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This is an important question to consider in the context of looking for someone to invest in your business idea.

Why do you need to know about the investor's current portfolio and industries they are familiar with? Or comfortable investing in?

Isn't it enough that this investor is flush with cash and they are perfectly capable of bankrolling your idea?

This isn't always the case.

Sometimes someone has all the cash in the world but they have no interest in your business space, or they have no extra knowledge that they can bring to the table besides the money.

Why does this matter?

Because if they have no knowledge or interest in your business idea, they might NOT be able to properly weigh the risk and rewards and decide if this is a good idea to invest in.

In they invest in your business without all the knowledge and facts, you're likely to have STRONG DISAGREEMENTS with these individuals who are bankrolling your company. This is NOT a good place to be in. Business is hard enough without the extra drama.

Apart from that, you don't just want an individual to plough 1M into your business ONLY. It would also help if this investor is knowledgeable enough to call you and say, "hey shouldn't you be thinking of XYZ? have you considered ABC? this project isn't going to be feasible unless we cater to 123! or, we might come up against 456 so let me introduce you to Chioma who is a specialist".

The recommendations, suggestions, oversight, mentorship, and other "intangibles" would be VERY useful beyond the money.

This can only happen if the investor is INTERESTED and Knowledgeable in this business space that you want to play in.

Before you make a sales pitch to potential investors what would you have to know about them?

This is an important question to consider because to be effective in sales, marketing, and other situations where you are trying to get someone to take action on something; it helps if you have some prior knowledge of who they are and what they are interested in.

It is only when you have this kind of knowledge that you can make an effective "ask" of them.

This "ask" or request is more likely to be effective if you have tailored your sales pitch or marketing message to things that they are already interested in, and things that they already care about.

The conversations you have with individual investors will change from person to person, and from context to context, but for now it's reasonable to make the following assumptions!

It would be a good idea to know about 1. the investor’s current portfolio and industries they are familiar with or comfortable investing in 2. their investment time horizon 3. their risk and return goals 4. what they want in return for their time and their money.

With this information, you should have a good chunk of what you need to create a "pitch" or investment "deck" that will hit the right spot with them when it comes time to asking them for money for your bright idea.

Is sales truly about CONVINCING people to do something?

And can you make people do something that is clearly against their own will? At least in a business or a commercial context?

The goal for most people seems to be to have that magical formula which when uttered will bring in unfettered sales.

That magic formula doesn’t yet exist because today there is nothing you can say to make someone buy against his or her will.

You can always coerce or strong arm people, but that's a conversation for another day.

Since you can't convince someone to do something in business, the next best thing is to use whatever motivations they already have and see how that can be channelled towards your goods and services, or the agenda that you have on the table.

If you sell inverter batteries, you cannot get wealthy grandma to buy solar panels for herself if she's comfortable with the dark and if she thinks, "what's the point, I'm going to be dead soon anyway!".

But if she really fusses over her grandkids, who knows? She might make a gift of it for them in the perpetual darkness of Lagos! It's worth a shot!

Either way, if wealthy grandma buys your "alternative energy solutions" from you, it'll be because your product or services already matches the motivations that she had before you showed up on the scene.

Stop looking for the magic formula. Look instead for the magic motivations.

How can sales skills help you get funding from investors?

If you ask "old school" business people they'll say, "sales is about convincing people to do something, so sales skills will help you convince investors to hand over their money".

If you ask the consummate modern sales and business development professional they'll say, "sales is about figuring out what people want, so that you can give it to them (assuming you have it in store)".

With the modern consummate professional approach, it becomes clear that sales skills help with securing investor funds by doing the following!

It will help you match YOUR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY to the investor's PORTFOLIO, INVESTMENT HORIZON, AND RISK/ RETURN GOALS.

Sales skills will help you with validating your business idea. This will in turn give you all the data to show the investors that you know what you are talking about. This is STEP ONE.

Sales skills will help you figure out which potential investors you should be talking to based on the kind of portfolio they have and the things they are interested in. You'll also be looking at how long they're willing to park their money with you, what they want in return, and how big or small the returns they're looking for. This is STEP TWO.

The final step would be using sales skills to make the presentation, make a proposal, and ask for the commitment.

Don't freestyle the process with COMMON SENSE. Learn how to sell and make this process easier with business sense.

Does capital always mean the same thing as money?

Not always! Because we can also regard our human assets as "capital" because we can "invest" them or "use" them as factors of production to grow the enterprise.

That's not very nice language to use when talking about people, and that's the reason why we have to not only "invest" them in the enterprise, but INVEST IN THEM AS WELL!

This way everything works out well for us all.

What about the main thesis that selling and sales skills is necessary to attract capital?

Does this apply to human capital as well?

It does if you want to attract the cream of the crop! This is because if you don't "sell" your organization properly, the "right" candidates might not apply.

It'll be hard to build your empire with just low hanging fruit as your "seed" human capital.

So learn how to sell well in person and in print so that you attract the best that you can find.

Do business fail for lack of capital?

That can definitely happen but a better way to look at it is this!

The proximate cause of capital is sales skills.

Capital equals money.

Money is required for owner profits and for fuel to keep the business running.

If the proximate cause of capital ie money is sales, then your business is actually suffering from a lack of sales skills.

Sales skills are required to secure financing from investors.

Sales skills are also required to get revenue and recurring income from customers.

Don’t whine that your business or business idea is suffering because of a lack of capital.

Your business and business ideas are dying because you don’t know how to sell.

