining) are also allowed though it is more ‘professionally’ conducted. The unwritten law is never be too far from 10% (±) of your cost price, here also there are no strict rules, though the ‘man-know-man’ (Familiarity with the decision maker) or WII FM (What’s In IT For Me) method also helps

2. Different factors affect the final decision, factors ranging from religion, geographic alienation (Northerners feel more comfortable doing business with people from the north and likewise west verse west, East ver East etc). The final decision in most cases is taken by the ‘Oga’ the big boss, but his decision is influenced by those under him. If you know someone close to him or her that would make getting the job done half easy, bottom line, decisions in most cases are not taken rationally but emotional attachment to some one or something.

3. Each business has its strategies but one thing is clear in Nigeria, between  75% - 85% of business owners go into the business based on guts feeling or they see some one making money from the business not from ‘crunching the numbers’ from research.
How do I know this? I am a Business research consultant and when some one comes to me and say ‘do a business plan for xyz business’ and I say ‘first we do a research to see the viability of the business’, I always get the reply that ‘Mr. XYZ started this business a year ago and today is swimming in millions’ or ‘I have this strong feeling the business will succeed’.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against guts feeling, but it does no harm to first crunch the numbers. I hope this helps.