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Showing posts from June, 2016

You have Monkeys on your Sales Team!

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In Nigeria, being a Sales person is difficult, hence Companies have a difficult task in recruiting and retaining the best into Sales. Salesmanship is a craft. You get better at Sales Daily. Ability to apply experience makes you an excellent Salesman. Companies have designed ways to Sell, Courses have been written on Essential Selling Skills, Millions of Dollars have been spent on understanding the Customer/Consumer so that Companies can develop products to satisfy human wants. Unfortunately, Products fail because the Sales Team could not deliver the break-even numbers that would guarantee the product a life cycle. To the Marketing Department, the Sales team are just a bunch of Monkeys. My big question is why leave so much to chance with the monkeys? Companies are quick to blame dwindling revenue on the Sales Team, and with a fix quick, find a way to get rid of the team. I have been a Sales Person for 16 years and these are the reasons why: Unrealistic Targets / Expectations and Tim...

How not to kill a successful Team.

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On my way to Work one morning, listening to an audio book, a statement pops at me "Success is achieving Set goals" Pondering on this, I realise teams are destroyed because we do not know how to manage success of teams when we achieve set goals.   A team is considered successful when set targets are met. A team would have gone through this cycle to become a performing team. Going back to the story, you know I am a salesperson, so I am constantly ploughing resources into Self-Motivation, being a Team Lead can be draining as you have to constantly motivate your team. I had learnt from a previous job that you can lead effectively by having; Experiential Knowledge: In my opinion, I believe the best leaders are created from the team, Management has expectations, the Team also has expectations, the ability of a person to balance the expectations of both parties increases productivity. A great example is recently my sales team expanded. From my experience I have learnt tha...

Hilary Clinton is my Cousin.

I let out a sigh of relief when I heard Hilary Clinton won the Democrats nomination. Every woman is a cousin to Hilary. Before you roll your eyes at me, let me explain. The first time I heard about Hilary Clinton in my life was when her husband cheated on her,  in a civilized society it is a big sacrilegious sin. In Nigeria it is a norm. A woman is blamed for her husband's cheating nature😢.  Sadly the woman is told she is not a good enough wife to the man. In the corporate world, office politics slay many a woman. Things have changed since then. We are as strong as can be imagined. Hilary Clinton has taught women around the World  how to manage crisis. How to be strong  inside and outside. She has managed situations with grace.  She has handled criticism with elegance, has dominated the World stage with wisdom.  I have learnt from Hilary that you can become every single thing you dream about. I am not an US citizen but whatever happens I am proud of this cousin of m...

Ignoring Competition Improves Sales.

As a Salesman, I have been trained to see and notice every minute detail of competition, How much is competition selling? What is Competition Numeric Distribution?, What is Competition Market Share?, and  for many a year I have been a keen spectator of competition. It was at my lowest ebb, I realized that I had the wrong doctrines embedded in my DNA, being in such a competitive mode, you never truly win. I had a Manager once whose desire to win was so huge, he won temporary recognition, but later lost it all. Life is more than a job or career. Life is made up of each aspect. Winning is relative ( The term relative means to me the Webster definition: a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them) what might be a winner to me, may be different to my parents. What my Company wants may be different from what I want. If I do not know what I want, this makes me uneducated. When you begin to compete, it slowly destroys your uniqueness, you want to be better vers...

Christianity Religion! what a Shame

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I was given birth in a Christian Home, not a contemporary christian home, I grew up in a white garment church, It was a very popular church in the day with a huge presence of affluent people. My Parents were Leaders in the Church and still active in the church at the time of this blog. This church had a great impact on my view about life, however it took me twenty years to fully understand the total package. In my Secondary School Days "Scripture Union"was the fad , being cool in Secondary School was either speaking complicated heavenly tongues or being a rascal. then it was easier to speak in tongues than being naughty as my parents were relatively young, so they possessed so much energy, and one of their few hobbies was giving me a good whipping   ♥ . unfortunately I did not have the DNA of being holy, so I backslide as many times as I become born again. I wanted to be a cool kid in my Niche and I choose religion to look cool (Na wa o!).  As I got to SS2 and SS3 I threw the...