Let's assume you're a female entrepreneur and part of your "sales pitch" to get your aunt to buy from you is "female empowerment" and "we are family".

How do you go about setting up "the ask"? And is that enough reason for someone to buy your product or service from you?

We've already settled in prior posts that the main reason someone will buy from you is because of a pressing need or desire that they have.

Other "charitable" considerations like female empowerment and love of family might also be a factor, but only if those issues are important to the person.

If your aunt isn't “woke”, doesn't care about female empowerment, or maybe thinks the feminist movement has gone tokenistic, then talking to your aunt about supporting female owned businesses might fall on deaf ears.

If your aunt doesn't care about family, or if she thinks that your father is an irresponsible leech, then bringing up family might work against you!

So how do you know when to bring female empowerment and family into the sales conversation?

You do so only when you have an idea of what this person's motivations are on the subject.

The manner of figuring out these feelings is by engaging in open conversations and asking questions that lure the person to talk some more.... questions like:

"Aunty what do you think about female owned businesses?"
"When you were my age what kind of hustles did you run?"
"I hope you're happy with the initiative the children in my generation are showing?"
"Was family support important to your success when you were growing up?"

The answers to these questions will lead to a light conversation where you can later introduce the fact that you've started a business selling shoes and bags and would be happy if your aunt becomes one of your first customers.

Remember we're still working with the scenario where we are ALICE who is a female undergrad entrepreneur in Benue state Nigeria who is looking for customers for her new business selling shoes and bags.

In prior posts we made some assumptions about the kinds of people that Alice should be running after for business, and how she could approach friends, family members, and associates to get the ball rolling.

In summary, you shouldn't be talking about anything in the sales conversation unless you have an inkling that the potential customer has an interest or desire there. The only way you'll know for sure is from open and frank conversations that you initiate.

There's no point in talking about how environmentally and ecologically superior your products are if the customer at hand doesn't give a blaze if the earth burns in 100 years time.

Our sales conversations ought to be tailored to the person whose needs, interests, and desires we have before us today.

Now that we have good ideas for how Alice ought to initiate conversations with her aunt regarding her shoes and bags business, we have one final issue to consider.

Is it enough that Alice is her niece and that's a good reason to buy from her?

If that were the case, wouldn't that be enough for us to buy from our nephews and nieces and also support the business endeavours of other family members?

If you're new to this series of posts, Alice is a fashion entrepreneur who is looking for customers and decides to hit up her aunt to see if they can do some business together.

Her aunt has three daughters and because of that Alice sent "Aunty" the following message, "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

The last few posts have been devoted to whether this was a good way to start the buying conversation with her aunt.

Now that we have the right approach, and we know it isn't enough to bulldoze your way to a sale using your USPs and UVPs, is it a good enough reason to buy from someone because you are related to them?

The answer depends on the motivation of your relatives!

If your Aunt in this case has been quarrelling with your father for the last fifteen years because of a land dispute in the village, then in fact your aunt might NOT want to buy from you... depending on which Nollywood scenarios that might ensue, your aunt might even do her best to frustrate your business at every turn she can.

Does that mean you shouldn’t imply that your family members should support your business JUST BECAUSE you are related?

NO! It just means you have to delay that "family ask" until you know that particular family member’s motivations.

How will you know what they are thinking? You'll have to engage them in conversation and tease out some information.

My mother has a soft spot for the empowerment of the girl child and so she will do anything and buy things that she doesn't need just so that she can support that budding entrepreneur of a niece.

That could be a possible motivation for "Aunty" in this case, and not just the fact that they're family.

So if you were Alice, how would you go about with the "family ask" or "female empowerment ask" to get her to buy your handbags and shoes?

We will tackle that in another post!

Until then, ask me anything in the comments section below.

If you have a thorough knowledge of your unique value proposition or your unique value proposition and you think that’s enough to get people to buy from you, you’re REALLY MISTAKEN.

People buy for their reasons and not yours.

I bought a chicken last week because I had guests to celebrate and NOT because of any reasons the seller could cook up.

Now that we know our USP isn’t enough to make a compelling presentation, the goal is to start a compelling conversation around those themes.

So instead of saying “good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me”, we should try instead to build conversations around the themes of our USP.

In this case we’ve previously identified them as 1. The GOOD QUALITY of her shoes and bags 2. The SOPHISTICATED SELECTION she has curated from Lagos, Malaysia and the United Kingdom 3. Her LOW PRICES... and the belief that since Alice and “Aunty” are related, she should help a family member buy from her to encourage young female entrepreneurship.

Instead of going into a presentation or sales pitch about the good quality of her bags, Alice should build conversations around bags that Aunty already has. At that point she can go into questions of origin and quality. This will let us know if her aunt is even concerned about the quality and the origins of her fashion accessories.

If Aunty is concerned about these things, then they’ll be good things to talk about!

How about, “Aunty I like this your bag o!”

Future questions would include “where did you get it from? How much did you get it for? Did you prefer this kind of leather over that?” ...and other kinds of questions you bag merchants and aficionados would care to ask.

The answers to the questions would give you a sense of whether Aunty is looking for more bags, the kind of bags she likes, her budget or spending power, and the flow of the conversation would let you know if Aunty is the kind of customer you’d like to flow with.

It’s only after you have all this information that you’d know if it makes sense to start “toasting” Aunty to buy from you.

What about other items in our USP list? We’ll explore those in the next post.

In the meantime ask me anything in the comment section below.

So we are ready to go out into the world and look for new customers!

We are armed with our unique selling proposition USP, or our unique value proposition UVP and we are convinced that we have all the information we need to talk people into buying from us.

We assume that with all this information, we have all the skills to PERSUADE people and INFLUENCE them into doing business with us.

This is the reason why the average person is okay with starting a conversation by saying, "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

In this case our entrepreneur named Alice is assuming that her value proposition and her unique selling point is 1. the GOOD QUALITY of her shoes and bags 2. the SOPHISTICATED SELECTION she has curated from Lagos, Malaysia and the United Kingdom 3. her LOW PRICES... and the belief that since Alice and "Aunty" are related, she should help a family member buy from her to encourage young female entrepreneurship.

Today we are going to ask the question, is your unique selling proposition enough to get "Aunty" to buy from you?

That would only work if Aunty is interested in exactly the same things you are! Unfortunately that isn't the case because everyone goes about their daily business interested only in THEIR PROBLEMS and they don't care about OUR goods and services.

They are only interested in our goods and services when THEIR PROBLEMS, INTERESTS, and DESIRES intersect with what it is that we have for sale.

Instead of pouncing on people and telling them about our USP or UVP, we are better off engaging in a conversation to figure out whether they have PROBLEMS, INTERESTS, and DESIRES that our products and services can solve!

Instead of listing out our USPs and telling them to buy from us, we should ask questions about our USPs and how they relate. This will tell us if the person is a good potential customer to continue to "yarn" with.

So how do we start the "yarning" and the "toasting" process around our UVPs? We will explore that in the next post.

In the meantime, ask me anything in the comment section below.

The average person goes into a sale or business conversation knowing their USP and they try to build the talk around showing how great their product or service is.

Talking about your USP, UVP (or other acronym) isn't always a good idea because you end up pressuring people into a sale when you aren't sure whether they need your product or service.

That's the reason why it's a bad idea to begin the conversation by saying something like, "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

This example is from a made up scenario of a Nigerian female undergrad trying to sell fashion accessories to her aunt who has three female children. You want more details from our case study? Check out the previous posts!

Before we continue, we should explore what a USP or UVP is since Alice (our entrepreneur) assumes that the sales pitch has to be built around those things in order to be effective.

The USP "unique selling point" or UVP "unique value proposition" are those things that answer the question 1. what will my product or service do for you? 2. Why is my product or service different from other people in the market? 3. Why should you (the customer) bother talking to me (the seller)?

In this case Alice thinks her USP is 1. the GOOD QUALITY of her shoes and bags 2. the SOPHISTICATED SELECTION she has curated from Lagos, Malaysia and the United Kingdom 3. Her AFFORDABLE PRICES ...and there's also the hint that since Alice and "Aunty" are related, she should help a family member out and buy from her to encourage her business.

Whether we agree that these are significant enough to constitute a USP is besides the point... Alice thinks these are important so we are going to focus on that.

Alice has assumed that all these things are important to her aunty and that is the focus of her sales pitch.

But how do we even know for sure that "Aunty" is concerned about any of these? How do we know that “Aunty” likes low prices, or UK clothes, or sophisticated fashion?

We have to know this because if neither of these things are important to “Aunty” and all the other potential customers we’re talking to, then we’re wasting our time! Our carefully crafted sales “toasting” is going to fall on deaf ears.

So how do we know for sure? We will tackle those issues in the next post!

In the meantime, ask me anything in the comments section below.

In the last post we considered whether it's a good idea to start a buying or business conversation with your aunty by saying, "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

In this made up scenario, we are a female university undergraduate named Alice in a school in the North Central part of Nigeria. If you want more details about this case study, check the previous posts.

In the previous post we also examined why this kind of approach is a bad idea. We also made another key assumption that since Alice and "Aunty" are family members, "Aunty" should have figured out by now that Alice is doing something fashion related because she is constantly posting about bags and shoes on her WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.

Once again this is a reminder that you should be doing the same thing too... because obviously it leads to avenues for organic conversations with your friends, family, and loved ones about your business. So if you haven’t started posting about it, begin so today!

So how should we start a selling or business conversation?

There are lots of sales and selling frameworks to consider, but before we get into the heavy theoretical stuff, let's take some simple common sense approaches.

We should begin by asking lots of questions because no one likes to be pushed into a buying conversation.

If you start with a sales pitch or presentation then you are intruding on someone’s time and attention. If you ask a few questions, then you guys are just having some open conversations.

The first approach at the beginning of the post will make Alice seem "pushy" and inconsiderate, and it will back "Aunty" into a corner because she might now feel obliged even though she has no need or desire to patronize Alice.

What kind of questions should we be asking? Since Alice is a beginner, it would be okay to ask questions and begin a conversation around her UVP or USP and see how the conversation goes from there.

At least if you take this approach, you'll be able to figure out quickly if someone is interested in what it is you sell, and whether they might be a good potential customer for you.

That should be the focus of our early selling and business conversations; trying to see if they are interested, and trying to see if they are a good fit for us to do business together.

But before we continue, what is a UVP, USP, and other fancy terms that we hear similar to this when we start talking about our products or services?

We will answer that in the next post!

In the meantime, ask me anything in the comment section below!

We have established with our last scenario that it's a good idea to approach friends, family and associates as a prospecting exercise when looking for people to talk to who could become potential customers in the future.

In our last post, our female entrepreneur approached her aunt with three daughters to get "Aunty" to become a patron for the bags and shoes that the entrepreneur sells.

For now let's call the shoe and bag vendor Alice.

In the last post, Alice approached her aunt and said "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

Is that a good way to start a buying conversation?

NO! Because when you try to push your product or service on people, they resist. Resistance is the natural human response you get when you try to push something on people.

It’s likely that “Aunty” will say in this case, “Well done my dear! I’m glad you’re getting busy instead of staying idle. Please send me your prices on WhatsApp and give me some time let me think about it”.

That is not the kind of response we’re looking for!

Since Alice is talking to her aunt, we can make a few more assumptions.

It's safe to assume that Alice and "Aunty" follow each other on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

Since that is the case, "Aunty" already has a vague notion that Alice is really interested in shoes and bags these days.

If you haven't been posting to your social media about your product or service, you should! This is because it will make it easier for you to start organic conversations around what you sell.

So now that we know that "Aunty" has been "warmed up" a little by the social media posts, how do we go about initiating a sales and business conversation without making it seem that we are pushing our bags and shoes on unsuspecting family members?

We will answer that in the next post.

Until then, ask me anything in the comment section below!

Whether you sell physical goods or you're some sort of service type consultant, you have to look for people to talk to that could some day become loyal customers.

In sales and business development, this activity is called prospecting and it has been the focus of the last two or three posts so far.

The scenario we're going with is a young female in a tertiary institution in Benue state Nigeria selling bags and shoes to other females in her school and other campuses close enough so that she can deliver her wares without eating too much into her profit margins.

We have made some assumptions for her that prospecting will involve either talking to people "face to face", or looking for people and communities online to engage with.

If our young fashion entrepreneur could approach people face to face to drum up business interest, how would she go about it?

The easiest place to start would be with friends, family members, and associates.

This is the easiest place to start prospecting because they already know you and they will be very polite with you. You will not feel the pain of rejection acutely if anyone here was to say NO to you.

Getting NO from total strangers hurts really bad... at least in the beginning of your business career.

The mistake that most people make when talking to friends, family, and associates about business is that they approach it selfishly and do nothing but talk about themselves all the time.

For instance, our entrepreneur here might approach her aunty who has 3 daughters and say, "good morning Aunty, I am now selling good quality bags and shoes from Lagos, Malaysia and some from the UK. My prices are really good. Aunty please come and help me and buy from me".

Is this a good way to start? It's better than doing nothing! So we have to give her marks for at least trying.

But there is a better way and it involves making it about THE OTHER PERSON you're talking to.

We will explore more of that in the next post but in the meantime, ASK ME ANYTHING in the comments section below!

How do you go about prospecting if you sell shoes and bags for ladies online?

Prospecting is the art of looking for people to talk to who could be potential buyers or users of your product or service.

For this scenario let's assume that you are a female undergraduate in the Federal University of Agriculture in Makurdi, Benue state. You are currently studying a 4 year program in Botany and you would like to get some extra income from bags and shoes that you buy in Lagos. It also helps that you have a cousin who sends you a few items from the UK about twice a year.

Prospecting here involves asking a few questions like, "where do my ideal customers hang out?", "what kinds of things are my customers interested in?", "which kinds of people are likely to use my product or service?"

For now it'll be hard to answer all these questions because we have limited information, so we'll have to do some guess work!

Let's assume that FEMALES will be our main focus. Let's also assume that it'll be mostly UNDERGRADUATES buying our accessories and not the female university professors. This is a reasonable assumption to make because I doubt a young undergrad will have keen insights into the shopping and dressing habits of middle aged women.

Let's also assume that since we might be looking at a university crowd, we might also get some attention from SCHOOLS NEARBY like Benue State University (about 20 minutes away), and maybe Kogi State University and Nassarawa State University which are in the adjoining states. There is also the University of Mkar which is in Gboko, also in Benue state.

The key assumption here is that we also want to be LOCAL meaning that we are selling to people who can reach us without much difficulty... also so that if we have to deliver anything to someone, we don't have to erode our profits on transportation costs.

Now that we have made all these assumptions, it's time to start TESTING these assumptions to find out who our ideal customer is and how we can reach them.

The results of our experiment are going to serve as the basis for our prospecting template in the future.

With all these assumptions I think it's clear that we can start looking for people to talk to 1. locally in the flesh or in person conversations, and 2. online communities.

How do we start those conversations? We will explore those in a later post on how to chat up female students in tertiary institutions who are local to us concerning our bags and shoes.

In the meantime, feel free to ask me anything in the comments!

What are the different kinds of client meetings any one of us could be having? And how can we have structured business conversations around that?

One scenario is not really a "client" scenario per se. The first instance is that conversation where we're trying to get someone to come along with us as a client.

In the proper business sense, this person is a "prospect" or "potential client or customer" because "clients" are people we have a subsisting business relationship with.

A client has already engaged your services or given you money in the past to solve a problem or provide a product or service to them.

So now that we're clear that we're dealing with a "potential client", what are the kinds of conversations we should engage in to get someone to become our client.

The first of those conversations according to sales theory is called a "prospecting" conversation.

Prospecting is the art of looking for people to talk to.

Those should be people who could be potential customers tomorrow because they have a problem, or are working towards a vision that our product or service could help them with.

How do you find people to talk to in the prospecting stage? You do so by asking a few questions like, "where do my ideal customers hang out?", "what kinds of things are my customers interested in?", "which kinds of people are likely to have a problem that my product or service could solve?".

The answers to these questions will give you clues to where you should start looking for people to talk to.

So let's assume that you sell bags and shoes for ladies on Instagram... how would you go about prospecting? We'll tackle that and more in future posts.

How can structured business conversations help with client meetings?

In the past we have looked at how business conversations are usually goal oriented.

The goal is to get something done in the most efficient way possible, so flowing from this perspectives there are two things we need to have in mind before approaching a client meeting.

The first thing is we have to be clear about what the goal of the conversation is, and the second thing we need to be clear about the most efficient way of getting there.

Traditional sales theory can help you with both problems because DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU ARE IN THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CLIENT, sales theory gives you a clear idea about what you should be aiming for next.

Sales theory can also give you several ideas about the best way to achieve those goals.

So let's work with a few scenarios and come up with a few plausible answers to the question.

What are the possible kind of client meetings we could be having? 1. the meetings where we're trying to get someone on as a client 2. the meetings where they are a paying client and we have specific projects we're working on 3. the meetings where we're trying to resolve problems, and 4. meetings that we have just to "nurture the relationship" with existing clients.

We will start exploring all the wonderful questions these scenarios raise in the next post!

How can structured business conversation skills help you with client deliveries?

Business conversations are usually goal oriented to get something done in the most efficient way possible.

For our working definition of "business conversations" please refer to the older posts in the series!

In traditional sales practice when we have a client delivery on hand, we're usually concerned with a number of things. We want to be sure of the following 1. that we got the identity of the client right 2. that we got the details of the delivery right 3. that the delivery or solution is fit for purpose, and 4. that there’s a possibility of repeat business or referrals.

The importance of the first two items is obvious. If the order is right but we've delivered it to the wrong person, then we haven't been very successful with this business transaction. It can be rectified, but with time, expense, and our customers being let down in their expectations... even if that let down was temporary.

The first part of the structured business conversation should be concerned with confirming those two items...

"Good afternoon is this Madam Ogendengbe? I'm calling from XYZ concerning an order you placed last week for ABC. Would you be available Jan 23rd for delivery? We have the address here as XYZ, can you please confirm that? Thank you very much Ma, our despatch driver Bayo will call you Monday morning."

This simple conversation makes us out to be professional, sets the right expectations, and confirms the identity of the recipient and that they're getting the right package.

This should be obvious, but you'd be surprised how many businesses show up unannounced with the wrong or incomplete items on the order.

It has happened to me personally several times and I’m sure it has happened either to you, or someone you know.

From a traditional sales and customer service perspective, an unsatisfied or “let down” customer isn't a good way to go because it INCREASES the amount of selling, toasting, cajoling, and apologising we have to do in the future.

How can structured business conversations help with client meetings? We will examine that in the next post.

Why should you bother learning how to have structured business conversations?

The answer to this is simple! This is exactly what you're going to spend most of your time doing in business.

It is also the key skill that will determine your level of success or failure in business, so it's a good idea to learn how to have structured business conversations.

In the past we have referred to business conversations as encounters to 1. promote our products or services to customers 2. fundraising and capital acquisition to develop a business idea, and 3. looking for business associates and maintaining relationships with stakeholders.

Most of us assume that in our businesses we are going to spend most of our time on the “technical” side of the business.

The tailor assumes that he'll spend most of his time tailoring and sewing. The inverter panel installer assumes he'll spend most of his time with batteries, panels, and wiring. The wedding photographer assumes that she'll spend most of her time shooting and editing photos.

The truth is that most of us will spend our days driving to meetings and deliveries, figuring out client requirements, dealing with unhappy clients, or chasing down new clients.

These things require an ability to carry out a well structured business conversation.

Most of our time in business will be spent doing these NOT technical and unsexy things.

These non technical, non sexy, and non glamourous things are those which will further our business growth.

All these activities are made better when we know how to have structured business conversations.

Let us now explore scenarios where structured business conversations can help in 1. client meetings and deliveries 2. figuring out what the client wants 3. dealing with unhappy clients, and 4. chasing down new clients.

More on that in the next post.

How do we build rapport in conversations where we're trying to get someone to buy something?

The first thing is to realize that tips and tricks won't help you here.

People are hyper aware for scammers and bullsh!^&#, so tips, tricks, and hacks will make you out to be a bad person.

Open conversations are the key, but you need an agenda and a structure to what the conversation will be.

First of all we should be trying to figure out who this person is. This is called "qualification" in sales.

After that we should be trying to find out if the person has a need for our product or service. We'll be asking open questions at this stage to figure out if they have a problem and how pressing the problem is. This stage is called "discovery".

There are other stages in carrying on a sales and business conversation, but these early stages are the ones where we have the most prospects for building rapport with them.

Whether we're talking to a potential associate or customer, we should have conversations around who they are? where they come from? how they got into this line of buisness? and how come XYZ has become a problem for them?

During these stages of the conversation you'll discover that both of you may have gone to the same university, maybe you share the same religious faith, maybe your mothers are from the same town, or maybe you both agree that Donald Trump is the greatest politician to have walked the face of the earth.

When these similarities come up, to build rapport all you have to do is point the likeness out and it gives an aura of commonality between you two...

"Are you serious? You went to Nsukka? Which set? 2008? Oh! I graduated in 1998! Na una enjoy pass!"

This kind of conversation establishes a warm link between alumni’s.

With a couple of connections in the conversation like this, the next time you meet to talk business, you shouldn't be total strangers.... and this familiarity can lead to easier conversations to explore the beautiful future that lies ahead.

What are the techniques you can use to build rapport in a business conversation?

The first trick is to keep things conversational. You can't build rapport if you're trying to use tips and tricks to magically get close to someone.

Using tips and tricks is for hucksters and I'm assuming that you're a genuine business person, so we have no need for that here.

Keeping things conversational means that we're having a simple honest chat with another individual.

However even though we're going to be having a simple conversation, we need to have a simple framework to guide the conversation.

If we freestyle the conversation we might end up talking about food, movies, music, politics, fashion, trivia and a host of other things.

There's nothing bad about this except that after such a fun three hour conversation, we might have found a new best friend and I suspect we're not looking for new best friends when having business conversations!

We need to have a simple agenda for the conversation.

Our goals usually in business conversations are 1. to promote our products or services to customers 2. fundraising and capital acquisition to develop a business idea, and 3. looking for business associates and maintaining relationships with stakeholders.

In other words, we use business conversations for networking and trading.

So the next question is going to be, "how do we have business conversations to promote our products or services to potential customers?"

That we will tackle in the next post!

How do you build rapport in business conversations?

Rapport is the "vibe" you get when you're in a pleasant conversation and it seems like both of you genuinely like each other.

The reason why you're both getting that vibe is because you're both alike in several key and important ways.

Rapport is the lubricant of business relationships.

You don't have to be best friends, but both of you have to agree that neither is a douche, slimy, or inconsistent with each other.

Women understand this instinctively. Sometimes they don't go necessarily to the saloon that has the most technically proficient staff, but rather the one where they have the most rapport with the staff and other patrons.

Business people do this subconsciously when they don’t do business with someone because “he rubbed me off the wrong way”.

So how is rapport built in business? You do this by establishing COMMONALITY.

Commonality is the answer to the questions, "how are we the same?", "what are the things we like?", and "what are the things we agree on?"

The answers to these questions are important because they can lead to a close and harmonious relationship where we understand each other well and communicate effectively.

What techniques can we use to build rapport?

That question will be answered in the next post!

Why should you build rapport in business conversations?

We ought to build rapport in business conversations because it makes us more effective in relationship building.

Relationship building in itself is essential because we won't be able to achieve our business goals in most cases without a modicum of some sort of a cordial relationship.

Our goals usually in business are 1. to promote our products or services to customers 2. fundraising and capital acquisition to develop or finance a business idea 3. looking for business associates and maintaining relationships with stakeholders.

These activities are a lot easier to do once we have developed a certain level of rapport with potential clients, customers, investors, and other business stakeholders.

Thanks senior man. You anticipated my next post perfectly! But you DO have to ask some questions related to the sale. More in that later.

How do you make business conversations about the other person you’re talking to?

You do that by asking questions in a simple conversational manner.

You should ask lots of questions around who they are? What they do? How did they get involved in their business or career? What challenges they have or visions aspired to? And maybe some other personal interests and challenges.

Why is this important? Because we can’t build rapport in a business context until we have done otherwise!

It’s rude to just show up and say “buy my product!” Or “here have my business card!”

Business and networking don’t have to be daunting.

Focusing on THEM will make the journey easier than focusing on ME.

How do you start a conversation with a potential customer?

It's not easy to start "toasting" when you know that you have money on your mind right?

This person is going to see right through you and your selfish motives right?

That's exactly how it can seem and none of us want to appear selfish, scummy, or like a scam artist!

The good news is, you won't come off as a scammer if you follow some simple guidelines established by sales professionals since the dawn of time.

What are these guidelines and principles?

There are several...the first of which is to realize that "it's not about you". It's about the customer or the other person at the end of the conversation.

If you come into the conversation wide eyed and blazing with enthusiasms to talk about YOU and YOUR product or service, you are going to turn most people off.

You have to make the conversation about THEM and THEIR needs.

How do achieve that?

More guidelines for that in future posts.

So we've taken it for granted that sales skills are necessary to help us acquire capital that we need to fund our business ideas.

We also now know that "capital" doesn't always have to be funds secured from investors, but it includes funds that we get from our customers who are satisfied with the products and services that we have provided so far.

We've examined the different ways how sales skills can help you cosy up with investors to get the capital you need.

So today we're going to examine how sales kills can help you warm up to your customers to get you the revenue or capital you need to invest to grow your business and develop your business ideas further.

The first order of business is to see how sales skills and frameworks can help us find our potential customers.

This should be the first order of business because if we don't have happy customers, we aren't going to get any revenues.

From a traditional sales perspective, our journey begins with an act or process called "prospecting".

Prospecting is the art of looking for people to talk to. The goal is to seek out people who could have a need for your product or service. The NEED part of the sentence is what we should be looking into.

If your big idea is banking software, then you probably shouldn't be talking to primary school teachers.

If you are a wedding photographer, you probably shouldn't be hanging out in online forums where the average age of the women is 60... except if you're hoping to get commissions from their daughters who might be getting married soon.

If you sell female shoes and bags on Instagram, then it doesn't help if most of your followers are men in their 40s, except if you're hoping they'll buy for their wives or girlfriends... or daughters.

Some of the primary questions of prospecting are "where do my potential customers hang out?", "where can I find people who have the problem XYZ?", and "which people have a vision for ABC? How can my business idea help them? And how can I reach them?".

If these are the kinds of questions that you concern yourself with in the beginning of your business journey, then you are well on the way to getting the "capital" you need to develop your business ideas further.

That is because if you do “prospecting” right, you’ll find yourself in more profitable conversations that could lead to revenue later on.

Prospecting leads to sales conversations. Sales conversations lead to profitable relationships. Profitable relationships give positive recurring cash flow. Recurring cash flow gives you the money that can be ploughed back into the business to grow it some more.

Now that we know how to find our potential customers, how do we go about initiating a conversation with them? That is the subject for another post coming soon!

How do sales skills help with market validation? And what is market validation in the first place.

This is the idea that the market (your target customers) gives their approval to your product or service.

These are the signals that you get from the customers that your product or service fulfils a need and meets their desires.

People in the tech space call this “product – market fit”.

Whatever the name you choose to call it, you have to quickly get to the place where the customers give you the thumbs up and you know for sure if you’re working on a problem worth solving.

If you have market validation, then it’s a good idea to keep hustling to promote and improve on your business idea.

If you don’t have market validation, perhaps it’s time to throw in the carpet or “pivot” to another idea.

Sometimes you not so much as “pivot”, but try a more suitable application of your original business idea, product, or service.

Your business idea might be good, but the market is pointing you towards different use case scenarios for your product or service.

How do you know if you have achieved market validation or product – market fit?

If you are a tech bruh or tech sis, then this is judged by the scale you have achieved, number of users, your growth metrics, and other “techy” kinds of metrics.

For the average non tech business owner, market validation is achieved relative to the amount of sales you’re able to generate.

Simply put, if no one is buying your stuff, then you’re either speaking to the wrong people, or the market is giving you a sign that your idea might not work today.

So now that we know what market validation is, how do sales skills help give us the signals that our business idea is where it needs to be?

We’ll talk about that in another post where we look at sales techniques for looking for our ideal customers, initiating conversations with them, understanding what their needs are, and getting them to give us a try.

In previous posts we have looked at how sales skills can cure the "capital" problem by helping you raise funds from investors.

That is just one side of the equation because for most of us "capital" will be raised for our business ideas NOT from investors, but from our customers and clients at large.

So now we will look at the other side of the coin to see how sales and selling skills can help us raise funds for our business ideas from our potential customers.

The good thing about applying sales skills this way is that it provides us with "market validation".

This is the idea that there is a market and a demand for our business idea and we ought to stay the course.

This is also a good bit of market research because it helps us figure out if our idea is valuable and workable.

It also helps us establish the use case scenario of our idea or product, because it is a good idea to know that not only is there a demand for our business idea, we also know the different ways in which our customers use our products and services.

Using sales this way also helps us establish who our ideal customer base is. This is obvious because trying to bootstrap capital from customers involves you having loads of conversations with different classes of people to figure out who are the most profitable group to spend time with.

These early conversations and sales activities will help you focus and lean in to who your easiest and most profitable customer base is.

Once you start looking at your records, receipts, emails, phone calls and message history, a picture of your ideal client will start to emerge from all the demographics and psychographics you find.

Demographics are the basic data we get about WHO our customers are like their age, where they live, their occupation, sex, etc.

Psychographics are the data we get about WHAT our customers are interested in.

If we know WHO they are and WHAT they are interested in, that makes future sales and marketing efforts a lot easier.

All the information you get from trying to use sales this way will come in handy when you want to "up" your business promotions and communications activity.

This includes things like advertising and more spending in visibility, branding, and other marketing activities.

Using sales and selling activities this way in the beginning will provide you all the data you need to fuel your advertising, marketing, and branding activities of the future.

Investing heavily in sales activities at the beginning of the venture is also a good idea because it will help to bring in REVENUE and PROFITS which can be ploughed back into the business. This is the "capital" function that we have been discussing so far in this series.

So now it looks like we have a few questions to answer in the ensuing posts 1. How do sales skills help me with market validation and ensuring I have a workable idea? 2. How do we use sales and selling skills to bring in revenue and bootstrap our business idea? and 3. What are the pros and cons of getting capital either through "fundraising" or "customers"?

The answers to these and many more will be explored in future posts!

The final skill from a sales angle that can help with raising capital, is not just the ability to "understand value" and "communicate value" but also the ability to "gain commitments" and "ask for the next step."

The average person falters when trying to make a sale, or to persuade because they do all the talking and then they wait silently asking for nothing in return.

This is what leads most people to say "let me think about it and get back to you" when they are at the other end of a business conversation or negotiation.

Picture this!

You have done all your research and you're sure that you are speaking to the right investor.

They are interested in your industry, you both anticipate a level of involvement and contributions that you are happy with, and both of you are confident that you can meet your growth, equity, and repayment obligations.

This is the stage where most entrepreneurial minded folks will remain in front of the power point presentation on the screen smiling, and doing nothing!

Off course the investor is going to say a number of things...

"Brilliant presentation, can you please email me the power point slides?"
"Good work team! Email it to my secretary and I'll get back to you in a few weeks!"
"You've given a lot of good insights with your presentation, this is a whole lot to take in. Give me a few weeks and I'll get back to you!"

The potential investor or his team is going to say this because you have asked for nothing yet!

And off course they are going to say things like this because you've said a lot of things they'd like to check out and mull things over.

In traditional sales theory we know that most people won't take action until something is asked or required of them.

Your potential investors aren't going to throw money at you until have first asked them to do so!

A beautiful presentation won’t automatically lead to them throwing money at you!

A consummate sales professional knows that this is the perfect time to make a request.

"Thank you very much for your time and attention. Like I mentioned earlier in the presentation, this is a Series A round to raise financing. Do you have term sheets you want us to go over?"
"Madam Ogendengbe you seemed really impressed with our presentation, is it safe to assume that you want to buy in at this current valuation?"

In both of these scenarios, you have lopped the ball over to their court. There is something that THEY now have to do to get the ball rolling.

They can either say YES or NO to the terms sheet and you can be back to exploring WHY and any other possible concerns and objections that they have.

That is a step in the right direction! If you leave it at "let me get back to you", then you could be in a heap of surprises next week when their interest wanes, or something else becomes a priority... or maybe they even forget!

Madam Ogendengbe can also either say YES or NO at the current valuation, and you guys enter into a VERY SPECIFIC conversation about what particular terms have to be before she puts any money down for your idea.

In either of these scenarios you ARE making progress because now the investor has a specific request and next step that THEY have to engage in to make progress on the deal.

You have taken the initiative and moved the conversation beyond the proposal or presentation that you made earlier.

For the average Jane or Joe, this is the silver bullet that stands in the way of raising capital for your big idea.

If you've followed the series from the beginning, you can now see that sales skills, especially personal selling with it's emphasis on conversational skills is a handy tool to improve your fundraising efforts.

Most importantly however, I hope you've been able to see that you don't have to change the way you dress to do this. You don't have to change your accent, and you don't have to change your personality.

These are simple frameworks and conversational skills that anyone can LEARN to help you acquire all the capital that you need.

Your business idea might be excellent, but you also have to learn to sell as well because your ability to raise financing depends on it.

Your ability to also interact with your end customer also depends on it, but we'll start addressing those dynamics in another post.

If you have to raise money from potential investors, it will pay you to come up with a few questions to help you gauge a few things.

You’ll be trying to figure out their business interests, the kinds of returns they're looking for, the amount of control over the business they would want, and the overall vision they have for their investment portfolio.

Unfortunately you're not going to be able to extract all the information you need unless you are great at listening.

Listening is a skill behind the art of selling called "discovering value".

Before you can make an argument or a pitch for what is valuable about your investment opportunity, you have to first know what your audience finds valuable.

If you're trying to build a unicorn in the software space, but the potential investor at hand prefers to put money behind regular cash flowing opportunities, then there's no room for a marriage here and you won't be getting the capital you need.

To get a sense of what they find valuable, you not only have to interrogate them with a list of your questions, you should also be able to pay attention, listen, ask for feedback, and tease out the salient points that you should be hitting when you compile your pitch deck.

If one set of investors values a big exit when you take your unicorn public in an IPO, then your pitch deck should be on point when it comes to forecasting and the opportunities for scale in the future.

If you have a monthly cash flow kinda investor, you're better off showing figures for how cash will flow into the business and what the opportunities for profits or dividends will be.

Asking for feedback would be helpful in either case...

"so if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that return of your capital is what's most important to you?”
“so would you be comfortable if we can show how your money would be returned with interest in three years instead of six?"
"I'm sorry but I thought you were interested in taking up more equity in return for your investment? Is there something else I'm missing sir?"

If you've been following the gist so far, then fundraising now becomes not a skill of making fancy power point slides, but a skill of listening to people intently and guiding the conversation so that you know what they find valuable and how your business proposition can help deliver them that value.

Put the odds in your favour and learn how to sell because that's the art that will make sure you properly understand where the value exchange is, and what your presentation points should be.

If you've been with me so far with the most recent posts... then good luck and happy fundraising!

When talking to a potential investor, how can you use sales skills to figure out what they find valuable and tailor that to your pitch deck or your elevator pitch?

As usual, it'll be nice to understand the terms before we continue!

The pitch deck is your slide presentation or document that tells the investor about your business idea, how they can buy in, and what they'll be getting in return.

The elevator pitch serves a similar purpose, but it is delivered when you're face to face with one potential investor whom you don’t expect to make an investment just yet.

Sometimes the pitch deck is used when you’re in front of multiple investors you’re making a presentation to.

The aim of the elevator pitch on the other hand is to get them interested to take a meeting. Once you have secured the meeting, the pitch deck is to get them to give you money for the business idea.

Obviously the content of the pitch deck and the elevator pitch should contain the answer to the questions, "what's in it for me?" and "what will this business idea do for me?".

The reason why this is obvious is because we have established that if there's no value to the investor, then there'll be no cash or capital injection for you.

If the answer to the question is that you have to employ sound sales principles and tactics to get all the information you need... then the question becomes, "what are sound sales principles and tactics in the first place?"

The first sales practice that we should be looking at here is PROSPECTING.

This is the art of looking for the right people to talk to.

If don't do prospecting right, you'll never close a sale.

If you sell juicy, fattening, and obesity inducing cakes, you might not make money if you keep approaching health conscious weight watchers and ask them to buy from you.

You have to do some research and make sure that you are prospecting and talking to the right people.

First we have to do some research to be sure that we are speaking to the right kind of investor for the business idea that we have at hand.

Do some research by checking online or talking to people to figure out things like...

"what kind of investment portfolio does this investor have?"
"what kind of returns are they looking for?"
"how active or passive do they like being with their investment?"
"what kind of industries have they invested in before?"
"what's their overall investment thesis?"

Doing research like this will help you figure out if this investor who is famous for investing in tech ideas would be happy to invest in your snail farm.

It's not unlikely! Especially if your research shows that they have a soft spot for SMEs in the agriculture space.

So this is how prospecting principles and practice can help you raise capital from investors.

The sales theory here will help make sure you are targeting the right "market" to begin with.

What other sales principles and practice apply here?

We will examine that in another post!